Category Astronomy/Space

Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) – flashes of high-energy light occur about once a day, randomly, from around the sky – the brightest events in the known universe. While a burst is underway, it is many millions of times brighter than an entire galaxy. Astronomers are anxious to decipher their nature not only because of their dramatic energetics, but also because their tremendous brightness enables them to be seen across cosmological distances and times, providing windows into the young universe.

GRB 130427A tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen.
There appear to be 2 general types of GRBs: those associated with the deaths of massive stars, and ones believed to originate from the coalescence of 2 extreme objects (neutron stars or black holes) that had been orbiting each other in a binary...

KU Leuven researchers discovered that two out of three possible climates on exoplanets are potentially habitable. Credit: KU Leuven – Ludmila Carone

The quest for potentially habitable planets is often interpreted as the search for an Earth twin. And yet, some rocky planets outside our Solar System may in fact be more promising candidates for further research. Scientists have run 165 climate simulations for exoplanets that permanently face their ‘sun’ with the same side. They discovered that 2 of the 3 possible climates are potentially habitable.

Most exoplanets orbit relatively small and cool stars known as red dwarfs. Only exoplanets that orbit close to their 3star can be warm enough for liquid water...

An artist’s impression of the HD 100546 system. A planet that is still in the process of forming could be boosting a transfer of material from the gas-rich outer part of the disk to the inner regions. Credit: David Cabezas Jimeno (SEA)

Surprising findings in observations of parent star HD 100546.

Dr Ignacio Mendigutía, University of Leeds, said: “Nobody has ever been able to probe this close to a star that is still forming and which also has at least one planet so close in. “We have been able to detect for the first time emission from the innermost part of the disk of gas that surrounds the central star. Unexpectedly, this emission is similar to that of ‘barren’ young stars that do not show any signs of active planet formation.”

They used Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), Chil...

Large-scale crossbedding in the sandstone of this ridge on a lower slope of Mars’ Mount Sharp is typical of windblown sand dunes that have petrified. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Some of the dark sandstone in an area being explored by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows texture and inclined bedding structures characteristic of deposits that formed as sand dunes, then cemented into rock. This sandstone outcrop, part of a geological layer that Curiosity’s science team calls the Stimson unit, has a structure called crossbedding on a large scale that is interpreted as deposits of sand dunes formed by wind.

Similar-looking petrified sand dunes are common in the U.S. Southwest...