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Thu, 16 Sep 2021
Scientists have reported new clues to solving a cosmic conundrum: How the quark-gluon plasma -- nature's perfect fluid -- evolved into the building blocks of matter during the birth of the early universe.
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Thu, 16 Sep 2021
Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. An international research team has now mapped a galactic wind for the first time. This unique observation helped to reveal where some of the Universe's missing matter is located and to observe the formation of a nebula around a galaxy.
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Wed, 15 Sep 2021
Dark energy, the mysterious force that causes the universe to accelerate, may have been responsible for unexpected results from the XENON1T experiment, deep below Italy's Apennine Mountains.
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Wed, 15 Sep 2021
Astronomers have mapped out the chemicals inside of planetary nurseries in extraordinary detail. The newly unveiled maps reveal the locations of dozens of molecules within five protoplanetary disks -- regions of dust and gas where planets form around young stars.
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Wed, 15 Sep 2021
A 900-year-old cosmic mystery surrounding the origins of a famous supernova first spotted over China in 1181AD has finally been solved, according to an international team of astronomers. New research says that a faint, fast expanding cloud (or nebula), called Pa30, surrounding one of the hottest stars in the Milky Way, known as Parker's Star, fits the profile, location and age of the historic supernova.
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Tue, 14 Sep 2021
New research has found the Moon may have been subjected to much greater impacts from asteroids and other bodies than previously thought, building on our understanding of the Moon's earliest geologic evolution.
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Mon, 13 Sep 2021
Transporting a single brick to Mars can cost more than a million British pounds -- making the future construction of a Martian colony seem prohibitively expensive. Scientists have now developed a way to potentially overcome this problem, by creating a concrete-like material made of extra-terrestrial dust along with the blood, sweat and tears of astronauts.
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Mon, 13 Sep 2021
An enormous amount of gravity from a cluster of distant galaxies causes space to curve so much that light from them is bent and emanated our way from numerous directions. This 'gravitational lensing' effect has allowed astronomers to observe the same exploding star in three different places in the heavens. They predict that a fourth image of the same explosion will appear in the sky by 2037. The study provides a unique opportunity to explore not just the supernova itself, but the expansion of our universe.
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Fri, 10 Sep 2021
An international team of researchers developed the largest and most detailed simulation of the Universe to date and has made it freely available on the cloud to everyone. This simulation, named Uchuu, will help astronomers to interpret results from Big Data galaxy surveys.
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Thu, 9 Sep 2021
Using a groundbreaking new technique, researchers has revealed previously unrecognized properties of technologically crucial silicon crystals and uncovered new information about an important subatomic particle and a long-theorized fifth force of nature.
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Thu, 9 Sep 2021
Building a base on the moon was once something out of science fiction, but now scientists are starting to consider it more seriously. Researchers are investigating methods for mining lunar resources to build such a base, using swarms of autonomous robots.
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Thu, 9 Sep 2021
Astronomers have obtained the sharpest and most detailed images yet of the asteroid Kleopatra. The observations have allowed the team to constrain the 3D shape and mass of this peculiar asteroid, which resembles a dog bone, to a higher accuracy than ever before. Their research provides clues as to how this asteroid and the two moons that orbit it formed.
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Wed, 8 Sep 2021
In order to better understand the history and evolution of the Milky Way, astronomers are studying the composition of the gases and metals that make up an important part of our galaxy. Three main elements stand out: the initial gas coming from outside our galaxy, the gas between the stars inside our galaxy -- enriched with chemical elements --, and the dust created by the condensation of the metals present in this gas. Until now, theoretical models assumed that these three elements were homogeneously mixed throughout the Milky Way and reached a level of chemical enrichment similar to the Sun's atmosphere, called the Solar metallicity. Today, a team of astronomers demonstrates that these gases are not mixed as much as previously thought, which has a strong impact on the current understanding of the evolution of galaxies. As a result, simulations of the Milky Way's evolution will have to be modified.
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Tue, 7 Sep 2021
In a first study of its kind, scientists characterized different bacterial populations isolated over time from potable (drinking) water from the International Space Station (ISS).
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Mon, 6 Sep 2021
Could dying stars hold the secret to looking younger? New evidence suggests that white dwarfs could continue to burn hydrogen in the final stages of their lives, causing them to appear more youthful than they actually are. This discovery could have consequences for how astronomers measure the ages of star clusters.
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Mon, 6 Sep 2021
As their name suggests, ultradiffuse galaxies, or UDGs, are dwarf galaxies whose stars are spread out over a vast region, resulting in extremely low surface brightness, making them very difficult to detect. An international team of astronomers reports it has used sophisticated simulations to detect a few 'quenched' UDGs in low-density environments in the universe. A quenched galaxy is one that does not form stars.
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Thu, 2 Sep 2021
Astronomers can't touch the stars they study, but an astrophysicist is using 3-dimensional models that fit in the palm of her hand to unravel the structural complexities of stellar nurseries, the vast clouds of gas and dust where star formation occurs. Astronomers created the models using data from simulations of star-forming clouds and a sophisticated 3D printing process in which the fine-scale densities and gradients of the turbulent clouds are embedded in a transparent resin.
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Thu, 2 Sep 2021
The Very Large Array Sky Survey gave astronomers the first clue that ultimately revealed a dramatic story -- the remnant of a star that exploded long ago had plunged into the core of its companion star causing it, too, to explode as a supernova.
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Thu, 2 Sep 2021
Researchers have uncovered the physical and chemical effects of the impact of a protostellar jet in the interior of the Orion Nebula. The observations show evidence of compression and heating produced by the shock front, and the destruction of dust grains, which cause a dramatic increase in the gas phase abundance of the atoms of iron, nickel, and other heavy elements in the Orion Nebula.
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Thu, 2 Sep 2021
Aviation guidelines aim to mitigate the effects of radiation, mainly caused by galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles, or SEP. The fluxes in the former are stable and predictable: dose rates are no higher than 10 µSv/h at the normal flight altitude of 12 km. But in the case of SEP, does the frequency of detected solar flares justify the costs of countermeasures? Current mitigation procedures instruct planes to lower altitude or change or cancel flight paths altogether, significantly raising expenses.
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Wed, 1 Sep 2021
Vesta, like Earth, is composed of rock in its crust and mantle, and it has an iron core. Therefore, studying Vesta helps us understand the very early days of our planetary neighborhood and how our own planet formed.
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Mon, 30 Aug 2021
Researchers combined observations and modeling to infer the distribution of cold planets in the Milky Way. The results suggest that this distribution is not strongly dependent on the distance from the galactic center. Cold planets seem to be present throughout our galaxy, even in the galactic bulge, where their existence was uncertain. The findings could improve our understanding of both planetary formation and its history in the Milky Way.
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Mon, 30 Aug 2021
The Bernese theoretical astrophysicist Kevin Heng has achieved a rare feat: On paper, he has derived novel solutions to an old mathematical problem needed to calculate light reflections from planets and moons. Now, data can be interpreted in a simple way to understand planetary atmospheres, for example. The new formulae will likely be incorporated into future textbooks.
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Fri, 27 Aug 2021
Using a supercomputer simulation, a research team has succeeded in following the development of a galaxy over a span of 13.8 billion years. The study shows how, due to interstellar frontal collisions, young and chaotic galaxies over time mature into spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way.
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Fri, 27 Aug 2021
Brown dwarfs are astronomical objects with masses between those of planets and stars. The question of where exactly the limits of their mass lie remains a matter of debate, especially since their constitution is very similar to that of low-mass stars. So how do we know whether we are dealing with a brown dwarf or a very low mass star?
