A new type of star has been discovered lurking as a low mass component in a very compact binary star system.
Astronomers Steve B. Howell of the University of California, Riverside and Tom Harrison of New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, announced today at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Seattle, Wash., that they have confirmed the existence of a new variety of stellar end-product. This previously unknown type of star has some properties similar to brown dwarf stars and may
Which way does a mammoth skeleton point in Siberia? No, it’s not a Christmas cracker joke. To find the answer you have to look in a rather surprising place – the Institute of Physics’ new online archive.
In an article published in the first edition of Proceedings of the Physical Society in 1874, John Rae writes about the physical properties of ice and mammoth remains. He put forward a theory as to why so many of the mammoth skeletons found near the Yenesei river in Siberia had been found wi
Using a state-of-the-art computer model of the lunar interior, geophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown that a mighty burp early in the moon’s history could account for some of its geologic mysteries.
The burp of hot rock, like a blob rising to the top of a lava lamp, would have lifted a blanket covering the moon’s core, allowing the core to cool quickly enough to produce a magnetic field.
The moon has long since cooled off and the global magne
A study at Ohio State University has uncovered more evidence that black holes form before the galaxies that contain them.
The finding could help resolve a long-standing debate, said Marianne Vestergaard, a postdoctoral fellow in astronomy at Ohio State.
Vestergaard came to this conclusion when she studied a collection of very energetic, active galaxies known as quasars as they appeared some 12 billion years ago, when the universe was only one billion years old. While the quasars wer
In results presented this week at the 2003 meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle, astrophysicist Greg Aldering and colleagues report that their supernova factory project has discovered an unprecedented 34 new supernovae in its first year. The accomplishment would not have been possible without the National Science Foundation (NSF) – supported high performance wireless network link to Palomar Observatory. “This has been the best rookie year for any supernova search pro
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory astronomers are major partners in a scientific collaboration that will conduct an extremely novel search for small, comet-like bodies in the outer solar system using four half-meter telescopes. The work was described today at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Rather than look for the light reflected directly by these objects (as is customary astronomy practice), this project will search for those very rare moments when one of these ob
When Earth’s sun expands into a red giant star in roughly five billion years, long after Earth has become uninhabitable, the hydrogen core will be burned out and the bloated outer shell will be cool and murky.
But according to new research by the University of Colorado at Boulder, such red giants still retain surface magnetic storms and coronas — the very hot and patchy outer atmosphere of the sun and sun-like stars — at temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit that often signal
One and a half billion years ago the small, inconspicuous galaxy Messier 82 (M82) almost smashed into its large, massive neighbour galaxy Messier 81 (M81), causing a frenzy of star formation.
New research by astronomers from the Universities of Cambridge and Utrecht, Netherlands, has now discovered an elusive phenomenon in this violent “starburst” area. About 100 star clusters have been discovered that are believed to be the ancestors of the so-called “globular clusters” thought to be the ol
ESA’s Rosetta will be the first mission to orbit and land on a comet, one of the icy bodies that travel throughout the Solar System and develop a characteristic tail when they approach the Sun. Rosetta is scheduled to be launched on-board an Ariane-5 rocket in January 2003 from Kourou, French Guiana. A decision on the launch date will be taken by Tuesday 14 January (see Arianespace press release N° 03/02 of 7 January 2003 or at http:www.arianespace.com).
The mission’s target is Comet Wi
A vast, but previously unknown structure has been discovered around our own Milky Way galaxy by an international team of astronomers. The announcement is being made at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting in Seattle, Washington, on behalf of Drs Annette Ferguson, Rodrigo Ibata, Mike Irwin, Geraint Lewis and Nial Tanvir. Their observations suggest that there is a giant ring of several hundred million stars surrounding the main disk of the Milky Way. Despite its size, the ring has not been
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center, a.k.a. Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, was made from the longest X-ray exposure of that region to date. In addition to Sgr A* more than two thousand other X-ray sources were detected in the region, making this one of the richest fields ever observed.
During the two-week observation period, Sgr A* flared up in X-ray intensity half a dozen or more times. The cause of these outbursts is not understood
Cosmologists hope to “hear the shape of space”, namely its topology, by analyzing in detail the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). An international team of cosmologists, including researchers from l’Observatoire de Paris, has recently developped a model for the vibrations of the universe. For the first time [1], they have simulated high resolution CMB maps containing the signatures of a wide class of topologies, for comparison with the forthcoming MAP satell
A Dartmouth researcher is building a case for a “dark energy” – dominated universe. Dark energy, the mysterious energy with unusual anti-gravitational properties, has been the subject of great debate among cosmologists.
Brian Chaboyer, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth, with his collaborator Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, have reported their finding in the January 3, 2003, issue of Science. Combining their calc
Combining concepts from electromagnetic radiation research and fiber optics, researchers have created an extreme-ultraviolet, laser-like beam capable of producing tightly-focused light in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum not previously accessible to scientists. Between 10-100 times shorter than visible light waves, the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths will allow researchers to “see” tiny features and carve miniature patterns, with applications in such fields as microscopy, lithography an
Quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN) are likely powered by matter accretion onto a super-massive black hole located at their center. Before being swallowed by the black hole, matter spirals towards the center, while forming an accretion disc. Unfortunately, such a disc is too small so that one can in general solve it with present day telescopes. But the technique of radio interferometry with very long base (VLBI, with base length of the size of the earth’s radius) make it possible somehow. I
Don’t worry – you are not the only one who thought this was a nice amateur photo of planet Saturn, Lord of the Rings in our Solar System!
But then the relative brightness and positions of the moons may appear somewhat unfamiliar… and the ring system does look unusually bright when compared to the planetary disk…??
Well, it is not Saturn, but Uranus, the next giant planet further out, located at a distance of about 3,000 million km, or 20 times the distance between the Sun and t
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