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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers see Black Hole Raging Red

    March 16, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Image shows an artist's impression of a black hole, similar to V404 Cyg, devouring material from an orbiting companion star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

    Image shows an artist’s impression of a black hole, similar to V404 Cyg, devouring material from an orbiting companion star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

    Violent red flashes, lasting just fractions of a second, have been observed during one of the brightest black hole outbursts in recent years. June 2015, a black hole called V404 Cygni underwent dramatic brightening for about 2 weeks, as it devoured material that it had stripped off an orbiting companion star. V404 Cygni, which is ~7,800 light years from Earth, was the first definitive black hole to be identified in our Galaxy and can appear extremely bright when it is actively devouring material.

    The astronomers associated the red colour with fast-moving jets of matter that were ejected from close to the black hole...

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    Outsourcing Crystal Growth…to space

    March 16, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    (a) The white ring is a ceramic helical insert on which the screw sample holder is placed. The scale bar is 10 mm. (b) The body of the growth cell is made of quartz glass (orange). Two capillaries of quartz glass with rubber stoppers (yellow) are fixed to the body with an adhesive. Tubes of elastomer (red) are attached to each capillary. After the growth cell is filled with the growth solution (light blue), the tubes are closed with metal wires (arrows). (c) Schematic illustration of the growth cell. Credit: K. Tsukamoto et al/Tohoku University

    (a) The white ring is a ceramic helical insert on which the screw sample holder is placed. The scale bar is 10 mm. (b) The body of the growth cell is made of quartz glass (orange). Two capillaries of quartz glass with rubber stoppers (yellow) are fixed to the body with an adhesive. Tubes of elastomer (red) are attached to each capillary. After the growth cell is filled with the growth solution (light blue), the tubes are closed with metal wires (arrows). (c) Schematic illustration of the growth cell. Credit: K. Tsukamoto et al/Tohoku University

    Crystal growth rate on ISS by interferometry will show the effects of microgravity. Sometimes, distance can lend a new perspective to a problem...

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    4 New Giant Planets detected around Giant Stars

    March 15, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Four new giant planets detected around giant stars

    Artist’s concept of a giant extrasolar planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

    The giant planets have masses from 2.4 to 5.5 the mass of Jupiter and have very long orbital periods ranging from nearly 2 to slightly more than 4 Earth years. The team, led by Matias Jones of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, made the discovery during observations under the EXPRESS (EXoPlanets aRound Evolved StarS) radial velocity program. They used 2 telescopes located in the Atacama desert in Chile: the 1.5 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the 2.2 m telescope at La Silla observatory. Complementary observations were conducted at the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian telescope in Australia.

    Using spectrographs mounted on these telescopes, the researchers were monitoring a sample of 166 b...

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    What Dark Matter Might Be: Researchers present a new model and how to test it

    March 14, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The value of the Hubble rate at the start of reheating that gives the correct relic abundance, as a function of the mass of the PIDM. The blue curve is for γ=1 , the orange curve is for γ=0.1 , and the green curve is for γ=0.01 . The red region is excluded from the current bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, and the purple dashed line is the projected sensitivity for next generation CMB experiments, from Ref. [24]. The dotted lines show the modification when taking also gravitational production into account [12, 13, 14]. The dashed-dotted line marks mX=Hi , and for a scalar PIDM the left-hand side of this line is excluded unless corrections to the PIDM potential are important during inflation. All values are given in units of Mp .

    The value of the Hubble rate at the start of reheating that gives the correct relic abundance, as a function of the mass of the PIDM. The blue curve is for γ=1 , the orange curve is for γ=0.1 , and the green curve is for γ=0.01 . The red region is excluded from the current bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, and the purple dashed line is the projected sensitivity for next generation CMB experiments, from Ref. [24]. The dotted lines show the modification when taking also gravitational production into account [12, 13, 14]. The dashed-dotted line marks mX=Hi , and for a scalar PIDM the left-hand side of this line is excluded unless corrections to the PIDM potential are important during inflation. All values are given in units of Mp .

    Though no one has ever seen it indisputable physical cal...

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