Category Astronomy/Space

It’s been nearly a century since astronomer Fritz Zwicky first calculated the mass of the Coma Cluster, a dense collection of almost 1,000 galaxies located in the nearby universe. But estimating the mass of something so huge and dense, not to mention 320 million light-years away, has its share of problems—then and now. Zwicky’s initial measurements, and the many made since, are plagued by sources of error that bias the mass higher or lower.

Now, using tools from machine learning, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University physicists has developed a deeplearning method that accurately estimates the mass of the Coma Cluster and effectively mitigates the sources of error.

“People have made mass estimates of the Coma Cluster for many, many years...

A team of researchers with affiliations to multiple institutions in the U.S. has found that the metal content of Fermi bubble high-velocity clouds does not match with material in the Milky Way’s galactic center, suggesting that at least some of the material comes from somewhere else. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes their analysis of the makeup of the clouds and their conclusions.

Prior research has shown that massive lobes of plasma extend above and below the center of the galactic plane that forms the Milky Way galaxy. Prior research has also suggested that the lobes are globular gas formations which has led to their nickname—Fermi bubbles...

Astronomers at the University of Arizona have developed a theory to explain the presence of the largest molecules known to exist in interstellar gas.

The team simulated the environment of dying stars and observed the formation of buckyballs (carbon atoms linked to three other carbon atoms by covalent bonds) and carbon nanotubes (rolled up sheets of single-layer carbon atoms). The findings indicate that buckyballs and carbon nanotubes can form when silicon carbide dust—known to be proximate to dying stars—releases carbon in reaction to intense heat, shockwaves and high energy particles.

“We know from infrared observations that buckyballs populate the interstellar medium,” said Jacob Bernal, who led the research...

A team of international experts, renowned for debunking several black hole discoveries, have found a stellar-mass black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbour galaxy to our own...