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    Category Astronomy/Space

    ‘Perfect Liquid’ Quark-Gluon Plasma is the most Vortical Fluid

    August 3, 2017, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    Tracking particle spins reveals that the quark-gluon plasma created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is more swirly than the cores of super-cell tornadoes, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, or any other fluid! Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

    Tracking particle spins reveals that the quark-gluon plasma created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is more swirly than the cores of super-cell tornadoes, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, or any other fluid! Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

    Swirling soup of matter’s fundamental building blocks spins 10 billion trillion times faster than the most powerful tornado, setting new record for ‘vorticity’. Particle collisions recreating the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that filled the early universe reveal that droplets of this primordial soup swirl far faster than any other fluid...

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    Running out of Gas: Gas Loss puts breaks on Stellar Baby Boom

    August 3, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Galaxy cluster XMMXCS J2215.9–1738 observed with ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Gas rich galaxies detected with ALMA are shown in red and marked with circles. Most gas rich galaxies are located in the outer part, not the center, of the galaxy cluster (around the center of the image). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Hayashi et al., the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

    Galaxy cluster XMMXCS J2215.9–1738 observed with ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Gas rich galaxies detected with ALMA are shown in red and marked with circles. Most gas rich galaxies are located in the outer part, not the center, of the galaxy cluster (around the center of the image).
    Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Hayashi et al., the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

    Understanding the history of star formation in the Universe is a central theme in modern astronomy. Various observations have shown that the star formation activity has varied through the 13.8 billion-year history of the Universe. The stellar birthrate peaked around 10billion years ago, and has declined steadily since then. However, the cause of the declining stellar birthrate is still not well understood...

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    Aalto-1 Satellite sends first image

    August 2, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The image shows the Danish coast as well as a portion of the Norwegian coastline. Credit: Aalto University, VTT and Aalto-1 team.

    The image shows the Danish coast as well as a portion of the Norwegian coastline. Credit: Aalto University, VTT and Aalto-1 team.

     
    The photograph was taken with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed hyperspectral camera’s secondary camera. Launched on the morning of 23 June from India, the Aalto-1 satellite’s first month in space has gone according to plan. ‘We have run checks on the majority of the satellite’s systems and found that the devices are fully functional,’ Aalto University’s Professor Jaan Praks, who is heading the satellite project, explains.
     
    ‘We have also downloaded the first image sent by Aalto-1, which is also the first ever image taken from a Finnish satellite. It was taken while on orbit over Norway at an altitude of about 500 kilometres...
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    Sun’s Core Rotates 4X Faster than its Surface

    August 2, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The sun is emitting plumes of hydrogen plasma. The white areas are where the sun's magnetic field is especially strong. Credit: SoHO, a joint project of the European Space Agency and NASA

    The sun is emitting plumes of hydrogen plasma. The white areas are where the sun’s magnetic field is especially strong. Credit: SoHO, a joint project of the European Space Agency and NASA

    Surprising observation might reveal what the sun was like when it formed. The sun’s core rotates nearly 4X faster than the sun’s surface, according to new findings by an international team of astronomers. Scientists had assumed the core was rotating like a merry-go-round at about the same speed as the surface. “The most likely explanation is that this core rotation is left over from the period when the sun formed, some 4.6 billion years ago,” said Roger Ulrich, a UCLA professor emeritus of astronomy, who has studied the sun’s interior for more than 40 years...

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