The results of science are often weirder than anything humans can imagine. As researchers, we dedicate our lives to taking data and knowing that whatever we may want to believe, we have to accept the reality of what our data shows us.  And sometimes the data is just plain weird.  The press release this story draws from includes the quote “When I show the observations to people, they are blown away.” and in describing the results, the press officers explain “The team acknowledges they are baffled but have come up with some possible theories.” While looking for stars with strong...

An artist’s impression of the ultra-long period magnetar—a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that can produce powerful bursts of energy. Credit: ICRAR. The more we look at the universe, the more we’ll be able to find rare and wonderful things. In...

Left: Dust is shown in red, oxygen in green, and starlight (from HST) in blue. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Y. Tamura et al., NASA/ESA HST). right: ALMA shows just dust emissions, including a vertically elongated elliptical cavity- a possible super bubble. Credit:...

A planet and its Trojan orbiting a star in the PDS 70 system (annotated) Credit: ALMA A whole fair amount of astronomy consists of theorists coming up with mathematically valid ideas of what is possible and then everyone debating if the universe would actually do...