Category Astronomy/Space

UV light from Superluminous Supernova key to revealing Explosion mechanism

An international team has discovered a way to use UV light from superluminous supernovae to uncover its explosion mechanism, and used it to identify Gaia16apd as a shock-interacting supernova, reports a new study. An international team has discovered a way to use observations at UV wavelengths to uncover characteristics about superluminous supernovae previously impossible to determine.

The team, led by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Project Researcher Alexey Tolstov, study stellar explosions called Superluminous Supernovae (SLSNe), an extra bright type of supernova discovered in the last decade that is 10 to 100 times brighter than ordinary supernovae...

Composite image of the X-ray pulsar SXP 1062 surrounded by the supernova remnant. The false-color image combines X-ray (blue) and optical data (oxygen: green, hydrogen: red). Credit: ESA / XMM-Newton / L. Oskinova, University of Potsdam, Germany / M. Guerrero, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain (X-ray); Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory / R. Gruendl & Y. H. Chu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (optical)

The discovery of the largest timing irregularity yet observed in a pulsar is the first confirmation that pulsars in binary systems exhibit the strange phenomenon known as a ‘glitch’. Pulsars are one possible result of the final stages of evolution of massive stars...

A selfie of the NASA Curiosity rover at the Murray Buttes in Gale Crater, Mars, a location where boron was found in light-toned calcium sulfate veins. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Boron compounds play role in stabilizing sugars needed to make RNA, a key to life. The discovery of boron on Mars gives scientists more clues about whether life could have ever existed on the planet, according to a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “Because borates may play an important role in making RNA – one of the building blocks of life – finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet,” said Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory...