Category Astronomy/Space

This is an artist’s impression of a red supergiant surrounded with thick circumstellar matter.
Credit: NAOJ

At the end of its life, a red supergiant star explodes in a hydrogen-rich supernova. By comparing observation results to simulation models, an international research team found that in many cases this explosion takes place inside a thick cloud of circumstellar matter shrouding the star. This result completely changes our understanding of the last stage of stellar evolution.

The research team led by Francisco Förster at the University of Chile used the Blanco Telescope to find 26 supernovae coming from red supergiants. Their goal was to study the shock breakout, a brief flash of light preceding the main supernova explosion. But they could not find any signs of this phenomenon...

Researchers have designed a synthetic small protein that wraps around a metal core composed of iron and sulfur. This protein can be repeatedly charged and discharged, allowing it to shuttle electrons within a cell. Such peptides may have existed at the dawn of life, moving electrons in early metabolic cycles.
Image: Vikas Nanda

The primordial peptide may have appeared 4 billion years ago. How did life arise on Earth? Rutgers researchers have found among the first and perhaps only hard evidence that simple protein catalysts – essential for cells, the building blocks of life, to function – may have existed when life began. Their study of a primordial peptide, or short protein, is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the chemist Günter W...

Artist’s impression of the monster galaxy COSMOS-AzTEC-1. This galaxy is located 12.4 billion light-years away and is forming stars 1,000 times more rapidly than our Milky Way galaxy. ALMA observations revealed dense gas concentrations in the disk, and intense star formation in those concentrations. Credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

An international team of astronomers from Japan, Mexico and the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying a “monster galaxy” 12.4 billion light years away today report that their instruments have achieved a 10 times higher angular resolution than ever before, revealing galaxy structural details previously completely unknown. They also were able to analyze dynamic properties that could not be probed before.

Monster galaxy COSMOS-AzTEC-1 is lo...

This spectacular image of the Carina nebula reveals the dynamic cloud of interstellar matter and thinly spread gas and dust as never before. The massive stars in the interior of this cosmic bubble emit intense radiation that causes the surrounding gas to glow. By contrast, other regions of the nebula contain dark pillars of dust cloaking newborn stars.
Credit: ESO/J. Emerson/M. Irwin/J. Lewis

VISTA gazes into one of the largest nebulae in the Milky Way in infrared. About 7500 light-years away, in the constellation of Carina, lies a nebula within which stars form and perish side-by-side. Shaped by these dramatic events, the Carina Nebula is a dynamic, evolving cloud of thinly spread interstellar gas and dust.

The massive stars in the interior of this cosmic bubble emit intense radiation that...