Category Astronomy/Space

Researchers have calculated the dust chemistry of the solar nebula (thin dusty ring around young sun) Image credit: NASA/FUSE/Lynette Cook

Using sophisticated computer simulations, team has discovered new insights into the chemical composition of the dust grains that formed in the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers from Swinburne Uni of Technology, Melbourne and the Uni of Lyon, France, calculated a 2D map of the dust chemistry in the solar nebula, the thin dusty disk that surrounded the young sun and out of which the planet formed.

It is expected that refractories (high temperature materials) should be located close to the young sun, while volatile materials (such as ices and sulphur compounds) should form far from the sun where temperatures are cooler...

This is a Simulation of a gravitationally unstable circumstellar disk by means of hydrodynamic calculations. Protoplanetary ’embryo’ form in the disc thanks to gravitational fragmentation. The three small pictures show the successive ‘disappearance’ of the lump by the star. Credit: Copyright Eduard Vorobyov, Universität Wien

New research shows the turbulent past of our sun. Stars are born inside a rotating cloud of interstellar gas and dust, which contracts to stellar densities thanks to its own gravity. Before finding itself on the star, however, most of the cloud lands onto a circumstellar disk forming around the star owing to conservation of angular momentum...

Slice through the three-dimensional simulation volume after 105 days in the common envelope. In the orbital plane, the companion star and the red giant core are circling around each other. Credit: Ohlmann /HITS

HITS astrophysicists use new methods to simulate the common-envelope phase of binary stars, discovering dynamic irregularities that may help to explain how supernovae evolve. More than half the stars have a companion that can have a major impact on their primary companions. The interplay within these so-called binary star systems is particularly intensive when the 2 stars involved are going through a phase in which they are surrounded by a common envelope...

Particle fates after 100 My for both (a) planetary embryo and (b) full-mass planet simulations, initially with 10,000 particles per zone.

Not only is the “Jupiter as shield” concept, implying that the planet shields Earth from comet impacts, not true, but perhaps Jupiter’s most important role in fostering the development of life on Earth was just the opposite – delivering the volatile materials from the outer Solar System needed for life to form. This new simulation study, and the previously underestimated role that Saturn may have also played in the evolution of life on Earth, are presented in an original research article published in Astrobiology.

The semimajor axes and eccentricities for all particles that survived 100 My of integration time for both (a) planetary embryo and (b) full-ma...