Category Astronomy/Space

Models show Venus’ superheated core could produce extended volcanism, long-lived resurfacing. A Southwest Research Institute-led team has modeled the early impact history of Venus to explain how Earth’s sister planet has maintained a youthful surface despite lacking plate tectonics. The team compared the early collision histories of the two bodies and determined that Venus likely experienced higher-speed, higher-energy impacts creating a superheated core that promoted extended volcanism and resurfaced the planet.

“One of the mysteries of t...

In a first for white dwarfs, the burnt-out cores of dead stars, astronomers have discovered that at least one member of this cosmic family is two faced. One side of the white dwarf is composed of hydrogen, while the other is made up of helium.

“The surface of the white dwarf completely changes from one side to the other,” says Ilaria Caiazzo, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who leads a new study on the findings in the journal Nature. “When I show the observations to people, they are blown away.”

White dwarfs are the scalding remains of stars that were once like our sun. As the stars age, they puff up into red giants; eventually, their outer fluffy material is blown away and their cores contract into dense, fiery-hot white dwarfs...

A team of scientists, led by the researcher at the IAC and the University of La Laguna (ULL) Sebastién Comerón, has found that the galaxy NGC 1277 does not contain dark matter. This is the first time that a massive galaxy (it has a mass several times that of the Milky Way) does not show evidence for this invisible component of the universe. “This result does not fit in with the currently accepted cosmological models, which include dark matter” explains Comerón.

In the current standard model cosmology massive galaxies contain substantial quantities of dark matter, a type of matter which does not interact in the same way as no...

An international team of astronomers used the state-of-the-art capability of VERA, a Japanese network of radio telescopes operated by NAOJ, to uncover valuable clues about how rapidly growing “young” supermassive black holes form, grow, and possibly evolve into more powerful quasars.

It is now widely accepted that nearly every active galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole at its core, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun...