Category Astronomy/Space

Location of a possible ninth planet. Analysis of radio data from the Cassini spacecraft defines forbidden areas (in red) where the perturbations created by the planet are inconsistent with observations, and a likely area (green) where the addition of the planet improves the model prediction, reducing the differences between the calculations and Cassini data. The position of minimum residues is the most likely location for a planet at P9. Scales are in astronomical units (AU). Credit: Image courtesy of CNRS

The Kuiper Belt Objects, small bodies similar to Pluto beyond Neptune, have a particular distribution that is difficult to explain by pure chance...

Scientists have discovered a new particle — the latest member to be added to the exotic species of particle known as tetraquarks. Credit: Artwork by Fermilab

Scientists on the DZero collaboration at Fermilab have discovered a new particle – the latest member to be added to the exotic species of particle known as tetraquarks. Quarks are point-like particles that typically come in packages of 2 or 3, the most familiar of which are the proton and neutron (each is made of 3 quarks). There are 6 types, or “flavors,” of quark to choose from: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. Each of these also has an antimatter counterpart. Over the last 60 years, scientists have observed hundreds of combinations of quark duos and trios.

In 2008 scientists on the Belle experiment in Japan reported the fi...

A slab cut from the cube generated by the Illustris simulation. It shows the distribution of dark matter, with a width and height of 350 million light-years and a thickness of 300000 light years. Galaxies are found in the small, white, high-density dots. Credit: Markus Haider / Illustris collaboration. Click for a full size image

We live in a universe dominated by unseen matter, and on the largest scales, galaxies and everything they contain are concentrated into filaments that stretch around the edge of enormous voids. Thought to be almost empty until now, astronomers now believe these dark holes could contain as much as 20% of the ‘normal’ matter in the cosmos and that galaxies make up only 1/500th of the volume of the universe.

Looking at cosmic microwave radiation, modern satellite obs...

The infrared image on the left shows the field of view of the Parkes radio telescope with the area where the signal came from marked in cyan. On the right are successive zoom-ins on that area. At the bottom right is the Subaru optical image of the FRB galaxy, with the superimposed elliptical regions showing the location of the fading 6-day afterglow seen with ATCA. Credit: © D. Kaplan (UWM), E. F. Keane (SKAO)

An international research team including Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany used a radio and optical telescopes to identify the precise location of a fast radio burst (FRB) in a distant galaxy, allowing them to conduct a unique census of the Universe’s matter content.They confirmed current cosmological models of the distribution of matter in the Universe.

On A...