Category Astronomy/Space

A mystery surrounding the space around our solar system is unfolding thanks to evidence of supernovae found in deep-sea sediments.

Professor Anton Wallner, a nuclear physicist at ANU, led the study which shows Earth has been travelling for the last 33,000 years through a cloud of faintly radioactive dust.

“These clouds could be remnants of previous supernova explosions, a powerful and super bright explosion of a star,” Professor Wallner said.

Professor Wallner conducted the research at the ANU Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF). He also holds joint positions at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and Technical University Dresden (TUD) in Germany.

The researchers searched through several deep-sea sediments from two different locations that date back 33,000 years using the...

Social media around the world lit up over the weekend, discussing the possibility that an asteroid (known as 2018 VP₁) could crash into Earth on November 2. But you can rest easy. The asteroid does not pose a threat to life on Earth. Most likely, it will sail harmlessly past our planet. At worst, it will burn up harmlessly in our atmosphere and create a firework show for some lucky Earthlings.

So, what’s the story?

Our story begins a couple of years ago, on November 3, 2018. That night, the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in Southern California discovered a faint new “near-Earth asteroid”—an object whose orbit can approach, or cross, that of our planet.

At the time...

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spectacular galaxy NGC2442, nicknamed the Meathook galaxy owing to its extremely asymmetrical and irregular shape.

This galaxy was host to a supernova explosion spotted in March 2015, known as SN2015F, that was created by a white dwarf star. The white dwarf was part of a binary star system and siphoned mass from its companion, eventually becoming too greedy and taking on more than it could handle.

This unbalanced the star and triggered runaway nuclear fusion that eventually led to an intensely violent supernova explosion.

The supernova...

NASA Hubble Space Telescope images ...