Category Astronomy/Space

This graphic shows the route that NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove in its final approach to “Perseverance Valley” on the western rim of Endeavour Crater during spring 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/NMMNH

NASA’s Rover Opportunity has reached the main destination of its 2 year extended mission – an ancient fluid-carved valley incised on the inner slope of a vast crater’s rim. As the rover approached the upper end of “Perseverance Valley” in early May, images from its cameras began showing parts of the area in greater resolution than what can be seen in images taken from orbit above Mars...

Qingdi Wang et al, How the huge energy of quantum vacuum gravitates to drive the slow accelerating expansion of the Universe, Physical Review D (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.95.103504

UBC physicists may have solved one of nature’s great puzzles: what causes the accelerating expansion of our universe? PhD student Qingdi Wang has tackled this question in a new study that tries to resolve a major incompatibility issue between two of the most successful theories that explain how our universe works: quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The study suggests that if we zoomed in-way in-on the universe, we would realize it’s made up of constantly fluctuating space and time.

“Space-time is not as static as it appears, it’s constantly moving,” said Wang...

An artist’s rendering of an X-ray pulsar. Credit: NASA

European astronomers have found that an Xray pulsar designated AX J1910.7+0917 has the slowest spin period among other objects in this class. the new findings in a paper published May 4 on arXiv.org. X-ray pulsars (also known as accretion-powered pulsars) are sources displaying strict periodic variations in Xray intensity, consisting of a magnetized neutron star in orbit with a normal stellar companion. In these binary systems, the Xray emission is powered by the release of gravitational potential energy as material is accreted from a massive companion. Xray pulsars are among the most luminous objects in the X-ray sky.

AX J1910...

The Large (centre left) and Small (centre right) Magellanic Clouds are seen in the sky above a radio telescope that is part of the Australia Telescope Compact Array at the Paul Wild Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Image: Mike Salway

For the first time, astronomers have detected a magnetic field associated with the Magellanic Bridge, the filament of gas stretching 75000 light-years between the Milky Way Galaxy’s nearest galactic neighbours: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively). Visible in the southern night sky, the LMC and SMC are dwarf galaxies that orbit our home galaxy and lie at a distance of 160 and 200 thousand light-years from Earth respectively.

Such cosmic magnetic fields can only be detected indirectly, and this detection was made by observ...