Category Astronomy/Space

The monstrous elliptical galaxy M87, located 53 million light-years from Earth is the dominant galaxy at the center of the neighboring Virgo cluster of galaxies. Astronomers have measured the ‘heartbeats’ of stars within M87 and used that data to determine the galaxy’s age in a new way. This photograph was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

In many ways stars are like living beings. They’re born; they live; they die. And they even have a heartbeat. Using a novel technique, astronomers have detected thousands of stellar ‘pulses’ in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Their measurements offer a new way of determining a galaxy’s age.

We tend to think of stars as stable and unchanging...

Visualising the local solar neighbourhood in 3D. Credit: ESA. Acknowledgement: H. Bouy (CSIC-INTA) & J. Alves (U. Vienna

Astronomers have used modern techniques to visualise data from ESA’s Hipparcos space astrometry mission in 3D. This offered insights into the distribution of nearby stars and uncovered new groupings of stars in the solar neighbourhood, shedding light on the origins of the stars in Orion and calling into question the existence of the Gould Belt – an iconic ring-shaped structure of stars in the Milky Way. The results show the potential of 3D visualisation of the solar neighbourhood, an approach which is of particular relevance to ESA’s Gaia mission which will map the Milky Way and Local Group in 3D with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy.

3D map of massive O and B ty...

An image of Camargo 791, one of the newly found embedded clusters. Credit: Camargo et al.

When a giant cloud of molecular gas condenses, star clusters are born. It may sound simple but the formation of star clusters is a very complex process. By peering into this process we could get valuable information on the evolution of galaxies and improve our knowledge about large cosmic structures in the universe. “Star clusters are often considered as building blocks of galaxies. Understanding how these objects form and evolve is vital to our comprehension of the structure, formation and evolution of galaxies,” Denilso Camargo.

Camargo and his colleagues recently discovered a multitude of star clusters using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer: 652 star clusters, stellar groups and candidate...

Lasers could Heat materials to Temps hotter than the Center of the Sun in only 20 quadrillionths of a second

Theoretical physicists from Imperial College London have devised an extremely rapid heating mechanism that they believe could heat certain materials to degrees in much less than a million millionth of a second. The method could be relevant to thermonuclear fusion energy, where scientists are seeking to replicate the Sun’s ability to produce clean energy.

The heating would be ~100X faster than rates currently seen in fusion experiments using the world’s most energetic laser system at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA. Researchers have been using high-power lasers to heat material as part of the effort to create fusion energy for many years...