Show Notes
Today's episode — S05E190, Thursday September 10, 2026: Main story: 109 fast radio bursts have been used to measure how much galactic feedback has smoothed out the matter in the universe. A fast radio burst lasts about a millisecond, and on its way to us it is dispersed — low radio frequencies slowed more than high ones by free electrons along the path, exactly the way a prism separates white light. The size of that delay counts the ordinary matter the burst passed through. Writing in Nature Astronomy on 8 September, a team led by Kritti Sharma at Caltech, with Vikram Ravi, Liam Connor and Elisabeth Krause (University of Arizona), used 109 bursts localised to host galaxies out to redshift ~0.3 — most of them from Caltech's DSA-110 — to constrain the suppression of matter clustering by feedback, and the gas fractions of groups and clusters between 10^13 and 10^15 solar masses. They find more gas retained than the X-ray picture implies: gas fractions about 1.9σ above stacked eROSITA measurements, and slightly above the Atacama Cosmology Telescope's kSZ constraints, consistent with the bursts counting cool gas that X-rays miss. The constraint is already competitive with both of those far larger experiments, cutting the uncertainty on clustering at these scales by roughly a factor of eight. That matters because feedback is the confound sitting under the S8 tension — it mimics the signature of massive neutrinos and of some dark energy and dark matter models. The technique's foundation is Australian: the Macquart relation, established with ASKAP in Western Australia in 2020, is what found the universe's missing ordinary matter in the first place. The rest of the news: · Hypersoft X-ray sources: NASA and the Chandra X-ray Center announced a new class of object on 9 September — 84 sources across six galaxies (M31, M101 and four ellipticals) that emit more than eight times as many photons below 0.3 keV as just above it, exceeding 10^38 erg/s in that narrow band and more again in the extreme ultraviolet. Led by Mustafa Muhibullah (University of Alabama) with Jimmy Irwin and Rosanne Di Stefano (CfA), published in Nature Astronomy. They are likely compact objects accreting from companions, and may be both the long-sought progenitors of Type Ia supernovae and a significant unaccounted source of ionising radiation. · A rendezvous with Halley's Comet: a trajectory study circulated on 6 September by Roberto Flores and Elena Fantino (Khalifa University), Mauro Pontani (Sapienza), and Ivano Bertini and Cesare Barbieri (Padua) sets out the first Halley rendezvous achievable with proven hardware — unpowered Jupiter and Saturn gravity assists plus deep-space low-thrust arcs, a Hall-effect thruster on a standard RTG, ~2,000 kg launch mass with ~750 kg of instruments, launching August 2036 or September 2037 and arriving in 2060, about a year before Halley's 2061 perihelion. Months alongside the comet instead of Giotto's minutes at 68 km/s. · Apollo Maneuvers 2026: US Space Command announced on 8 September that it had completed the first live-fly orbital manoeuvre exercise of its kind, moving real operational satellites across low, medium and geosynchronous orbits with Operation Olympic Defender allies (Australia among them) and commercial operators via its Commercial Integration Cell. Named for the US Army's 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers. The practical consequence is more unpredictable objects in an already crowded region, and in-orbit refuelling becoming load-bearing. · Skywatch: New Moon on 11 September at 14:27 AEST (04:27 UTC) makes tonight and tomorrow the darkest nights of the month. Southern Hemisphere — the galactic core still high after dark, and Venus well placed low in the west-south-west, 7.4° from Spica and building to greatest brilliancy on 18 September at magnitude −4.8. Saturn rises about an hour after sunset for everyone, heading for its 4 October opposition with the rings about 7° from edge-on. North America — the pre-dawn s
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Show notes The Milky Way's disc settled in two stages; metal-rich gas around Sgr A*; two mirror-image simulated universes; shadows in the Orion Bar; quick hits on Hera, Uzbekistan and Artemis; Orionid-night skywatch. Sources · IAC — Milky Way's disc formed in two very distinct stages — https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/research-iac-reveals-milky-ways-disc-formed-two-very-distinct-stages · Mirabal et al. — ApJL 1010 L38 — https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aeb0a3 · McGill — Gas around Milky Way's central black hole is rich in metals — https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/gas-around-milky-ways-central-black-hole-rich-metals-study-finds-375101 · Ford et al. — AJ (DOI) — http://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae994d · Ford et al. — arXiv 2605.13995 — https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.13995 · Argonne — Aurora powers two of the largest cosmological simulations — https://www.anl.gov/article/argonnes-aurora-supercomputer-powers-two-of-the-largest-cosmological-simulations-to-date · UDE — New 3D model reveals hidden chemistry of stellar nurseries — https://www.uni-due.de/2026-10-16-publication-aa-brandt-gaches-3d-model-en · Gaches et al. — A&A 714 A295 — https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202660769 · ESA — Finding Hera's way: Flight Dynamics team in action — https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/Finding_Hera_s_way_Flight_Dynamics_team_in_action · Kun.uz — Uzbekistan joins Artemis Accords — https://kun.uz/en/news/2026/10/19/uzbekistan-joins-artemis-accords-on-peaceful-space-exploration · NASA — To discuss Artemis acceleration, status of upcoming Moon missions — https://nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-to-discuss-artemis-acceleration-status-of-upcoming-moon-missions · The Planetary Society — Night sky, October 2026 — https://www.planetary.org/night-sky/night-sky-what-to-see-this-month Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support (https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss) . Sponsor Details: Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN . To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit You'll be glad you did! Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail (https://www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail) Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here (https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates--5648921/support) This episode includes AI-generated content. Episode link: https://play.headliner.app/episode/35863922?utm_source=youtube
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