Washington DC (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
In results announced this week at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky survey present the most detailed look yet at the warp of our own Galaxy. "Our usual picture of a spiral galaxy is as a flat disk, thinner than a pancake, peacefully rotating around its center," said Xinlun Cheng of the University of Virginia, the lead author of th

Green Bank WV (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
How are galaxies able to keep forming stars and planets? Astronomers from Texas Christian University are using the Green Bank Telescope to reveal more about this process, studying high-velocity clouds that are being pulled into our Milky Way galaxy by its gravitational pull. Stars and planets require large amounts of gas to form, and galaxies can run out of this cosmic building material un

Chicago IL (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
The Milky Way houses 8,292 recently discovered stellar streams - all named Theia. But Theia 456 is special. A stellar stream is a rare linear pattern - rather than a cluster - of stars. After combining multiple datasets captured by the Gaia space telescope, a team of astrophysicists found that all of Theia 456's 468 stars were born at the same time and are traveling in the same direction a

Chicago IL (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
The Dark Energy Survey, a global collaboration including the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, has released DR2, the second data release in the survey's seven-year history. DR2 is the topic of sessions today and tomorrow at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical

Thuwal, Saudi Arabia (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
Computer simulations of cells evolving over tens of thousands of generations reveal why some organisms retain a disused switch mechanism that turns on under severe stress, changing some of their characteristics. Maintaining this "hidden" switch is one means for organisms to maintain a high degree of gene expression stability under normal conditions. Tomato hornworm larvae are green in warm

Munich, Germany (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
Venus's impenetrable atmosphere has long made it difficult to conduct a thorough investigation of our neighbouring planet. In a step forward, by conducting laboratory experiments scientists from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) have now developed a way of determining the nature of the planet's surface using new instruments from orbit. The entire surfac

Montreal, Canada (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Universite de Montreal have found. This intriguing discovery by Ph.D. student Caroline Piaulet of UdeM's Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more

Berkeley CA (SPX) Jan 19, 2021
A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars. First theorized in the 1970s as part of a solution to a fundamental particle physics problem, axion

Beijing (XNA) Jan 19, 2021
China published its Regulations on the Management of Lunar Samples on Monday morning, aiming to improve scientific research and international cooperation. Developed by the China National Space Administration, the document has nine chapters and 37 clauses, governing the storage, management and use of lunar samples brought back by the country's Chang'e 5 mission. According to the regul