Massive Primordial Galaxies Found Swimming in Vast Ocean of Dark Matter - National Radio Astronomy Observatory
https://public.nrao.edu/news/2017-alma-galaxies-dark-matter/

Astronomers expect that the first galaxies, those that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, would share many similarities with some of the dwarf
galaxies we see in the nearby universe today. These early agglomerations of a few billion stars would then become the building blocks of the larger galaxies that came
to dominate the universe after the first few billion years.

Ongoing observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), however, have discovered surprising examples of massive, star-filled galaxies
seen when the cosmos was less than a billion years old. This suggests that smaller galactic building blocks were able to assemble into large galaxies quite quickly.

The latest ALMA observations push back this epoch of massive-galaxy formation even further by identifying two giant galaxies seen when the universe was only 780 million
years old, or about 5 percent its current age. ALMA also revealed that these uncommonly large galaxies are nestled inside an even-more-massive cosmic structure, a halo
of dark matter several trillion times more massive than the sun.

The two galaxies are in such close proximity — less than the distance from the Earth to the center of our galaxy — that they will shortly merge to form the largest galaxy
ever observed at that period in cosmic history. This discovery provides new details about the emergence of large galaxies and the role that dark matter plays in assembling
the most massive structures in the universe.

The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature.

Clay minerals on Mars may have formed in primordial steam bath | News from Brown
http://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/12/marsclay

New research suggests that the bulk of clay minerals on Mars could have been formed as the planet’s crust
cooled and solidified, not by later interactions with water on the surface as has long been assumed.

VIRGO: Measured in the time domain? Or how?

https://archive.stsci.edu/tess/

Snellen - Exoplanets and the search for extraterrestrial life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=ZNkhILRp354

VIRGO: obavam se ze to je ale spatne - minimalne ten lunochod je moc malej. Ve skutecnosti ma prumer "talire" cca 2m.

Recipe for a comet | Max Planck Society
https://www.mpg.de/11813538/chemical-elements-rosetta-comet-67p?c=2249

Rearchers analyse which chemical elements make up comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

The dust that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko emits into space consists to about one half of organic molecules.
The dust also belongs to the most pristine and carbon-rich material known in our solar system; it has hardly
changed since its birth. These are the results of the COSIMA team, an instrument onboard the Rosetta spacecraft,
which investigated the comet. In their current study, the involved researchers including scientists from the Max
Planck Institute for Solar System Research analyze as comprehensively as never before, what chemical elements
constitute cometary dust.

The Mysterious Star MWC349su201744 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/su201744

Molecular clouds in interstellar space can sometimes produce natural masers (the radio wavelength analogs of lasers) that shine with
bright, narrow beams of radiation. Regions of active star formation generate some of the most spectacular such masers -- in one case
radiating as much energy in a single spectral line as does our Sun in its entire visible spectrum. In these sources, the maser
radiation comes from molecules like water or OH that are excited by collisions and the radiation environment around the young stars.

Giant Black Hole Pair Photobombs Andromeda Galaxy | NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/...on_pages/chandra/news/giant-black-hole-pair-photobombs-andromeda-galaxy.html

It seems like even black holes can’t resist the temptation to insert themselves unannounced into photographs. A cosmic photobomb found as a background
object in images of the nearby Andromeda galaxy has revealed what could be the most tightly coupled pair of supermassive black holes ever seen.

Astronomers made this remarkable discovery using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from ground-based telescopes, Gemini-
North in Hawaii and the Caltech’s Palomar Transient Factory in California.

This unusual source, called LGGS J004527.30+413254.3 (J0045+41 for short), was seen in optical and X-ray images of Andromeda, also known as M31. Until
recently, scientists thought J0045+41 was an object within M31, a large spiral galaxy located relatively nearby at a distance of about 2.5 million light
years from Earth. The new data, however, revealed that J0045+41 was actually at a much greater distance, around 2.6 billion light years from Earth.

“We were looking for a special type of star in M31 and thought we had found one,” said Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein of the University of Washington in Seattle,
WA, who led the paper describing this discovery. “We were surprised and excited to find something far stranger!”

Even more intriguing than the large distance of J0045+41 is that it likely contains a pair of giant black holes in close orbit around each other.
The estimated total mass for these two supermassive black holes is about two hundred million times the mass of our Sun.

Previously, a different team of astronomers had seen periodic variations in the optical light from J0045+41, and, believing it to be a member of M31,
classified it as a pair of stars that orbited around each other about once every 80 days.

Hydrothermal vent experiments bring Enceladus to Earth - Astrobiology Magazine
https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/hydrothermal-vent-experiments-bring-enceladus-earth/

Laboratory experiments on Earth can now simulate the conditions under which life might emerge on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as well as other icy alien worlds,
according to new research published in the September 2017 issue of the journal Astrobiology.

Since there is life virtually wherever there is water on Earth, researchers looking for alien life often focus on planets in the habitable zones of stars,
which are the regions around stars where it is warm enough for worlds to possess water on their surfaces. However, in the past few decades, scientists have
increasingly found evidence for oceans – and, potentially, life – hidden under the icy crusts of places such as Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto,
and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan.

On Earth, life is often thought to have originated near hydrothermal vents, which include hot springs on land, as well as fissures near undersea volcanoes.
Much research has suggested that icy moons might also host active hydrothermal vents on their ocean floors. Enceladus is of particular interest because data
from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggests there is activity within its ocean involving temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees Fahrenheit),
which in turn hints at geothermal heating by hydrothermal vents.

Scientists reduce the chances of life on exoplanets in so-called habitable zones around red stars
https://www.princeton.edu/...sts-reduce-chances-life-exoplanets-so-called-habitable-zones-around-red

Is there life beyond Earth in the cosmos? Astronomers looking for signs have found that our Milky Way galaxy teems with exoplanets, some with conditions that could be right
for extraterrestrial life. Such worlds orbit stars in so-called “habitable zones,” regions where planets could hold liquid water that is necessary for life as we know it.

However, the question of habitability is highly complex. Researchers led by space physicist Chuanfei Dong of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University have recently raised doubts about water on — and thus potential habitability of — frequently cited exoplanets that orbit red dwarfs,
the most common stars in the Milky Way.

In two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists develop models showing that the stellar wind — the constant outpouring of charged particles that sweep out
into space — could severely deplete the atmosphere of such planets over hundreds of millions of years, rendering them unable to host surface-based life as we know it.

“Traditional definition and climate models of the habitable zone consider only the surface temperature,” Dong said. “But the stellar wind can significantly contribute to
the long-term erosion and atmospheric loss of many exoplanets, so the climate models tell only part of the story.”

To broaden the picture, the first paper looks at the timescale of atmospheric retention on Proxima Centauri b (PCb), which orbits the nearest star to our solar system,
some four light years away. The second paper questions how long oceans could survive on “water worlds” — planets thought to have seas that could be hundreds of miles deep.