Category Astronomy/Space

A team of researchers, including UvA physicists and astronomers, has studied gamma rays caused by the Sagittarius Dwarf, a small neighbouring galaxy of our Milky Way. They showed that all the observed gamma radiation can be explained by millisecond pulsars, and can therefore not be interpreted as a smoking gun signature for the presence of dark matter. The results were published in Nature Astronomy this week.

The center of our galaxy is blowing a pair of colossal bubbles ...

Japanese astronomers report the detection of a new polar ring galaxy using the data obtained with the Subaru Telescope as part of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). The discovery was detailed in a paper published August 26 on the arXiv pre-print server.

The so-called polar ring galaxies (PRGs) are systems composed of an S0-like galaxy and a polar ring, which remain separate for billions of years. In general, these outer polar rings, composed of gas and stars, are aligned roughly in a perpendicular orientation with respect to the major axis of the central host galaxy.

However, although more than 400 PRG candidates have been discovered to date, only dozens of them have been...

Research team uses laser flashes to simulate the interior of ice planets – and spurs a new process for producing miniscule diamonds...

Universe’s coldest fermions open portal to high-symmetry quantum realm. Japanese and U.S. physicists have used atoms about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space to open a portal to an unexplored realm of quantum magnetism.

“Unless an alien civilization is doing experiments like these right now, anytime this experiment is running at Kyoto University it is making the coldest fermions in the universe,” said Rice University’s Kaden Hazzard, corresponding theory author of a studypublished today in Nature Physics. “Fermions are not rare particles. They include things like electrons and are one of two types of particles that all matter is made of.”

A Kyoto team led by study author Yoshiro Takahashi used lasers to cool its fermions, atoms of ytterbium, within about one-billiont...