News (Page 390)

How many habitable planets are out there? Thanks to new research using data from the Kepler space telescope, it’s estimated that there could be as many as 300 million potentially habitable planets in our galaxy. Some could even be pretty close, with several likely within 30 light-years of our Sun. The findings will be published in The Astronomical Journal, and research was a collaboration of scientists from NASA, the SETI Institute, and other organizations worldwide. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Citizen astronomers reshape asteroids from their backyard There are nearly one million catalogued asteroids, but we don’t know much about many of them. Now Unistellar and its scientific partner, the SETI Institute, can count on a network of nearly 3,000 amateurs capable of observing thousands of asteroids and providing an estimate of their size and shape. With mobile stations located in Asia, North America and Europe, the Unistellar network, the largest network of citizen astronomers, participates in cutting-edge research and has delivered its first scientific results including the 3-D shape model of an asteroid and the size of another one. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Violent cosmic explosion revealed by ALMA: The merging of massive protostars? The phenomenon of molecular outflow was first discovered in the 1980’s. Very high velocity motions were detected in the line wings of the carbon monoxide (CO) molecule, seen towards young forming stars. The high velocity motions obviously could not be gravitationally bound motions (such as infall or rotation) because of the required large gravitating masses. The first detections were in fact in the extremely bright CO lines in the center of the Orion nebulae, which were already seen when CO was first detected in the interstellar medium. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

LIGO and Virgo announce 39 new gravitational wave discoveries during first half of third observing run The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration released a catalog of results from the first half of its third observing run (O3a), and scientists have detected more than three times as many gravitational waves than the first two runs combined. Gravitational waves were first detected in 2015 and are ripples in time and space produced by merging black holes and/or neutron stars. Several researchers from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG) were heavily involved in analyzing the gravitational waves and understanding their significance. phys.orgRead More →

Measuring the expansion of the universe: The importance of measuring velocity Ever since the astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the further apart two galaxies are, the faster they move away from each other, researchers have measured the expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble constant) and the history of this expansion. Recently, a new puzzle has emerged, as there seems to be a discrepancy between measurements of this expansion using radiation in the early universe and using nearby objects. Researchers from the Cosmic Dawn Center, at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have now contributed to this debate by focusing on velocity measurements. TheRead More →

How star formation is ‘quenched’ in galaxies Galaxies die quickly—that is the conclusion of a new study that examines the mechanism that switches galaxies from an active star-forming phase to one of quiescence. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

An early dark energy model could solve an expanding cosmological conundrum Much mystery surrounds dark energy and the cosmological constant, the proxies used to explain the accelerating expansion of the Universe. New research suggests that an early model of dark energy presents a competing theory that offers all the benefits of current models without the baggage that comes associated with the cosmological constant. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Hubble finds ‘Greater Pumpkin’ galaxy pair Sorry Charlie Brown, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is taking a peek at what might best be described as the “Greater Pumpkin,” that looks like a Halloween decoration tucked away in a patch of sky cluttered with stars. What looks like two glowing eyes and a crooked carved smile is a snapshot of the early stages of a collision between two galaxies. The entire view is nearly 109,000 light-years across, approximately the diameter of our Milky Way. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Where were Jupiter and Saturn born? New work led by Carnegie’s Matt Clement reveals the likely original locations of Saturn and Jupiter. These findings refine our understanding of the forces that determined our Solar System’s unusual architecture, including the ejection of an additional planet between Saturn and Uranus, ensuring that only small, rocky planets, like Earth, formed inward of Jupiter. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

An Earth-sized rogue planet discovered in the Milky Way Our galaxy may be teeming with rogue planets, gravitationally unbound to any star. An international team of scientists, led by Polish astronomers, has announced the discovery of the smallest Earth-sized free-floating planet found to date. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Solved: the mystery of how dark matter in galaxies is distributed The gravitational force in the Universe under which it has evolved from a state almost uniform at the Big Bang until now, when matter is concentrated in galaxies, stars and planets, is provided by what is termed ‘dark matter.” But in spite of the essential role that this extra material plays, we know almost nothing about its nature, behavior and composition, which is one of the basic problems of modern physics. In a recent article in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, scientists at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)/University of La Laguna (ULL) andRead More →

Astronomers discover activity on distant planetary object Centaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae—clouds of dust particles and gas—even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Ultra-luminous X-ray pulsar Swift J0243.6+6124 investigated with AstroSat Using India’s AstroSat spacecraft, astronomers have performed broadband timing and spectral observations of an ultra-luminous X-ray (ULX) pulsar known as Swift J0243.6+6124. Results of this observational campaign, presented in a paper published October 16 on arXiv.org, reveal more details about the properties of this pulsar. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →