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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Earth and Venus grew up as Rambunctious Planets

    September 28, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Simulated aftermath of a hit-and-run collisions between the young Earth and another planetary body
    The moon is thought to be the aftermath of a giant impact. According to a new theory, there were two giant impacts in a row, separated by about 1 million years, involving a Mars-sized ‘Theia’ and proto-Earth. In this image, the proposed hit-and-run collision is simulated in 3D, shown about an hour after impact. A cut-away view shows the iron cores. Theia (or most of it) barely escapes, so a follow-on collision is likely.A. Emsenhuber/University of Bern/University of Munich

    Using machine learning and simulations of giant impacts, researchers found that the planets residing in the inner solar system were likely born from repeated hit-and-run collisions, challenging conventional models of planet formation.

    Planet formation — the process by which neat, round, distinct planets form from ...

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    Hubble finds Early, Massive Galaxies Running on Empty

    September 25, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    These images are composites from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The boxed and pullout images show two of the six, distant, massive galaxies where scientists found star formation has ceased due to the depletion of a fuel source – cold hydrogen gas. Hubble, together with ALMA, found these odd galaxies when they combined forces with the “natural lens” in space created by foreground massive galaxy clusters. The clusters’ gravity stretches and amplifies the light of the background galaxies in an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows astronomers to use massive galaxy clusters as natural magnifying glasses to study details in the distant galaxies that would otherwise be impossible to see...
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    Unveiling Galaxies at Cosmic Dawn that were Hiding Behind the Dust

    September 24, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Scientists serendipitously discover two heavily dust-enshrouded galaxies that formed when the Universe was only 5% of its present age. When astronomers peer deep into the night sky, they observe what the Universe looked like a long time ago. Because the speed of light is finite, studying the most distant observable galaxies allows us to glimpse billions of years into the past when the Universe was very young and galaxies had just started to form stars. Studying this “early Universe” is one of the last frontiers in astronomy and is essential for constructing accurate and consistent astrophysics models. A key goal of scientists is to identify all the galaxies in the first billion years of cosmic history and to measure the rate at which galaxies were growing by forming new stars.

    Vari...

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    Gigantic Cavity in Space Sheds New Light on how Stars Form

    September 23, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Alyssa Goodman/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

    Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of the shapes and sizes of nearby molecular clouds have discovered a gigantic cavity in space.

    The sphere-shaped void, described today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, spans about 150 parsecs — nearly 500 light years — and is located on the sky among the constellations Perseus and Taurus. The research team, which is based at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, believes the cavity was formed by ancient supernovae that went off some 10 million years ago.

    The mysterious cavity is surrounded by the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds — regions in space where stars form.

    “Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble,” says Shmuel B...

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