Recent Comments

    Category Astronomy/Space

    The Origins of the Universe

    March 2, 2016, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    The nuclear phase diagram: RHIC sits in the energy "sweet spot" for exploring the transition between ordinary matter made of hadrons and the early universe matter known as quark-gluon plasma. Credit: Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory

    The nuclear phase diagram: RHIC sits in the energy “sweet spot” for exploring the transition between ordinary matter made of hadrons and the early universe matter known as quark-gluon plasma. Credit: Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory

    An in-depth look at the origins of matter and the environmental conditions that helped shape the universe today. Our understanding is shaped by re-creating events that constituted the Big Bang and by studying the primordial soup of fundamental particles of the very early universe. One of the best science tools for this is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

    RHIC, a particle collider, is the first machine capable of mashing together heavy ions, which are atoms that h...

    Read More

    Birth of Rare Massive Stars Deep within Crimson Gas Clouds

    March 2, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    In this huge image of part of the southern constellation of Norma (The Carpenter's Square) wisps of crimson gas are illuminated by rare, massive stars that have only recently ignited and are still buried deep in thick dust clouds. These scorching-hot, very young stars are only fleeting characters on the cosmic stage and their origins remain mysterious. The vast nebula where these giants were born, known as RCW 106, is captured here in fine detail by ESO's VLT Survey Telescope (VST), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The brightest part appears just above the center of the image. Many other interesting objects are also captured in this wide-field image. For example the filaments to the right of the image are the remnants of an ancient supernova (SNR G332.4-00.4, also known as RCW 103), and the glowing red filaments at the lower left surround an unusual and very hot star (RCW 104, surrounding the Wolf-Rayet star WR 75). Patches of dark obscuring dust are also visible across the entire cosmic landscape. Credit: ESO

    In this huge image of part of the southern constellation of Norma (The Carpenter’s Square) wisps of crimson gas are illuminated by rare, massive stars that have only recently ignited and are still buried deep in thick dust clouds. These scorching-hot, very young stars are only fleeting characters on the cosmic stage and their origins remain mysterious. The vast nebula where these giants were born, known as RCW 106, is captured here in fine detail by ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The brightest part appears just above the center of the image. Many other interesting objects are also captured in this wide-field image. For example the filaments to the right of the image are the remnants of an ancient supernova (SNR G332.4-00...

    Read More

    New method may find Elusive Flaws in Medical Implants and Spacecraft

    March 1, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    NIST researchers demonstrated an approach for detecting hidden flaws in ceramic capacitors, which store energy in the electronics for medical implants and spacecraft. NIST studied 3-millimeter-long capacitors (top photo), looking for cracks similar to the one shown in the NASA photo (bottom). Credit: NIST/NASA

    NIST researchers demonstrated an approach for detecting hidden flaws in ceramic capacitors, which store energy in the electronics for medical implants and spacecraft. NIST studied 3-millimeter-long capacitors (top photo), looking for cracks similar to the one shown in the NASA photo (bottom). Credit: NIST/NASA

    Medical implants and spacecraft can suddenly go dead, often for the same reason: cracks in ceramic capacitors, devices that store electric charge in electronic circuits. These cracks, at first harmless and often hidden, can start conducting electricity, depleting batteries or shorting out the electronics...

    Read More

    The Milky Way’s central Molecular Zone

    February 29, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Milky Way's central molecular zone

    An infrared and multi-wavelength image of the Central Molecular Zone in the Milky Way. Dense gas is shown in red, and warm and cold dust in green and blue respectively. Several key objects in the region are labeled, along with a set of embedded young stellar clusters seen at 24 microns. Credit: C. Battersby

    The center of our Milky Way galaxy lies ~27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. At its core is a black hole ~4 million solar masses in size. Around the black hole is a donut-shaped structure about 8 light-years across that rings the inner volume of neutral gas and thousands of individual stars. Around that, stretching out to ~700 light-years, is a dense zone of activity called the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ)...

    Read More