Category Astronomy/Space

Scientists have succeeded in dating some of the oldest stars in the galaxy with unprecedented precision by combining data from the stars’ oscillations with information about their chemical composition.

The team, led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, surveyed around 100 red giant stars, and were able to determine that some of these were originally part of a satellite galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus, which collided with the Milky Way early in its history.

The results, published in Nature Astronomy, revealed that the group of stars surveyed all have similar ages, or are slightly younger than the majority of the stars known to have started their lives within the Milky Way...

On Sept. 9, 2018, astronomers spotted a flash from a galaxy 860 million light years away. The source was a supermassive black hole about 50 million times the mass of the sun. Normally quiet, the gravitational giant suddenly awoke to devour a passing star in a rare instance known as a tidal disruption event. As the stellar debris fell toward the black hole, it released an enormous amount of energy in the form of light.

Researchers at MIT, the European Southern Observatory, and elsewhere used multiple telescopes to keep watch on the event, labeled AT2018fyk...

New research reveals hidden processes at work in the hearts of large stars. Astronomers commonly refer to massive stars as the chemical factories of the Universe. They generally end their lives in spectacular supernovae, events that forge many of the elements on the periodic table. How elemental nuclei mix within these enormous stars has a major impact on our understanding of their evolution prior to their explosion. It also represents the largest uncertainty for scientists studying their structure and evolution.

A team of astronomers led by May Gade Pedersen, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Barbara’s Kavli Institut...

Conventional studies investigating the effects of reduced gravity on muscle mass and function have used a ground control group that is not directly comparable to the space experimental group. Researchers from the University of Tsukuba set out to explore the effects of gravity in mice subjected to the same housing conditions, including those experienced during launch and landing. “In humans, spaceflight causes muscle atrophy and can lead to serious medical problems after return to Earth” says senior author Professor Satoru Takahashi. “This study was designed based on the critical need to understand the molecular mechanisms through which muscle atrophy occurs in conditions of microgravity and artificial gravity.”

Two groups of mice (six per group) were h...