News (Page 827)

Cooking up alien atmospheres on Earth Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are cooking up an alien atmosphere right here on Earth. In a new study, JPL scientists used a high-temperature “oven” to heat a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 Celsius), about the temperature of molten lava. The aim was to simulate conditions that might be found in the atmospheres of a special class of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) called “hot Jupiters.” phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

SDSS J1430+1339: Storm rages in cosmic teacup Fancy a cup of cosmic tea? This one isn’t as calming as the ones on Earth. In a galaxy hosting a structure nicknamed the “Teacup,” a galactic storm is raging. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

New 3-D map will help solve long-standing cosmic mysteries A new study led by ANU has created a 3D map of the magnetic field in a small wedge of the Milky Way galaxy, paving the way for future discoveries that will improve our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Universe. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

ESO’s Cosmic Gems Programme captures the Cosmic Bat’s dusty clouds Hidden in one of the darkest corners of the Orion constellation, this Cosmic Bat is spreading its hazy wings through interstellar space two thousand light-years away. It is illuminated by the young stars nestled in its core — despite being shrouded by opaque clouds of dust, their bright rays still illuminate the nebula. Too dim to be discerned by the naked eye, NGC 1788 reveals its soft colours to ESO’s Very Large Telescope in this image—the most detailed to date. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers investigate a recently reactivated radio magnetar A UK-German team of astronomers has conducted observations of a peculiar radio magnetar known as XTE J1810–197, which turned on in December 2018 after an almost decade-long period of quiescence. Results of these observations provide more information about the magnetar properties, and were presented in a paper published March 6 on arXiv.org. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Quasar jets confuse orbital telescope Astrophysicists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LPI RAS), and NASA have found an error in the coordinates of active galactic nuclei measured by the Gaia space telescope, and helped correct it. The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, also serve as an independent confirmation of the astrophysical model of these objects. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Strong planetary magnetic fields like Earth’s may protect oceans from stellar storms A study by scientists at ANU on the magnetic fields of planets has found that most planets discovered in other solar systems are unlikely to be as hospitable to life as Earth. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

ALMA observes the formation sites of solar-system-like planets Researchers have spotted the formation sites of planets around a young star resembling the sun. Two rings of dust around the star, at distances comparable to the asteroid belt and the orbit of Neptune in the solar system, suggest that we are witnessing the formation of a planetary system similar to our own. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes in the early universe Astronomers from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University have discovered 83 quasars powered by supermassive black holes in the distant universe, from a time when the universe was less than 10 percent of its present age. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Neural networks predict planet mass To find out how planets form, astrophysicists run complicated and time-consuming computer calculations. Members of the NCCR PlanetS at the University of Bern have now developed a totally novel approach to speed up this process dramatically. They use deep learning based on artificial neural networks, a method that is well known in image recognition. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Large area solar flares are the likely source of puzzling millimeter emission Solar flares are sudden explosive processes that convert the energy of the magnetic field into the kinetic energy of electrons and ions. Since the beginning of the century, millimeter observations of solar flares became routinely possible at a few frequencies with limited spatial resolution (see Kaufmann 2012, as a review). One of the most puzzling aspects of the observations at millimeter wavelengths (200-400 GHz) is the presence, in some flares, of a bright spectral component that grows with frequency. This emission is about a hundred trillion times more powerful than the power fromRead More →

Researchers confirm massive hyper-runaway star ejected from the Milky Way Disk A fast-moving star may have been ejected from the Milky Way’s stellar disk by a cluster of young stars, according to researchers from the University of Michigan who say the star did not originate from the middle of the galaxy, as previously believed by astronomers. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →