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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Sulfur ‘Spices’ Alien Atmospheres

    April 8, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    Credit: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University

    They say variety is the spice of life, and now new discoveries from Johns Hopkins researchers suggest that a certain elemental ‘variety’ – sulfur – is indeed a ‘spice’ that can perhaps point to signs of life.

    These findings from the researchers’ lab simulations reveal that sulfur can significantly impact observations of far-flung planets beyond the solar system; the results have implications for the use of sulfur as a sign for extraterrestrial life, as well as affect how researchers should interpret data about planetary atmospheres.

    A report of the findings was published today in Nature Astronomy...

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    The Milky Way’s satellites help reveal link between Dark Matter Halos and Galaxy Formation

    April 7, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A still image from a simulation of the formation of dark matter structures from the early universe until today. Gravity makes dark matter clump into dense halos, indicated by bright patches, where galaxies form. In this simulation, a halo like the one that hosts the Milky Way forms, and a smaller halo resembling the Large Magellanic Cloud falls toward it. SLAC and Stanford researchers, working with collaborators from the Dark Energy Survey, have used simulations like these to better understand the connection between dark matter and galaxy formation. Credit: Ralf Kaehler/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

    Just as the sun has planets and the planets have moons, our galaxy has satellite galaxies, and some of those might have smaller satellite galaxies of their own...

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    High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory Tests Speed of Light

    April 6, 2020, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    This compound graphic shows a view of the sky in ultra-high energy gamma rays. The arrows indicate the four sources of gamma rays with energies over 100 TeV from within our galaxy (courtesy of the HAWC collaboration) imposed over a photo of the HAWC Observatory’s 300 large water tanks. The tanks contain sensitive light detectors that measure showers of particles produced by the gamma rays striking the atmosphere more than 10 miles overhead (courtesy of Jordan Goodman)

    New measurements confirm, to the highest energies yet explored, that the laws of physics hold no matter where you are or how fast you’re moving...

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    Electron-eating Neon causes Star to Collapse

    April 3, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist’s impression shows how an imaginary neon footballfish eats away at the electrons inside a star core. Credit: Kavli IPMU

    An international team of researchers has found that neon inside a certain massive star can consume the electrons in the core, a process called electron capture, which causes the star to collapse into a neutron star and produce a supernova.

    The researchers were interested in studying the final fate of stars within a mass range of eight to 10 solar masses, or eight to 10 times the mass of the sun. This mass range is important because it includes the boundary between whether a star has a large enough mass to undergo a supernova explosion to form a neutron star, or has a smaller mass to form a white dwarf star without becoming a supernova.

    An eight- to 1...

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