Category Astronomy/Space

A rhodochrosite specimen from Butte, Mont. Credit: Robert Downs

New research predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos. Minerals form from novel combinations of elements. These combinations can be facilitated by both geological activity, including volcanoes, plate tectonics, and water-rock interactions, and biological activity, such as chemical reactions with oxygen and organic material.

Nearly a decade ago, Hazen developed the idea that the diversity explosion of planet’s minerals from the dozen present at the birth of our Solar System to the nearly 5,000 types existing today arose primarily from the rise of life...

In this theoretical artist’s conception of the Milky Way galaxy, transluscent green “bubbles” mark areas where life has spread beyond its home system to create cosmic oases, a process called panspermia. New research suggests that we could detect the pattern of panspermia, if it occurs. Credit: NASA/JPL/R. Hurt

Astrophysicists now show that if life can travel between the stars ie panspermia it would spread in a characteristic pattern that we could potentially identify. “In our theory clusters of life form, grow, and overlap like bubbles in a pot of boiling water,” says lead author Henry Lin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

There are two basic ways for life to spread beyond its host star...

Images of 3 DOG’s. The left, middle, and right panels show optical image from HSC, near-infrared image from VIKING, and mid-infrared image from WISE, respectively. The image size is 20 square arcsecond (1 arcsecond is 1/3600 degree). It is clear that DOGs are faint in the optical, but are extremely bright in the infrared. Credit: Image courtesy of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

As they harbor rapidly growing black holes in their centers, these results give us clues for understanding the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes. The research group discovered 48 DOGs, and measured how common they are using Subaru Strategic Program with Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), a new wide-field camera with a field of view 9X the size of the moon.

How did galaxies form and evolve during t...

This artist’s concept illustrates the two types of spiral galaxies that populate our universe: those with plump middles, or central bulges (upper left), and those lacking the bulge (foreground). Credit: NASA

A large proportion of galaxies have undergone a major ‘metamorphosis’ since they were initially formed after the Big Bang. By providing the first direct evidence of the extent of this transformation, the team hope to shed light on the processes that caused these dramatic changes. They observed around 10,000 galaxies using a survey of the sky created by the Herschel ATLAS and GAMA projects.

The researchers then classified the galaxies into the 2 main types: flat, rotating, disc-shaped galaxies (much like our own galaxy, the Milky Way); and large, oval-shaped galaxies with a swarm of dis...