Category Astronomy/Space

Inside the target chamber at the University of Rochester’s Omega Facility, a team of researchers including Princeton University’s Thomas Duffy and June Wicks use lasers to compress iron-silicon samples to the ultrahigh pressures found in the cores of super-Earths. Credit: Photo courtesy of Laboratory for Laser Energetics

How researchers are using lasers to recreate the extreme pressures of exoplanet interiors. Using high-powered laser beams, researchers have simulated conditions inside a planet three times as large as Earth. Scientists have identified more than 2,000 of these “super-Earths,” exoplanets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, the next-largest planet in our solar system...

Astronomers recently discovered a group of interacting and merging galaxies in the early universe, as seen in this artist’s illustration. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY)

A dense flock of 14 galaxies from 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang is destined to become one of the most massive structures in the modern universe. For the 1st time, astronomers have witnessed the birth of a colossal cluster of galaxies. Their observations reveal at least 14 galaxies packed into an area only 4 times the diameter of the Milky Way’s galactic disk. Computer simulations of the galaxies predict that over time the cluster will assemble into one of the most massive structures in the modern universe, the astronomers report in the April 26 issue of Nature.

Galaxies w...

Wandering Supermassive Black Holes in Milky-Way-mass Halos. The Astrophysical Journal, 2018; 857 (2): L22 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aabc0a

Astronomers are beginning to understand what happens when black holes get the urge to roam the Milky Way. Typically, a supermassive black hole (SMBH) exists at the core of a massive galaxy. But sometimes SMBHs may “wander” throughout their host galaxy, remaining far from the center in regions such as the stellar halo, a nearly spherical area of stars and gas that surrounds the main section of the galaxy. Astronomers theorize that this phenomenon often occurs as a result of mergers between galaxies in an expanding universe. A smaller galaxy will join with a larger, main galaxy, depositing its own, central SMBH onto a wide orbit within the new host.

In a...

(Left) Galaxy cluster MACS J1206 observed with the Subaru Telescope. (Right) Magnified image of the left by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA, Umetsu et al. 2012, ApJ, 755, 56

Analysis of gravitational lensing data by an international research team reveals that the evolution of galaxy clusters is dictated by a surprisingly simple law, which clearly shows that they are still growing. Using observational data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope, the size and mass of galaxy clusters have precisely been measured. The newfound law will serve as a tool to clarify the evolutionary history of clusters and the universe.

Galaxy clusters are the largest celestial body in the Universe...