Category Astronomy/Space

Surface of Mercury – credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/USGS/Arizona State University

A hot, metallic, Earth-sized planet with a density similar to Mercury – situated 339 million light years away – has been detected and characterised by a global team of astronomers, including the University of Warwick. Named K2-229b, the planet is almost 20% larger than Earth but has a mass which is over 2.5X greater – and reaches a dayside temperature of over 2000°C (2330 Kelvin). It finds itself very close to its host star (0.012 AU, around a hundredth of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), which itself is a medium-sized active K dwarf in the Virgo Constellation. K2-229b orbits this star every fourteen hours.

Using the K2 telescope, Dr Armstrong and colleagues employed the D...

Principle of the experimental test of the inverse-square law of the gravity in nano-meter scale via neutron scattering. Deviation from the inverse-square law will be observed as the modification in the angular distribution of the scattered neutrons. Credit: The NOP collaboration

Scientists use high-sensitivity experiments to probe exotic gravitational force. Scientists have used a pulsed slow neutron beamline to probe the deviation of the inverse square law of gravity below the wavelength of 0.1 nm. The experiment achieved the highest sensitivity for a neutron experiment demonstrated to date, and is a significant step toward determining whether the space we live in is really limited to the 3 dimensions most are familiar with.

Often, practical limits control the experimental measurements th...

The galaxy Markarian 231, the nearest quasar to Earth, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is the product of a merger between two galaxies. Astronomers have discovered the signatures of the ionized molecules OH+ and H2O+ in its massive outflow and argue that shock-induced cosmic rays are responsible for their ionization. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University

There is a process at work in most galaxies that affects both the central black hole mass as well as the galaxy’s global velocity structure and luminosity. Astronomers suspect that feedback of some kind is involved, and one popular mechanism is outflowing gas...

Space Observatory Captures the Details of an Unusual Stellar Detonation

The universe is full of mysterious exploding phenomena that go boom in the dark. One particular type of ephemeral event, called a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient (FELT), has bewildered astronomers for a decade because of its very brief duration. Now, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope—designed to go hunting for planets across our galaxy—has also been used to catch FELTs in the act and determine their nature. They appear to be a new kind of supernova that gets a brief turbo boost in brightness from its surroundings.

Kepler’s ability to precisely sample sudden changes in starlight has allowed astronomers to quickly arrive at this model for explaining FELTs, and rule out alternative explanations...