Category Astronomy/Space

A Neptune-sized planet denser than steel has been discovered by an international team of astronomers, who believe its composition could be the result of a giant planetary clash. TOI-1853b’s mass is almost twice that of any other similar-sized planet known and its density is incredibly high, meaning that it is made up of a larger fraction of rock than would typically be expected at that scale.

In the study, published August 30 in Nature, scientists led by Luca Naponiello of University of Rome Tor Vergata and the University of Bristol suggest that this is the result of planetary collisions. These huge impacts would have removed some of the lighter atmosphere and water leaving a multitude of rock behind.

Senior Research Associate and co author Dr...

Experiments promote a curious flipside of decaying monopoles: A reality where particle physics is quite literally turned on its head. The field of quantum physics is rife with paths leading to tantalising new areas of study, but one rabbit hole offers a unique vantage point into a world where particles behave differently — through the proverbial looking glass.

Dubbed the ‘Alice ring’ after Lewis Carroll’s world-renowned stories on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the appearance of this object verifies a decades-old theory on how monopoles decay...

Chromium hydride (CrH), a molecule that’s relatively rare and particularly sensitive to temperature, is useful as a “thermometer for stars,” according to astronomer Laura Flagg, because it’s abundant only in a narrow range between 1,200–2,000 degrees Kelvin.

Flagg, a research associate in astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), has used this and other metal hydrides to determine the temperature of cool stars and brown dwarfs...

Nothing can evoke an existential perspective-spiral quite like looking at an image of a galaxy. At first glance, these sublime structures may appear rather serene. But in fact the center of many galaxies is a turbulent environment containing an actively feeding supermassive black hole.

Orbiting these incomprehensibly dense objects are swirling accretion disks of gas and dust, which feed the black hole and emit copious amounts of energy all along the electromagnetic spectrum—from high-energy gamma rays and X-rays, through visi...