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https://theconversation.com/alien-megastructures-cosmic-thumbprint-whats-behind-a-james-webb-telescope-photo-that-had-even-astronomers-stumped-192249>
"In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by
surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads.
The picture, which looks like a kind of “cosmic thumbprint”, came from the
James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship observatory.
The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some on the wild
fringe even claimed it as evidence for “alien megastructures” of unknown
origin.
Luckily, our team at the University of Sydney had already been studying this
very star, known as WR140, for more than 20 years – so we were in prime
position to use physics to interpret what we were seeing.
Our model, published in
Nature, explains the strange process by which the
star produces the dazzling pattern of rings seen in the Webb image (itself now
published in
Nature Astronomy)."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
