Heavens
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 30, 2019 -- Exoplanets revolving around distant stars are coming quickly into focus with advanced technology like the Kepler space telescope. Gaining a full understanding of those systems is difficult, because the initial positions and velocities of the exoplanets are unknown. Determining whether the system dynamics are quasi-periodic or chaotic is cumbersome, expensive and computationally demanding.
DURHAM, NC -- Engineers at Duke University have developed a method for extracting a color image from a single exposure of light scattered through a mostly opaque material. The technique has applications in a wide range of fields from healthcare to astronomy.
The study appeared online on July 9 in the journal Optica.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has discovered three new worlds that are among the smallest, nearest exoplanets known to date. The planets orbit a star just 73 light years away and include a small, rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes -- planets about half the size of our own icy giant.
MADISON - The sun's solar wind affects nearly everything in the solar system. It can disrupt the function of Earth's satellites and creates the lights of the auroras.
A new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison physicists mimicked solar winds in the lab, confirming how they develop and providing an Earth-bound model for the future study of solar physics.
Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, alongside others, have revealed the cells of origin for specific subtypes of medulloblastoma, the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. The work also has implications for how medulloblastoma is classified, which may eventually shape clinical care. The work appears as an advance online publication today in Nature.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. (July 24, 2019) -- A U.S. Army project exploring novel applications of superconducting resonators has discovered these systems may be used to simulate quantum materials impossible to otherwise fabricate. Additionally, they may provide insights to open and fundamental questions in quantum mechanics and gravity.
Pasadena, CA--A team of collaborators from Carnegie and the University of Chicago used red giant stars that were observed by the Hubble Space Telescope to make an entirely new measurement of how fast the universe is expanding, throwing their hats into the ring of a hotly contested debate. Their result--which falls squarely between the two previous, competing values--is published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Canada has been battling a very active and destructive fire season on multiple fronts this year. A warming climate, very dry environment, and more extreme weather including severe thunderstorms has led to massive wildfires throughout the country. Two of the provinces hardest hit by these fires are Ontario and Manitoba. On July 7, 2019, the Suomi NPP satellite using its VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument captured this image of the fires ongoing in the region.
Astronomers using National Science Foundation (NSF) radio telescopes have demonstrated how a combination of gravitational-wave and radio observations, along with theoretical modeling, can turn the mergers of pairs of neutron stars into a "cosmic ruler" capable of measuring the expansion of the Universe and resolving an outstanding question over its rate.
Astronomers obtained the first detailed face-on view of a gaseous disk feeding the growth of a massive baby star. They found that it shares many common features with lighter baby stars. This implies that the process of star formation is the same, regardless of the final mass of the resulting star. This finding paves the way for a more complete understanding of star formation.
Scientists have used satellite observations to identify the largest bloom of macroalgae in the world, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt - a heavy mass of brown algae stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. According to the results, the expansion of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB) could signify a seaweedy new norm for the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, driven by factors including deforestation and fertilizer use.
There are some numerical values that define the basic properties of our universe. They are just as they are, and no one can tell why. These include, for example, the value of the speed of light, the mass of the electron, or the coupling constants that define the strength of the forces of nature.
The processes behind the release and consumption of methane on Mars have been discussed since methane was measured for the first time for approx. 15 years ago. Now, an interdisciplinary research group from Aarhus University has proposed a previously overlooked physical-chemical process that can explain methane's consumption.
A new radioactivity model of Earth's ancient rocks calls into question current models for the formation of Earth's continental crust, suggesting continents may have risen out of the sea much earlier than previously thought but were destroyed, leaving little trace.
Scientists at the University of Adelaide have published two studies on a model of rock radioactivity over billions of years which found that the Earth's continental crust may have been thicker, much earlier than current models suggest, with continents possibly present as far back as four billion years.
Hubble offers a special view of the double star system Eta Carinae's expanding gases glowing in red, white, and blue. This is the highest resolution image of Eta Carinae taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.