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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Massive Gas Disk raises questions about Planet Formation Theory

    December 25, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    20191223_Higuchi_49Ceti_ALMA_separated_E
    ALMA image of the debris disk around the young star 49 Ceti. The distribution of dust is shown in red; the distribution of carbon monoxide is shown in green; and the distribution of carbon atoms is shown in blue.
    Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Higuchi et al.

    Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas. The star, called 49 Ceti, is 40 million years old and conventional theories of planet formation predict that the gas should have disappeared by that age. The enigmatically large amount of gas requests a reconsideration of our current understanding of planet formation.

    Planets are formed in gaseous dusty disks called protoplanetary disks around young stars...

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    Nightside Barrier gently Brakes ‘Bursty’ Plasma Bubbles

    December 23, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An image from a magnetohydrodynamic simulation by the Gamera project at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory shows bursty flows (in red and brown) in the plasma sheet. Rice University space plasma physicists developed algorithms to measure the buoyancy waves that appear in thin filaments of magnetic flux on Earth’s nightside. Credit: K. Sorathia/JHUAPL

    Physicists extend Rice Convection Model with details of magnetospheric buoyancy waves. The solar wind that pummels the Earth’s dayside magnetosphere causes turbulence, like air over a wing. Physicists at Rice University have developed new methods to characterize how that influences space weather on the nightside.

    It’s rarely quiet up there...

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    Spitzer studies a Stellar Playground with a Long History

    December 22, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A collection of gas and dust over 500 light-years across, the Perseus Molecular Cloud hosts an abundance of young stars. It was imaged here by the NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Perseus Molecular Cloud, a massive collection of gas and dust that stretches over 500 light-years across. Home to an abundance of young stars, it has drawn the attention of astronomers for decades.

    Spitzer’s Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) instrument took this image during Spitzer’s “cold mission,” which ran from the spacecraft’s launch in 2003 until 2009, when the space telescope exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant. (This marked the beginning of Spitzer’s “warm mission...

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    Nearby Pulsar’s Gamma-Ray ‘Halo’ linked to Antimatter Puzzle

    December 21, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    a photon "squiggle" collides with an electron "dot"; there's a flash and the photon (now a higher-energy gamma ray) shoots away
    Particles traveling near light speed can interact with starlight and boost it to gamma-ray energies. This animation shows the process, known as inverse Compton scattering. When light ranging from microwave to ultraviolet wavelengths collides with a fast-moving particle, the interaction boosts it to gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.
    Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

    NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a faint but sprawling glow of high-energy light around a nearby pulsar. If visible to the human eye, this gamma-ray “halo” would appear about 40 times bigger in the sky than a full Moon. This structure may provide the solution to a long-standing mystery about the amount of antimatter in our neighborhood.

    “Our analysis suggests that this same puls...

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