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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Stellar Winds, the Source material for the Universe, are Clumpy

    January 27, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Illustration of a high-mass X-ray binary system made up of a compact, incredibly dense neutron star paired with a massive ‘normal’ supergiant star. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows that the neutron star in the high-mass X-ray binary, OAO 1657-415, passed through a dense patch of stellar wind from its companion star, demonstrating the clumpy nature of stellar winds.
    Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

    Data recorded by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of a neutron star as it passed through a dense patch of stellar wind emanating from its massive companion star provide valuable insight about the structure and composition of stellar winds and about the environment of the neutron star itself...

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    How to Escape a Black Hole: Simulations provide new clues about powerful Plasma jets

    January 27, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This visualization of a general-relativistic collisionless plasma simulation shows the density of positrons near the event horizon of a rotating black hole. Plasma instabilities produce island-like structures in the region of intense electric current.
    Credit: Kyle Parfrey et al./Berkeley Lab

    Interplay of twisting magnetic field, ‘negative-energy’ particles. How do black holes purge energy locked up in their rotation, jetting near-light-speed plasmas into space to opposite sides in one of the most powerful displays in the universe? These jets can extend outward for millions of light years.

    New simulations led by researchers working at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have combined decades-old theories to provide new insight ...

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    Milky Way’s Neighbors Pick up the Pace

    January 25, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Gaia Satellite, the maps show the relative abundance of heavy elements (elements heavier than helium) in the stars. Yellow indicates fewer heavy elements and purple indicates more heavy elements.
    Credit: David Nidever (NOAO/Montana State University) and the SDSS collaboration.

    After slowly forming stars for the first few billion years of their lives, the Magellanic Clouds, near neighbors of our own Milky Way galaxy, have upped their game and are now forming new stars at a fast clip. This new insight into the history of the Clouds comes from the first detailed chemical maps made of galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

    Named for explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who led the first European expedition to circumnavigate the globe, the Large and Small ...

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    Planetary Collision that formed the Moon made Life possible on Earth Study:

    January 25, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    A schematic depicting the formation of a Mars-sized planet (left) and its differentiation into a body with a metallic core and an overlying silicate reservoir. The sulfur-rich core expels carbon, producing silicate with a high carbon to nitrogen ratio. The moon-forming collision of such a planet with the growing Earth (right) can explain Earth’s abundance of both water and major life-essential elements like carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, as well as the geochemical similarity between Earth and the moon.
    Credit: Image courtesy of Rajdeep Dasgupta

    Planetary delivery explains enigmatic features of Earth’s carbon and nitrogen. Most of Earth’s essential elements for life – including most of the carbon and nitrogen in you – probably came from another planet.

    Earth most likely received the b...

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