Category Astronomy/Space

Stars with less than half the mass of our sun are able to host giant Jupiter-style planets, in conflict with the most widely accepted theory of how such planets form, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) and University of Warwick researchers.

Gas giants, like other planets, form from disks of material surrounding young stars. According to core accretion theory, they first form a core of rock, ice and other heavy solids, attracting an outer layer of gas once this core is sufficiently massive (about 15 to 20 times that of Earth).

However, low-mass stars have low-mass disks that, models predict, would not provide enough material to form a gas giant in this way, or at least not quickly enough before the disk breaks up.

In the study, accepted for publica...

Physicists show that black holes and dense state of gluons–the ‘glue’ particles that hold nuclear matter together–share common features. Atomic nuclei accelerated close to the speed of light become dense walls of gluons known as color glass condensate (CGC). Recent analysis shows that CGC shares features with black holes, enormous conglomerates of gravitons that exert gravitational force across the universe...

Researchers have analyzed samples of the asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft and found uracil, one of the informational units that make up RNA, the molecules that contain the instructions for how to build and operate living organisms. Nicotinic acid, also known as Vitamin B3 or niacin, which is an important cofactor for metabolism in living organisms, was also detected in the same samples.

This discovery by an international team, led by Associate Professor Yasuhiro Oba at Hokkaido University, adds to the evidence that important building blocks for life are created in space and could have b...

New research conducted as part of the science verification phase of the Visible Spectropolarimeter (ViSP) instrument at the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is the first to use data from this instrument. It is hoped that the work will pave the way for future studies to enable a better understanding of the potential risks to key power and communications infrastructure.

The study, which is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was the result of an exciting collaboration between the U.K. and the National Science Foundation and marks an important milestone for the astronomical community and this ground-breaking telescope.

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