Category Astronomy/Space

Image of starlight on exoplanet. Credit: Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Is there life beyond Earth in the cosmos? Astronomers looking for signs have found that our Milky Way galaxy teems with exoplanets, some with conditions that could be right for extraterrestrial life. Such worlds orbit stars in “habitable zones,” regions where planets could hold liquid water that is necessary for life as we know it. However, the question of habitability is highly complex. Researchers led by space physicist Chuanfei Dong of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University have recently raised doubts about water on – and thus potential habitability of – frequently cited exoplanets that orbit red dwarfs, the most common stars in the Milky Way.

In two ...

Black hole artist’s concept. Credit: © nasa_gallery / Fotolia

A new study outlines how gravitational wave experiments could be used to test the existence of primordial black holes, gravity wells formed just moments after the Big Bang that some scientists have posited could be an explanation for dark matter. “We know very well that black holes can be formed by the collapse of large stars, or as we have seen recently, the merger of two neutron stars,” said Savvas Koushiappas, an associate professor of physics at Brown University and coauthor of the study with Avi Loeb from Harvard University. “But it’s been hypothesized that there could be black holes that formed in the very early universe before stars existed at all. That’s what we’re addressing with this work.”

The idea is that shortly af...

This color image shows the Hubble Ultra Deep Field region, a tiny but much-studied region in the constellation of Fornax, as observed with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. But this picture only gives a very partial view of the riches of the MUSE data, which also provide a spectrum for each pixel in the picture. This data set has allowed astronomers not only to measure distances for far more of these galaxies than before — a total of 1600 — but also to find out much more about each of them. Surprisingly 72 new galaxies were found that had eluded deep imaging with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESO/MUSE HUDF collaboration

Astronomers using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have conducted the deepest spectroscopic survey ever...

Infant stars, like those recently identified near the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, are surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas. In this artist’s conception of infant solar system, the young star pulls material from its surroundings into rotating disk (right) and generates outflowing jets of material (left). Credit: Bill Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Earliest phase of star formation ever observed in highly hostile environment. ALMA has revealed the telltale signs of 11 low-mass stars forming perilously close – within 3 light-years – to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). At this distance, tidal forces driven by the supermassive black hole should be energetic enough to rip apart clouds of dust and gas before they can form stars.

The presenc...