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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Saturn is Losing its Rings at ‘worst-case-scenario’ Rate

    December 18, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    An artist’s impression of how Saturn may look in the next hundred million years. The innermost rings disappear as they rain onto the planet first, very slowly followed by the outer rings.
    Credit: NASA/Cassini/James O’Donoghue

    New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field.

    “We estimate that this ‘ring rain’ drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn’s rings in half an hour,” said James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland...

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    A Young Star Caught forming like a Planet

    December 18, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    This is an artists impression of the disc of dust and gas surrounding the massive protostar MM 1a, with its companion MM 1b forming in the outer regions.
    Credit: J. D. Ilee / University of Leeds

    Astronomers have captured one of the most detailed views of a young star taken to date, and revealed an unexpected companion in orbit around it. While observing the young star, astronomers led by Dr John Ilee from the University of Leeds discovered it was not in fact one star, but two.

    The main object, referred to as MM 1a, is a young massive star surrounded by a rotating disc of gas and dust that was the focus of the scientists’ original investigation. A faint object, MM 1b, was detected just beyond the disc in orbit around MM 1a...

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    Tangled Magnetic fields power Cosmic Particle Accelerators

    December 16, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Cosmic particle accelerators

    SLAC researchers have found a new mechanism that could explain how plasma jets emerging from the center of active galaxies, like the one shown in this illustration, accelerate particles to extreme energies. Computer simulations (circled area) showed that tangled magnetic field lines create strong electric fields in the direction of the jets, leading to dense electric currents of high-energy particles streaming away from the galaxy. (Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

    New way to explain how a black hole’s plasma jets boost particles to the highest energies observed in the universe. Magnetic field lines tangled like spaghetti in a bowl might be behind the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe...

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    Where did the Hot Neptunes go? A Shrinking Planet holds the answer

    December 16, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    This artist’s illustration shows a giant cloud of hydrogen streaming off a warm, Neptune-sized planet just 97 light-years from Earth. The exoplanet is tiny compared to its star, a red dwarf named GJ 3470. The star’s intense radiation is heating the hydrogen in the planet’s upper atmosphere to a point where it escapes into space. The alien world is losing hydrogen at a rate 100 times faster than a previously observed warm Neptune whose atmosphere is also evaporating away.
    Credit: © Crédit NASA, ESA, and D. Player (STScI)

    Astronomers explain the rarity of the hot Neptunes by their evaporation which transforms them into super-Earths...

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