Category Astronomy/Space

Analysis of observations made by satellites in 2014 has revealed a long-lasting ‘space hurricane’ – a swirling mass of plasma several hundred kilometers above the North Pole, raining electrons instead of water.

Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are known, but they had never before been detected in the upper atmosphere.

An international team of scientists led by Shandong University in China analysed observations made by satellites in 2014 to reveal a long-lasting hurricane, resembling those in the lower atmosphere, in the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere with surprisingly large energy and momentum deposition despite otherwise extremely quiet geomagnetic conditions.

The analysis allowed a 3D image to be created of the 1,000km-wide swirling mass of plasma several hundre...

Red supergiants are a class of star that end their lives in supernova explosions. Their lifecycles are not fully understood, partly due to difficulties in measuring their temperatures. For the first time, astronomers develop an accurate method to determine the surface temperatures of red supergiants.

Stars come in a wide range of sizes, masses and compositions. Our sun is considered a relatively small specimen, especially when compared to something like Betelgeuse which is known as a red supergiant...

Researchers have detected cosmic pipelines supplying the cold gases necessary for the formation of massive galaxies and the creation of stars. It is the first direct observational evidence of the phenomenon in the early universe.

To come into being, galaxies need a steady diet of cold gases to undergo gravitational collapse. The larger the galaxy, the more cold gas it needs to coalesce and to grow.

Massive galaxies found in the early universe needed a lot of cold gas — a store totaling as much as 10...

Volcanic rock samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions bear the isotopic signature of key events in the early evolution of the Moon, a new analysis found. Those events include the formation of the Moon’s iron core, as well as the crystallization of the lunar magma ocean — the sea of molten rock thought to have covered the Moon for around 100 million years after the it formed.

The analysis, published in the journal Science Advances, used a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to study volcanic glasses returned from the Apollo 15 and 17 missions, which are thought to represent some of the most primitive volcanic material on the Moon...