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    Category Astronomy/Space

    What kinds of Stars form Rocky Planets?

    December 4, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This figure from the paper shows the abundance of different elements in stars versus their abundances of iron. In each square, you can see a plot of the abundance of one element (represented by [x/Fe]) against the abundance of iron (represented by [Fe/H]). Each red dot, black square, or blue X represents a star. The red dots are the small planet-hosting stars studied in this new work. You can see how they do not stand out from the rest of the stars, which were studied in other publications, some of which host planets and some of which have no known planets. The green dashed lines show these values for our Sun. Credit: From the team's paper

    This figure from the paper shows the abundance of different elements in stars versus their abundances of iron. In each square, you can see a plot of the abundance of one element (represented by [x/Fe]) against the abundance of iron (represented by [Fe/H]). Each red dot, black square, or blue X represents a star. The red dots are the small planet-hosting stars studied in this new work. You can see how they do not stand out from the rest of the stars, which were studied in other publications, some of which host planets and some of which have no known planets. The green dashed lines show these values for our Sun. Credit: From the team’s paper

    When a star is young, it is surrounded by a rotating disk of gas and dust, from which its planets form...

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    The Cosmic Web: Seeing what makes up the Universe

    December 3, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Results of a digital simulation showing the large-scale distribution of matter, with filaments and knots. Credit: V.Springel, Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München

    Results of a digital simulation showing the large-scale distribution of matter, with filaments and knots. Credit: V.Springel, Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München

    Matter corresponds to only 5% of the Universe. ~1/2 of this still eluded detection. Numerical simulations made it possible to predict that the rest of this ordinary matter should be located in the large-scale structures that form the “cosmic web” at temperatures between 100,000 and 10 million degs. A team observed this phenomenon directly. The research shows most of missing ordinary matter is found in the form of a very hot gas associated with intergalactic filaments.

    Galaxies are formed when ordinary matter collapses then cools down...

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    Astronomers Closer to Explaining Mysterious Radio Pulses from Space

    December 3, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist impression of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) reaching Earth. The colors represent the burst arriving at different radio wavelengths, with long wavelengths (red) arriving several seconds after short wavelengths (blue). This delay is called dispersion and occurs when radio waves travel through cosmic plasma. Credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium

    Artist impression of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) reaching Earth. The colors represent the burst arriving at different radio wavelengths, with long wavelengths (red) arriving several seconds after short wavelengths (blue). This delay is called dispersion and occurs when radio waves travel through cosmic plasma. Credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium

    Origin of a Fast Radio Burst has been tied to to a highly magnetized, gas-filled region of space, providing a new hint in the decade-long quest to explain the mysterious radio pulses. “We now know that the energy from this particular burst passed through a dense magnetized field shortly after it formed,” says Kiyoshi Masui...

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    LISA Pathfinder will pave the way for us to ‘See’ Black Holes for the first time

    December 2, 2015, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    Stick with me and I’ll show you the universe. Artist’s impression of LISA Pathfinder. ESA, CC BY-ND

    Stick with me and I’ll show you the universe. Artist’s impression of LISA Pathfinder. ESA, CC BY-ND

    LISA pathfinder mission will prepare the way for us to study violent events that we’ve never seen before – such as the creation of massive black holes. The probe is to test technology needed to launch another mission, eLISA, in 2034, which will aim to detect gravitational waves. Intriguingly, the project may also help us prove some of the most extreme aspects of 3Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

    Defn: General relativity states that gravity is just a manifestation of the fact that mass causes the surrounding space to curve, and it is the curvature of space that dictates the path followed by any other object, or indeed by light...

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