Category Astronomy/Space

This is an artist’s impression of the record-breakingly powerful, superluminous supernova ASASSN-15lh as it would appear from an exoplanet located about 10,000 light years away in the host galaxy of the supernova. Credit: Beijing Planetarium / Jin Ma

Astronomers studying what may be the most powerful supernova ever seen, with energy of hundreds of billions of suns. At its heart is an object a little larger than 10 miles across that could be a very rare type of star called a magneta – but one so powerful that it pushes the energy limits allowed by physics. An international team of professional and amateur astronomers spotted the possible supernova, now called ASASSN-15lh, when it first flared to life in June 2015.

Krzysztof Stanek, turned to the movie This is Spinal Tap to find a way to des...

Quantum particles of different energies sense different properties of spacetime. The effect is similar to the dispersion of light in prism: photons of different energies sense the same prism as having slightly different properties. (Source: FUW, jch) Credit: Source: FUW, jch

When white light is passed through a prism, the rainbow on the other side reveals a rich palette of colors. Theorists from University of Warsaw have shown that in models of the Universe using any of the quantum theories of gravity there must also be a ‘rainbow’ of sorts, composed of different versions of spacetime. The mechanism predicts that instead of a single, common spacetime, particles of different energies essentially sense slightly modified versions thereof.

We have probably all seen the experiment: when white l...

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the compact green pea galaxy J0925+1403. The diameter of the galaxy is approximately 6,000 light years, and it is about twenty times smaller than the Milky Way. Credit: NASA

Astronomers gain a new understanding of the re-ionization of the universe by studying a nearby dwarf ‘green pea’ galaxy. Newly formed dwarf galaxies were likely the reason that the universe heated up about 13 billion years ago. The finding opens an avenue for better understanding the early period of the universe’s 14 billion year history.

In the period of several hundred thousand yrs after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense that matter was ionized instead of being in a neutral form...

In the last year, astronomers from Wyoming Uni have discovered 100 of the fastest-moving stars in the Milky Way galaxy with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and use of the Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO) on Jelm Mountain, Wyo.

When some swift, massive stars – moving at > 50,000 miles/h- plow through space, they can cause material to stack up in front of them in the same way that water piles up ahead of a ship or a supersonic plane creates a shockwave in front of it. Called bow shocks, these dramatic arc-shaped features in space are helping researchers to uncover massive, so-called runaway stars...