The asteroid presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth with such force that carbon deep in the Earth's crust liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet, say scientists from the U.S., U.K., Italy, and New Zealand in this month's Geology.
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
At the cores of many galaxies, supermassive black holes expel powerful jets of particles at nearly the speed of light. Just how they perform this feat has long been one of the mysteries of astrophysics. The leading theory says the particles are accelerated by tightly-twisted magnetic fields close to the black hole, but confirming that idea required an elusive close-up view of the jet's inner throat.
| | | | | | | | | Is there anybody out there? Probably not, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia.
A mathematical model produced by Prof Andrew Watson suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low, given the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evolve and the remaining life span of the Earth.
Structurally complex and intelligent life evolved late on Earth and it has already been suggested that this process might be governed by a small number of very difficult evolutionary steps.
| | | | | | | | | Using NASA, Japanese, and European X-ray satellites, a team of Japanese astronomers has discovered that our galaxy’s central black hole let loose a powerful flare three centuries ago.
The finding helps resolve a long-standing mystery: why is the Milky Way’s black hole so quiescent? The black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), is a certified monster, containing about 4 million times the mass of our Sun. Yet the energy radiated from its surroundings is billions of times weaker than the radiation emitted from central black holes in other galaxies.
| | | | | | | | | The European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen the GSI accelerator facility to assess radiation risks that astronauts will be exposed to on a Mars mission. GSI was selected because its accelerator is the only one in Europe able to create ion beams similar to those found in space. To determine possible health risks of manned space flights, scientists from all over Europe have been asked to investigate the effects of ion beams in human cells and organs. The first experiments will be launched this year and subsequently continued at GSI’s planned FAIR accelerator system.
| | | | | | | | | XMM-Newton has been surprised by a rare type of galaxy, from which it has detected a higher number of X-rays than thought possible. The observation gives new insight into the powerful processes shaping galaxies during their formation and evolution.
Scientists working with XMM-Newton were looking into the furthest reaches of the universe, at celestial objects called quasars. These are vast cosmic engines that pump energy into their surroundings. It is thought an enormous black hole drives each quasar.
| | | | | | | | | Researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today in Astrophysical Journal Letters that they have discovered a faraway binary star system that could be the progenitor of a rare type of supernova.
The two yellow stars, which orbit each other and even share a large amount of stellar material, resemble a peanut. The Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues believe the two stars in the system, 13 million light years away and tucked inside a small galaxy known as Holmberg IX, appear to be nearly identical, each 15 to 20 times the mass of our Sun.
| | | | | | | | | Astronomers have spied a faraway star system that is so unusual, it was one of a kind -- until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home.
In a paper published in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova.
They discovered the first star system 13 million light years away, tucked inside Holmberg IX, a small galaxy that is orbiting the larger galaxy M81. They studied it between January and October 2007 with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mt. Graham in Arizona.
The star system is unusual, because it’s what the astronomers have called a “yellow supergiant eclipsing binary” -- it contains two very bright, massive yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a large amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut.
| | | | | | | | | UC Irvine scientists have discovered a cluster of galaxies in a very early stage of formation that is 11.4 billion light years from Earth – the farthest of its kind ever to be detected. These galaxies are so distant that the universe was in its infancy when their light was emitted.
The galaxy proto-cluster, named LBG-2377, is giving scientists an unprecedented look at galaxy formation and how the universe has evolved. Before this discovery, the farthest known event like this was approximately 9 billion light years away.
| | | | | | | | | The "Large Molecule Heimat" is a very dense, hot gas clump within the star forming region Sagittarius B2. In this source of only 0,3 light-year diameter, which is heated by a deeply embedded newly formed star, most of the interstellar molecules known to date have been found, including the most complex ones such as ethyl alcohol, formaldehyde, formic acid, acetic acid, glycol aldehyde (a basic sugar), and ethylene glycol.
Starting from 1965, more than 140 molecular species have been detected in space, in interstellar clouds as well as in circumstellar envelopes. A large fraction of these molecules is organic or carbon-based. A lot of attention is given to the quest for so-called "bio"-molecules, especially interstellar amino acids. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and therefore key ingredients for the origin of life, have been found in meteorites on Earth, but not yet in interstellar space.
| | | | | | | | | 