Category Astronomy/Space

Post-starburst galaxies were previously thought to scatter all of their gas and dust — the fuel required for creating new stars — in violent bursts of energy, and with extraordinary speed. Now, new data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals that these galaxies don’t scatter all of their star-forming fuel after all. Instead, after their supposed end, these dormant galaxies hold onto and compress large amounts of highly-concentrated, turbulent gas. But contrary to expectation, they’re not using it to form stars.

In most galaxies, scientists expect gas to be distributed in a way similar to starlight. But for post-starburst galaxies, or PSBs, this isn’t the case...

Saturn’s moon Titan looks very much like Earth from space, with rivers, lakes, and seas filled by rain tumbling through a thick atmosphere. While these landscapes may look familiar, they are composed of materials that are undoubtedly different — liquid methane streams streak Titan’s icy surface and nitrogen winds build hydrocarbon sand dunes.

The presence of these materials — whose mechanical ...

First model that is fully consistent with all FBOT observations. Ever since they were discovered in 2018, fast blue optical transients (FBOTs) have utterly surprised and completely confounded both observational and theoretical astrophysicists.

So hot that they glow blue, these mysterious objects are the brightest known optical phenomenon in the universe. But with only a few discovered so far, FBOTs’ origins have remained elusive.

Now a Northwestern University astrophysics team presents a bold new explanation for the origin of these curious anomalies. Using a new model, the astrophysicists believe FBOTs could result from the actively cooling cocoons that surround jets launched by dying stars...

Planet’s atmosphere explains the gravity of the situation. If not for the soupy, fast-moving atmosphere on Venus, Earth’s sister planet would likely not rotate. Instead, Venus would be locked in place, always facing the sun the way the same side of the moon always faces Earth.

The gravity of a large object in space can keep a smaller object from spinning, a phenomenon called tidal locking. Because it prevents this locking, a UC Riverside scientist argues the atmosphere needs to be a more prominent factor in studies of Venus as well as other planets.

These argument...