News (Page 495)

Astrophysicists use artificial intelligence to determine exoplanets sizes Using a machine learning technique, a team of Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço researchers constrained the radius of an exoplanet with known mass. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Violent flaring revealed at the heart of a black hole system An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Southampton, have used state-of-the-art cameras to create a high frame-rate movie of a growing black hole system at a level of detail never seen before. In the process they uncovered new clues to understanding the immediate surroundings of these enigmatic objects. The scientists publish their work in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

The Milky Way kidnapped several tiny galaxies from its neighbor Just like the moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun, galaxies orbit each other according to the predictions of cosmology. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers show how supergiant stars repeatedly cool and heat up An international team of professional and amateur astronomers, which includes Alex Lobel, astronomer at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, has determined in detail how the temperature of four yellow hypergiants increases from 4000 degrees to 8000 degrees and back again in a few decades. They will publish their findings in the professional journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Milky Way raids intergalactic ‘bank accounts,’ Hubble study finds Our Milky Way is a frugal galaxy. Supernovas and violent stellar winds blow gas out of the galactic disk, but that gas falls back onto the galaxy to form new generations of stars. In an ambitious effort to conduct a full accounting of this recycling process, astronomers were surprised to find a surplus of incoming gas. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

For newborn planets, solar systems are naturally baby-proof Numerical simulations by a group of astronomers, led by Mario Flock from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, have shown that young planetary systems are naturally “baby-proof”: Physical mechanisms combine to keep young planets in the inner regions from taking a fatal plunge into the star. Similar processes also allow planets to be born close to stars—from pebbles trapped in a region close to the star. The research, which has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, explains findings by the Kepler space telescopes that show a large number of super-Earths orbiting their stars very closely,Read More →

Astronomers investigate a black hole candidate during outburst Using MeeKAT telescope, astronomers have studied a black hole candidate X-ray binary system known as H1743−322 during an outburst that took place last year. Results of the study, presented in a paper published October 1 on arXiv.org, could help astronomers to untangle the mysteries of black holes existing as part of binary systems. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Milky Way’s center will be revealed by NASA’s Webb Telescope The center of our galaxy is a crowded place: A black hole weighing 4 million times as much as our sun is surrounded by millions of stars whipping around it at breakneck speeds. This extreme environment is bathed in intense ultraviolet light and X-ray radiation. Yet much of this activity is hidden from our view, obscured by vast swaths of interstellar dust. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Researchers theorize origins of magnetars, the strongest magnets in the universe How do some neutron stars become the strongest magnets in the universe? A German-British team of astrophysicists has found a possible answer to the question of how magnetars form. They used large computer simulations to demonstrate how the merger of two stars creates strong magnetic fields. If such stars explode in supernovae, magnetars can result. Scientists from Heidelberg University, the Max Planck Society, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, and the University of Oxford were involved in the research. The results were published in Nature. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Humans will not ‘migrate’ to other planets, Nobel winner says Humans will never migrate to a planet outside of Earth’s solar system because it would take far too long to get there, Swiss Nobel laureate Michel Mayor said Wednesday. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Liquifying a rocky exoplanet Rocky exoplanets that are around Earth-size are comparatively small, which makes them incredibly difficult to detect and characterise using telescopes. What are the optimal conditions to find such small planets that linger in the darkness? “A rocky planet that is hot, molten, and possibly harboring a large outgassed atmosphere ticks all the boxes,” says Dan Bower, astrophysicist at the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) of the University of Bern. Such a planet could be more easily seen by telescopes due to strong outgoing radiation than its solid counterpart. The SNSF Ambizione and CSH Fellow continues: “Granted, you wouldn’t want toRead More →

Carbon-rich hot bubble detected in the planetary nebula NGC 5189 Using ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope, astronomers have found that the planetary nebula NGC 5189 harbors a carbon-enriched X-ray-emitting hot bubble. The discovery, presented in a paper published September 30 on arXiv.org, could shed more light on the nature of gaseous material in planetary nebulae. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Exoplanet and cosmology discoveries awarded Nobel Prize in Physics ESA congratulates 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who have been awarded the prestigious prize for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star, and James Peebles, honoured for the theoretical framework of cosmology used to investigate the Universe on its largest scales. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →