Atlanta GA (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
Astronomers from Georgia State University have found an explanation for the strange occurrence of massive stars located far from their birthplace in the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy. Stars more massive than the Sun have very hot cores that drive nuclear energy generation at very high rates. They are among the brightest objects in our galaxy. But because they burn through their hydrogen fue

Washington DC (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
Pictures of the Milky Way show billions of stars arranged in a spiral pattern radiating out from the center, with illuminated gas in between. But our eyes can only glimpse the surface of what holds our galaxy together. About 95 percent of the mass of our galaxy is invisible and does not interact with light. It is made of a mysterious substance called dark matter, which has never been directly me

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
Exoplanets come in shapes and sizes that are not found in our solar system. These include small gaseous planets called mini-Neptunes and rocky planets several times Earth's mass called super-Earths. Now, astronomers have identified two different cases of "mini-Neptune" planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. Radiation from the planets' sta

Bonn, Germany (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
The Standard Model of Cosmology describes how the universe came into being according to the view of most physicists. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now studied the evolution of galaxies within this model, finding considerable discrepancies with actual observations. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Charles University in the Czech Republic were also involved in the study.

Manoa HI (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
Everything in our universe moves, but the timescales needed to see motion are often vastly greater than human lifetimes. In a major new study, a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), University of Maryland and University of Paris-Saclay has traced the movement of 10,000 galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the dominant congregations of matter, within 350

Warwick UK (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
A new study from the University of Warwick demonstrates the impact of passing stars, misaligned binary stars and passing gas clouds on the formation of planets in early star systems. Scientists have modelled how cosmic events like these can warp protoplanetary discs, the birthplaces of planets, in the early evolution of solar systems. Their results are published today in the Astrophysical Journa

Mountain View CA (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is kicking off its 7th year with a call for applications and the search for an expanded faculty. This year will be the program's biggest and most ambitious to date, with more teams tackling challenges in space, Earth science and energy domains. FDL is a public-private partnership between NASA, DOE, the SETI Institute, Trillium Technologies, the European Space

Cologne, Germany (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
Astronomers have found a new and original method for measuring the cosmic microwave background's temperature when the Universe was still in its infancy. Writing in 'Nature', they confirm in their new study the early cooling of our Universe shortly after the Big Bang and open up new perspectives on the elusive dark energy. An international group of astrophysicists has discovered a new metho

Heidelberg (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
With the IRAM NOEMA telescope array in the French Alps, astronomers have for the first time observed a distant object casting a shadow on the early, hot Big Bang phase of our universe, blocking out some of the light of the so-called cosmic background radiation. The object is a water cloud so distant that we see it as it was a mere 880 million years after the Big Bang. The shadow appears because

Leicester UK (SPX) Feb 07, 2022
New Leicester space research has revealed, for the first time, a complex 'tug-of-war' lights up aurorae in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, using a combination of data from NASA's Juno probe and the Hubble Space Telescope. The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, describes the delicate current cycle driven by Jupiter's rapid rotation and the release of sulphur