Category Astronomy/Space

This illustration of the region surrounding our Solar System shows the estimated location of the two-million-year-old supernova, lying close to the galactic magnetic field, that may have been the source for some high-energy cosmic rays observed today. Credit: Michael Kachelrieß, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

High-energy protons, nuclei, and other particles are constantly showering down on Earth’s atmosphere from space, but the origins of these cosmic rays is unknown. One possibility is that the cosmic rays come from supernovae, although the evidence for this claim is limited...

A comparison of the relative size of planets and brown dwarfs to the size of our sun. Credit: https://student.societyforscience.org/article/failed-%E2%80%98star%E2%80%99-found-sun%E2%80%99s-backyard

Despite being discovered 20 yrs ago, little is known about brown dwarfs – notably why they fail to grow into stars. Part of the answer probably lies in the physics of how dense plasmas merge inside them. Now researchers, led by the York Plasma Institute at the University of York and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Central Laser
Facility, have created “lumps” of plasma to recreate the conditions similar to those found deep inside brown dwarfs...

White dwarf stars in the early Milky Way. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Calamida and K. Sahu (STScI), and the SWEEPS Science Team; Credit for Ground-based Image: A. Fujii

Peering deep into the Milky Way’s crowded central hub of stars, Hubble researchers have uncovered for the 1st time a population of ancient white dwarfs, smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars that inhabited the core. This can yield clues to how our galaxy was built, long before Earth/sun formed.

The white dwarfs contain information about the stars that existed about 12 billion years ago that burned out to form the white dwarfs. As these dying embers of once-radiant stars cool, they serve as multi-billion-year-old time pieces that tell astronomers about the Milky Way’s groundbreaking years.

An analysis of the Hubble data suppor...

Mars Express aurora detections

Mars Express has for the 1st time combined remote observations with in situ measurements of electrons hitting the atmosphere. On Earth, auroras are often-spectacular light shows at high northern and southern polar latitudes as the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. As charged atomic particles from the Sun are drawn along Earth’s magnetic field, they collide with different molecules and atoms in the atmosphere to create dynamic, colourful curtains and rays in the sky.

These light displays are also found on other planets, including those with powerful magnetic fields such as Jupiter and Saturn. But they can even occur on planets with no magnetic field, such as Venus and Mars.
In the absence of a global magnetic field, solar particles can directly...