Category Astronomy/Space

1. A radio image of a triple star system forming within a dusty disk in the Perseus molecular cloud obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Credit: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF 2. Radio image of a very young binary star system, less than about 1 million years old, that formed within a dense core (oval outline) in the Perseus molecular cloud. All stars likely form as binaries within dense cores. Credit: SCUBA-2 survey image by Sarah Sadavoy, CfA

Did our sun have a twin when it was born 4.5 billion years ago? Almost certainly yes – though not an identical twin...

VLA image of radio-emitting mini-halo in the Perseus Cluster of galaxies. Radio emission in red; optical in white. Credit: Gendron-Marsolais et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA; SDSS.

New details help unravel mystery of structure’s origin. Astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have discovered new details that are helping them decipher the mystery of how giant radio-emitting structures are formed at the center of a cluster of galaxies. The scientists studied a cluster of thousands of galaxies more than 250 million light-years from Earth, named the Perseus Cluster after the constellation in which it appears. Embedded within the center, the Perseus Cluster hosts a pool of superfast particles that emit radio waves, creating a radio structure known as a “mini-halo...

LIGO detected gravitational waves radiating from two black holes that crashed together about 1.3 billion years ago, simulation pictured. Researchers from Kyoto University have suggested the two black holes detected by Ligo could be ‘primordial’ black holes, instead of traditional black holes

An interdisciplinary team of physicists and astronomers at the University of Amsterdam’s GRAPPA Center of Excellence for Gravitation and Astroparticle Physics has devised a new strategy to search for ‘primordial’ black holes produced in the early universe. Such black holes are possibly responsible for the gravitational wave events observed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO.

The researchers specifically show that the lack of bright X-ray and radio sources at the center of o...

Valley Networks Lyot Crater, rendered here with elevations exaggerated, is home to relatively recent water-carved valleys (white streaks). New research suggests the water came from melting snow and ice present at the time of the crater-forming impact. David Weiss/NASA/Brown University

Present-day Mars is a frozen desert, colder and more arid than Antarctica, and scientists are fairly sure it’s been that way for at least the last 3 billion years. That makes a vast network of water-carved valleys on the flanks of an impact crater called Lyot—which formed between 1.5 billion and 3 billion years ago—something of a Martian mystery. It’s not clear where the water came from...