Category Astronomy/Space

The figure shows how a small, elongated drop of quark-gluon plasma is formed when two atomic nuclei hit each other a bit off center. The angular distribution of the emitted particles makes it possible to determine the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, including the viscosity. Credit: State University of New York

Researchers collided lead atoms with extremely high energy in the 27 km long particle accelerator. The primordial soup is a quark-gluon plasma and researchers have measured its liquid properties with great accuracy at the LHC’s top energy. A few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was made up extremely hot and dense primordial soup of quarks and gluons. By colliding lead nuclei at a record-high 5...

Figure 1: The giant spiral galaxy NGC 253 (shown in color) is accompanied by a newly discovered dwarf galaxy, NGC 253-dw2 (at upper left). The peculiar, elongated shape of the dwarf implies it is being torn apart by the gravity of the bigger galaxy – which in turn shows irregularities on its periphery that may be caused by the mutual interaction. (Image credit: Copyright © 2015 R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com) & Michael Sidonio. Insert image: R. Jay GaBany & Johannes Schedler.)

An international team led by Aaron Romanowsky of San José State University has used the Subaru Telescope to identify a faint dwarf galaxy disrupting around a nearby giant spiral galaxy. The observations provide a valuable glimpse of a process that is fleeting but important in shaping galaxies.

“The outer region...

Messages from the earth will be beamed to the stars. Credit: Paul Quast

Messages from around the world are to be beamed into space at the speed of light as part of a cultural project to create a celestial time capsule. In autumn 2016, dispatches from the public will be converted into radio waves and broadcasted towards the North Star, Polaris, this autumn, reaching their destination in 434 years. The interstellar message in a bottle will comprise of people’s responses to a single question: how will our present environmental interactions shape the future?

A Simple Response to an Elemental Message is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh, and the UK Astronomical Technology Centre (UKATC) along with other partners...

Mass-Radius Relation for Rocky Planets Based on PREM Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Every school kid learns the basic structure of the Earth: a thin outer crust, a thick mantle, and a Mars-sized core. But is this structure universal? Will rocky exoplanets orbiting other stars have the same 3 layers? New research suggests that the answer is yes – they will have interiors very similar to Earth.

Zeng et al applied a computer model Preliminary Reference Earth Model (PREM), which is the standard model for Earth’s interior. They adjusted it to accommodate different masses and compositions, and applied it to 6 known rocky exoplanets with well-measured masses and physical sizes...