Category Astronomy/Space

Snapshot from a simulation of the first stars in the Universe, showing how the gas cloud might have become enriched with heavy elements. The image shows one of the first stars exploding, producing an expanding shell of gas (top) which enriches a nearby cloud, embedded inside a larger gas filament (centre). The image scale is 3,000 light years across, and the colourmap represents gas density, with red indicating higher density. Credit: Britton Smith, John Wise, Brian O’Shea, Michael Norman, and Sadegh Khochfar

Researchers have discovered a distant, ancient cloud of gas that may contain the signature of the very first stars that formed in the Universe...

These images of the Milky Way show the distribution of gas, at left, compared to the distribution of stars, at right, after the dwarf satellite disrupts the galaxy. Credit: Sukanya Chakrabarti/Rochester Institute of Technology

A trio of brightly pulsating stars at the outskirts of the Milky Way is racing away from the galaxy and may confirm a method for detecting dwarf galaxies dominated by dark matter and explain ripples in the outer disk of the galaxy. This new method to characterize dark matter marks the first real application of galactoseismology. Just as seismologists analyze waves to infer properties about Earth’s interior, Sukanya Chakrabarti, assistant professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, uses waves in the galactic disk to map the interior structure and mass of galaxies.

Artist’s concept (stock illustration). Credit: © Kerri McClellan / Fotolia

Scientists have recreated an elusive form of material that makes up much of the giant planets in our solar system, and the sun. Experiments have given a glimpse of a previously unseen form of hydrogen that exists only at extremely high pressures, >3 million times Earth’s atmosphere. Hydrogen – among the most abundant elements in the Universe – is thought to be found in this high-pressure form in interiors of Jupiter and Saturn.

Researchers around the world have been trying for years to create this form of the element, known as the metallic state, which is considered to be the holy grail of this field of physics. It was 1st theorised to exist 80 years ago...