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Tue, 2 Mar 2021
An astrophysicist theorized why the chemical composition of the Sun's tenuous outermost layer differs from that lower down. His theory has recently been validated by combined observations of the Sun's magnetic waves from the Earth and from space.
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Tue, 2 Mar 2021
Analysis of observations made by satellites in 2014 has revealed a long-lasting 'space hurricane' -- a swirling mass of plasma several hundred kilometers above the North Pole, raining electrons instead of water.
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Tue, 2 Mar 2021
A new study used NASA's ice-measuring laser satellite to identify atmospheric river storms as a key driver of increased snowfall in West Antarctica during the 2019 austral winter.
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Mon, 1 Mar 2021
Physicists have discovered a way to trap the world's coldest plasma in a magnetic bottle, a technological achievement that could advance research into clean energy, space weather and solar physics.
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Sun, 28 Feb 2021
Red supergiants are a class of star that end their lives in supernova explosions. Their lifecycles are not fully understood, partly due to difficulties in measuring their temperatures. For the first time, astronomers develop an accurate method to determine the surface temperatures of red supergiants.
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Sat, 27 Feb 2021
Researchers have introduced a new method for taking high-resolution images of fast-moving and rotating objects in space, such as satellites or debris in low Earth orbit. They created an imaging process that first utilizes a novel algorithm to estimate the speed and angle at which an object in space is rotating, then applies those estimates to develop a high-resolution picture of the target.
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Sat, 27 Feb 2021
Researchers went back to the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago to gain new insights into the cosmic origin of the heaviest elements on the periodic table.
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Fri, 26 Feb 2021
A study has found the most densely populated galaxy cluster in formation in the primitive universe. The researchers predict that this structure, which is at a distance of 12.5 billion light years from us, will have evolved into a cluster similar to that of Virgo, a neighbor of the Local Group of galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs.
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Thu, 25 Feb 2021
While protons populate the nucleus of every atom in the universe, sometimes they can be squeezed into a smaller size and slip out of the nucleus for a romp on their own. Observing these squeezed protons may offer unique insights into the particles that build our universe. Now, researchers hunting for these squeezed protons have come up empty-handed, suggesting there's more to the phenomenon than first thought.
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Thu, 25 Feb 2021
After traveling several billion miles toward the Sun, a wayward young comet-like object orbiting among the giant planets has found a temporary parking place along the way. The object has settled near a family of captured ancient asteroids, called Trojans, that are orbiting the Sun alongside Jupiter. This is the first time a comet-like object has been spotted near the Trojan population.
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Thu, 25 Feb 2021
A team of scientists has detected the presence of a high-energy neutrino in the wake of a star's destruction as it is consumed by a black hole. This discovery sheds new light on the origins of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays -- the highest energy particles in the Universe.
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Thu, 25 Feb 2021
Volcanic rock samples collected during NASA's Apollo missions bear the isotopic signature of key events in the early evolution of the Moon, a new analysis found. Those events include the formation of the Moon's iron core, as well as the crystallization of the lunar magma ocean -- the sea of molten rock thought to have covered the Moon for around 100 million years after the it formed.
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Thu, 25 Feb 2021
NASA's Parker Solar Probe captured stunning views of Venus during its close flyby of the planet in July 2020. For more insight, the WISPR team planned a set of similar observations of the Venusian nightside during Parker Solar Probe's latest Venus flyby on Feb. 20, 2021. Mission team scientists expect to receive and process that data for analysis by the end of April.
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Wed, 24 Feb 2021
A scientist examined 11 Mars years of image data to understand the seasonal processes that create linear gullies on the slopes of the megadune in the Russell crater on Mars.
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Wed, 24 Feb 2021
A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving 'normal' matter, supermassive black holes could instead form directly from dark matter in high density regions in the centres of galaxies. The result has key implications for cosmology in the early Universe.
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Wed, 24 Feb 2021
A research team has succeeded in creating a micrometer-sized space-time crystal consisting of magnons at room temperature. With the help of a scanning transmission X-ray microscope, they were able to film the recurring periodic magnetization structure in a crystal.
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Wed, 24 Feb 2021
Researchers have detected cosmic pipelines supplying the cold gases necessary for the formation of massive galaxies and the creation of stars. It is the first direct observational evidence of the phenomenon in the early universe.
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Tue, 23 Feb 2021
A team of researchers has discovered evidence of radio flares emitted only long after a star is destroyed by a black hole.
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Mon, 22 Feb 2021
According to a new study, Earth, Venus and Mars were created from small dust particles containing ice and carbon. The discovery opens up the possibility that the Milky Way may be filled with aquatic planets.
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Mon, 22 Feb 2021
New video from NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.
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Mon, 22 Feb 2021
Astronomers have discovered that large galaxies are stealing the material that their smaller counterparts need to form new stars.
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Mon, 22 Feb 2021
For only the second time, astronomers have linked an elusive particle called a high-energy neutrino to an object outside our galaxy. Using ground- and space-based facilities, they traced the neutrino to a black hole tearing apart a star, a rare cataclysmic occurrence called a tidal disruption event.
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Mon, 22 Feb 2021
From aboard the Juno spacecraft, an instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter's clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the data and determined that they had captured a bolide, an extremely bright meteoroid explosion in the gas giant's upper atmosphere.
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Mon, 22 Feb 2021
A doctoral student has mined the most recent Gaia survey for all binary stars near Earth and created a 3D atlas of 1.3 million of them. The last local survey included about 200 binary pairs. With such census data, astronomers can conduct statistical analyses on binary populations. For pairs that contain white dwarfs, it's possible to determine the age of their main-sequence companion, and thus of any exoplanets around them.
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Fri, 19 Feb 2021
Experimental microbially assisted chemolithotrophy provides an opportunity to trace the putative bioalteration processes of the Martian crust. A study on the Noachian Martian breccia Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 composed of ancient crustal materials from Mars has now delivered a unique prototype of microbial life experimentally designed on a real Martian material.
