Category Astronomy/Space

Images of Neptune taken during twilight observing revealed an extremely large bright storm system near Neptune’s equator (labeled ‘cloud complex’ in the upper figure), a region where astronomers have never seen a bright cloud. The center of the storm complex is ~9,000 km across, about 3/4 the size of Earth, or 1/3 of Neptune’s radius. The storm brightened considerably between June 26 and July 2, as noted in the logarithmic scale of the images taken on July 2.
Credit: N. Molter/I. De Pater, UC Berkeley & C. Alvarez, W. M. Keck Observatory

Striking images of a storm system nearly the size of Earth have astronomers doing a double-take after pinpointing its location near Neptune’s equator, a region where no bright cloud has been seen before...

The colors represent the relative amounts of short-lived radioactive isotopes, such as iron-60, injected into a newly formed protoplanetary disk (seen face on with the protostar being the light purple blob in the middle) by a supernova shock wave. Credit: Image courtesy of Alan Boss

New evidence supporting the supernova shock theory of our Solar System’s origin. According to one longstanding theory, our Solar System’s formation was triggered by a shock wave from an exploding supernova. The shock wave injected material from the exploding star into a neighboring cloud of dust and gas, causing it to collapse in on itself and form the Sun and its surrounding planets...

Researchers have found that a “hot Jupiter” exoplanet named WASP-121b (left) has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. The planet is as close to its host star (right) as possible without the star’s gravity ripping the planet apart. Credit: Engine House VFX, At-Bristol Science Centre, University of Exeter

Distant ‘hot Jupiter’ has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. Scientists have found compelling evidence for a stratosphere on an enormous planet outside our solar system. The planet’s stratosphere – a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes – is hot enough to boil iron. WASP-121b, located ~900 light years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a “hot Jupiter.”

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter wit...

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...