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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers find Elusive Target Hiding behind Dust

    June 9, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

    Discovery resolves longstanding question.
    Some young, still-forming stars are surrounded by regions of complex organic molecules called ”hot corinos.” In some pairs of young stars forming together as binary pairs, astronomers found a hot corino around one, but not the other. Guessing that the unseen one might be obscured by dust, researchers studied such a pair with the VLA at radio wavelengths that readily pass through dust, and found the other one.

    Astronomers acting on a hunch have likely resolved a mystery about young, still-forming stars and regions rich in organic molecules closely surrounding some of them. They used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G...

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    Scientists Apply Revolutionary 30 Year-Old Principle and Find Black Holes Could Be Like Holograms

    June 8, 2020, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    What researchers have done is apply the theory of the holographic principle to black holes. In this way, their mysterious thermodynamic properties have become more understandable: focusing on predicting that these bodies have a great entropy and observing them in terms of quantum mechanics, you can describe them just like a hologram: they have two dimensions, in which gravity disappears, but they reproduce an object in three dimensions.

    According to new research, black holes could be like a hologram, where all the information is amassed in a 2D surface able to reproduce a 3D image.

    We can all picture that incredible image of a black hole that traveled around the world about a year ago...

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    A New Catalog of Infrared Dark -Clouds

    June 7, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A false-color infrared image of the Infrared Dark Cloud called “the Snake” as seen by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers have produced a new catalog of IRDCs from IRAC’s sky survey images using a new computational search-and-detection algorithm. (Blue dots are stars relatively undimmed by dust, while the red dots are young stars embedded in the cloud.)
    NASA, JPL-Caltech/S. Carey (SSC/Caltech)

    Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are dark patches of cold dust and gas seen in the sky against the bright diffuse infrared glow of warm dust in our galaxy. These IRDCs, massive and rich in molecules, are natural sites for star birth—one of the main reasons why astronomers are actively studying them...

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    Origin of Martian Moon Phobos

    June 5, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Images capture the Mars moon Phobos during different phases—waxing, waning and full—including the three images recently processed by Edwards.

    Christopher Edwards, assistant professor in NAU’s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, just processed new images of the Martian moon Phobos that give scientists insight into the physical properties of the moon and its composition. The images of the small moon, which is about 25 kilometers (15 miles) in diameter, were captured by NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. When reviewed in combination with three previously released images, these new images could ultimately help settle the debate over whether the planetary body is a “captured asteroid” — pulled into perpetual orbit around Mars — or an ancient chunk of Mars blasted off the surface by a meteorite impact.

    Along with scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Arizona State University, Edwards used the Thermal Emission I...

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