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| METEORITES A RICH SOURCE FOR PRIMORDIAL SOUP |
| Washington, DC—The organic soup that spawned life on Earth may have gotten generous helpings from outer space, according to a new study. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have discovered concentrations of amino acids in two meteorites that are more than ten times higher than levels previously measured in other similar meteorites. This result suggests that the early solar system was far richer in the organic building blocks of life than scientists had thought, and that fallout from space may have spiked Earth’s primordial broth. |
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| Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster |
| The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulations suggest. |
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| No More Black Holes? |
| If new calculations are correct, the universe just got even stranger. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, have constructed mathematical formulas that conclude black holes cannot exist. The findings--if correct--could revolutionize astrophysics and resolve a paradox that has perplexed physicists for 4 decades. |
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| DEVASTATING ANCIENT METEOR IMPACT OFF AUSTRALIA? |
| A massive dent hidden under the seabed off the north west coast of Australia could be evidence of a meteor impact responsible for the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, scientists say. |
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| HALLEY'S COMET PORTRAYED ON ANCIENT COIN |
| A rare ancient coin may feature an early record of Halley's comet, researchers say. |
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| SIZING UP THE UNIVERSE |
| How big is the universe? It is one of the oldest questions in science, and the answer could be anything from "slightly bigger than the area of the universe that we can see" to "infinite". |
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| MARTIAN MYSTERY EXPLAINED |
| The spiral troughs of Mars' polar ice caps have been called the most enigmatic landforms in the solar system. The deep canyons spiraling out from Red Planet’s North and South poles cover hundreds of miles. No other planet has such structures. |
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| DARK MATTER COULD BE LIGHT |
| Gamma rays from galaxy centre may signify less massive missing particles. |
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| METEORITE TOO EARLY TO KILL DINOSAURS |
| An ancient meteorite collision that created a vast crater off the coast of Mexico may not have triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to an international team of scientists. |
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| UNIVERSE PEAKED TWICE AS IT FORMED |
| A controversial theory on the formation of the Universe argues for a more complex account of how stars are formed, say Australian and U.S. researchers. |
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| FRESH LIGHT ON DARK ENERGY |
| A new study into the mysterious force called dark energy may reassure cosmologists that the Universe is not going to be ripped apart. |
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| BLACK HOLE RIPS INTO STAR AND SPEWS IT OUT |
| A big black hole ripped apart a sun-like star, gobbled a bit of it and flung the rest out into the cosmic neighborhood in an act of celestial gluttony caught for the first time, astronomers said. |
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| COMETS SPREAD EARTH-LIFE AROUND GALAXY, SAY SCIENTISTS |
| If comets hitting the Earth could cause ecological disasters, including extinctions of species and climate change, they could also disperse Earth-life to the most distant parts of the Galaxy. |
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| DOES THE UNIVERSE GO ON FOREVER? |
| Perplexing observations beamed back by a NASA spacecraft are fuelling debates about a mystery of biblical proportions- is our universe infinite? This week, a team of scientists announced tantalising hints that the universe is actually relatively small, with a hall-of-mirrors illusion tricking us into thinking that space stretches on forever. |
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| SOLAR CONTRIBUTION TO 'GLOBAL WARMING' PREDICTED TO DECREASE |
| Vascular disease pertains to the disorders that affect our arteries and veins. For the three most common types of vascular disease --carotid, aortic and peripheral – aging is a major risk factor. Recent studies suggest that pathological changes not only predispose the vasculature to disease but also impair compensatory adaptations to various stimuli including shear force and injury. Other studies have demonstrated a progressive increase in oxidative stress, activation of inflammatory mediators, and increasing endothelial dysfunction in both humans and animals. |
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| STUDY PREDICTS TRILLIONS OF PLANETS |
| The chances of Earth being alone in the universe just got a whole lot smaller, as astronomers have dramatically raised the estimate on how many planets are out there. |
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| WAS THE UNIVERSE BORN IN A BLACK HOLE? |
| The universe may have been created by an explosion within a black hole, according to a new theory by two mathematicians recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.. |
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| NEW INSIGHT INTO THE COSMIC RENAISSANCE EPOCH |
| Using the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), two astronomers from Germany and the UK [2] have discovered some of the most distant galaxies ever seen. They are located about 12,600 million light-years away.
It has taken the light now recorded by the VLT about nine-tenths of the age of the Universe to traverse this huge distance. We therefore observe those galaxies as they were at a time when the Universe was very young, less than about 10% of its present age. At this time, the Universe was emerging from a long period known as the "Dark Ages", entering the luminous "Cosmic Renaissance" epoch.
Unlike previous studies which resulted in the discovery of a few, widely dispersed galaxies at this early epoch, the present study found at least six remote citizens within a small sky area, less than five per cent the size of the full moon! This allowed understanding the evolution of these galaxies and how they affect the state of the Universe in its youth. |
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| QUASAR SHOWS STAR BIRTH AT DAWN OF TIME |
| The oldest object known, a superhot quasar powered by a black hole a billion times larger than our Sun, has been found to harbour molecular gas - suggesting stars were forming as early as 13 billion years ago. |
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| DARK MATTER MAY BE AN ILLUSION |
| Dark matter, the clumps of invisible mass between the stars, may be an illusion - if you tweak the laws of physics slightly, an international meeting of astronomers heard today. |
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| STARS RICH IN HEAVY METALS TEND TO HARBOR PLANETS |
| Sydney, Australia - A comparison of 754 nearby stars like our sun - some with planets and some without - shows definitively that the more iron and other metals there are in a star, the greater the chance it has a companion planet. |
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| DISCOVERY OF 'EMPTY GALAXIES' MAY FORCE A RETHINK |
| Some galaxies are mostly gas rather than stars, Australian researchers have discovered, turning conventional thinking on its head, the world congress of astronomy has heard. |
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| SMOKING SUPERNOVAE. ASTRONOMERS CLAIM SOLUTION TO A MYSTERY OF THE UNIVERSE. |
| Astronomers from Cardiff University, in Wales, and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, Scotland, believe they have solved one of the long-standing mysteries of the Universe - the origins of cosmic dust. |
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| ANOTHER METEOR STRIKE BLAMED FOR EXTINCTIONS |
| A large meteorite collided 380 million years ago into what is now the Moroccan desert and may have caused one of the five known mass extinctions of life on Earth, researchers report. |
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| BRIGHTEST STAR EVER SEEN 1,000 YEARS AGO |
| A supernova first seen in the 11th century was the brightest flash of light from a star in recorded history, U.S. astronomers have confirmed. |
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| FACT OR FICTION: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER AN ASTEROID COLLIDES WITH EARTH? |
| While Hollywood's film industry has explored the possibility of a catastrophic asteroid or comet colliding with the Earth, off screen there are no plans in place for civil defense in case an unexpected impact occurs, no international agreements on how to respond if a threatening asteroid is found, and no current studies of deflection technology. Although the annual probability of a large impact is extremely small, the consequences would be so great that it is necessary to understand and establish realistic societal goals, scientists said today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting. |
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| HUBBLE WATCHES GALAXIES ENGAGE IN DANCE OF DESTRUCTION |
| NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is witnessing a grouping of galaxies engaging in a slow dance of destruction that will last for billions of years. |
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| HUBBLE PHOTOGRAPHS 'DOUBLE BUBBLE' IN NEIGHBORING GALAXY |
| A unique peanut-shaped cocoon of dust, called a reflection nebula, surrounds a cluster of young, hot stars in this view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The "double bubble," called N30B, is inside a larger nebula. The larger nebula, called DEM L 106, is embedded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way lying 160,000 light-years away. The wispy filaments of DEM L 106 fill much of the image. Hubble captures the glow of fluorescing hydrogen and sulfur, as well as the brilliant blue-white colors of the hot stars. |
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| JUPITER'S MOON JUST LOOSE RUBBLE AND HOLES |
| Jupiter's potato-shaped inner moon Amalthea, discovered only seven years ago, is so surprisingly light that scientists suspect it is made up of loose rubble and ice riddled with holes. |
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| THREAT TO EARTH FROM SUPERNOVA BLAST FALLS |
| The likelihood of a supernova explosion that would strip off the Earth's protective ozone layer for decades and imperil life has been reduced to a remote threat, according to new calculations by American astrophysicists. |
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| TUNGUSKA-TYPE IMPACTS LESS COMMON THAN THOUGHT |
| Smaller asteroid impacts, such as the famed Tunguska event that devastated Siberia early last century, are less likely than previously thought, Canadian and American astronomers have found. |
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| MARS METEORS MORE COMMON THAN THOUGHT |
| Martian meteorites can reach Earth much more easily than first suspected, according to a new U.S.-Russian study, strengthening the case for theories that life on Earth may have originated on the red planet. |
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| VENUS MAY BE HIDING LIFE |
| The acidic clouds of Venus could in fact be hiding life. Unlikely as it sounds, the presence of microbes could neatly explain several mysterious observations of the planet's atmosphere. |
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| HUBBLE DISCOVERS BLACK HOLES IN UNEXPECTED PLACES |
| Medium-size black holes actually do exist, according to the latest findings from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, but scientists had to look in some unexpected places to find them. |
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| THE SUN'S TWISTED MYSTERIES |
| Solar physicists at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL, University College London) in Surrey have found new clues to the thirty year old puzzle of why the Sun ejects huge bubbles of electrified gas, laced with magnetic field, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). In a paper published this month in the Journal of Solar Physics, they explain that the key to understanding CMEs, which can cause electricity black outs on Earth, may be due to twisted magnetic fields originating deep within the heart of the Sun. |
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| HEAVY STARS THRIVE AMONG HEAVY ELEMENTS |
| Do very massive stars form in metal-rich regions of the Universe and in the nuclei of galaxies ? Or does "heavy element poisoning" stop stellar growth at an early stage, before young stars reach the "heavyweight class"?
What may at the first glance appear as a question for specialists actually has profound implications for our understanding of the evolution of galaxies, those systems of billions of stars - the main building blocks of the Universe.
With an enormous output of electromagnetic radiation and energetic elementary particles, massive stars exert a decisive influence on the surrounding (interstellar) gas and dust clouds. They also eject large amounts of processed elements, thereby participating in the gradual build-up of the many elements we see today. Thus the presence or absence of such stars at the centres of galaxies can significantly change the overall development of those regions and hence, presumably, that of the entire galaxy. |
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| AUSTRALIAN-AMERICAN DUO SHOWS BLACK HOLES IN COLLISION |
| One of the more spectacular phenomena in the cosmos might just be the collision of supermassive black holes that accompanies the merger of galaxies. But the astronomical community has not had definitive proof that these black holes are actually coming together. For the first time, astronomers have now produced a convincing mathematical model that offers the strongest support to date for the idea that the black holes merge when their host galaxies do. |
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| SATELLITES REVEAL A MYSTERY OF LARGE CHANGE IN EARTH'S GRAVITY FIELD |
| Satellite data since 1998 indicates the bulge in the Earth's gravity field at the equator is growing, and scientists think that the ocean may hold the answer to the mystery of how the changes in the trend of Earth's gravity are occurring. |
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| COSMIC RAYS LINKED TO GLOBAL WARMING |
| Researchers studying global warming have often been confounded by the differences between observed increases in surface-level temperatures and unchanging low-atmosphere temperatures. Because of this discrepancy, some have argued that global warming is unproven, suggesting instead that true warming should show uniformly elevated temperatures from the surface through the atmosphere. Researchers have proposed a theory that changes in cloud cover could help explain the puzzling phenomenon, but none-until now-have come up with an argument that could account for the varying heat profiles. |
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| SCIENTISTS VISUALIZE WAVES IN SPACE CAUSED BY BLACK-HOLE MERGERS |
| Merging black holes will rock the fabric of space and time with gravitational waves that start quiet, grow to a thunderous roar at the moment of impact, and then resonate from the final gong, according to international team of scientists who have created a novel computer model of such a merger based on Einstein's equations. Scientists present these results this week at the Fourth International LISA Symposium on gravitational radiation at Penn State University in University Park. |
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| CHANDRA DISCOVERS DWARF GALAXIES GIVE UNIVERSE BREATH OF FRESH OXYGEN |
| Astronomers have discovered a nearby dwarf galaxy is spewing oxygen and other "heavy" elements into intergalactic space. This observation from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory supports the idea that dwarf galaxies may be responsible for most of the heavy elements between the galaxies. The Marshall Center manages the Chandra program. |
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| GHOSTLY ASTEROIDS CLUE TO MISSING MATTER |
| Astronomers have lost thousands of comets. A University of Melbourne physicist thinks they may still be there, just invisible and some of them potentially on a collision course with Earth.
Dr Robert Foot suggests that many of the missing comets could be made of an exotic material called 'mirror matter', a new type of invisible matter that a small group of physicists believe could be the elusive 'dark matter'. Dark matter is considered the cosmic scaffolding that makes up most of the universe, but nobody can identify it. |
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| ASTROPHYSICISTS DISCOVER POSSIBLE NANODIAMOND FORMATION IN THE EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM |
| An astrophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics has found that some nanodiamonds, the most famous and exotic form of stardust, may instead have formed within the inner solar system. |
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| COLORFUL FIREWORKS FINALE CAPS A STAR'S LIFE |
| Glowing gaseous streamers of red, white, and blue - as well as green and pink - illuminate the heavens like Fourth of July fireworks. The colorful streamers that float across the sky in this photo taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope were created by one of the biggest firecrackers seen to go off in our galaxy in recorded history, the titanic supernova explosion of a massive star. |
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| LIFE: DID IT COME FROM OUTER SPACE? |
| The building blocks of life on Earth may have come from giant clouds of icy dust deep in outer space, astronomers have told an international astrobiology conference in Australia. |
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| ND3 - THE FIRST MOLECULE WITH THREE DEUTERIUM ATOMS DISCOVERED IN SPACE |
| To their great surprise, astronomers of the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles have discovered a new molecule in space: ND3. This is a special form of ammonia, NH3, where all three hydrogen atoms are replaced by the heavier and rare isotope deuterium (similar as in heavy water - D2O). Such molecules which contain deuterium occur mostly in very cold clouds of gas and dust in our Milky Way. In such clouds, molecules with one or two deuterium atoms had been found before. The new molecule, however, is the first one with three deuterium atoms. The results are published in a letter to Astronomy & Astrophysics (Vol 388(3), L53: June IV, 2002). |
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| GIANT LOOPS IN THE SOLAR ATMOSPHERE MAY TRIGGER SUN'S MAGNETIC POLES REVERSALS, NEW STUDY REVEALS |
| New findings by Stanford astronomers may help solve one of the most baffling questions in solar science: What causes the Sun's magnetic poles to flip-flop every 11 years? |
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| BLACK HOLE DYNAMO MAY BE COSMOS' ULTIMATE ELECTRICITY GENERATOR |
| Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory believe that magnetic field lines extending a few million light years from galaxies into space may be the result of incredibly efficient energy-producing dynamos within black holes that are somewhat analogous to an electric motor. Los Alamos researchers Philipp Kronberg, Quentin Dufton, Stirling Colgate and Hui Li today discussed this finding at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Albuquerque, N.M. |
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| MICROWAVE IMAGER PROBES UNIVERSE ‘FIRST LIGHT’ TO ANSWER COSMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS. INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE OF INFLATION THEORY. |
| Astronomers operating from a remote plateau in the Chilean desert have produced the most detailed images ever made of the oldest light emitted by the universe, providing independent confirmation of controversial theories about the origin of matter and energy. |
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| MONSTER WIMPZILLA ATTACK |
| An army of monster Wimpzillas is hiding out in our Galaxy and Earth is under attack. Fantastical as these beasts sound, they could solve two mysteries that have been plaguing physicists for years: the source of the Universe's missing mass, and the origin of the most powerful cosmic rays hitting our planet. |
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| NEW EVIDENCE FOR DARK DWARF GALAXIES SUPPORTS DARK MATTER THEORY |
| Two scientists have found evidence that galaxies are surrounded by halos containing hundreds of invisible dwarf galaxies. Their discovery, described in a paper in the June 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, provides strong support for the theory that most of the matter in the universe is in the form of some undetected type of slowly moving particles called cold dark matter. |
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| HUBBLE PINPOINTS WHITE DWARFS IN GLOBULAR CLUSTER |
| Peering deep inside a cluster of several hundred thousand stars, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Located in the globular cluster M4, these small, dying stars — called white dwarfs — are giving astronomers a fresh reading on one of the biggest questions in astronomy: How old is the universe? The ancient white dwarfs in M4 are about 12 to 13 billion years old. After accounting for the time it took the cluster to form after the big bang, astronomers found that the age of the white dwarfs agrees with previous estimates for the universe's age. |
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| NEUTRINOS CHANGE EN ROUTE TO EARTH |
| A team of scientists from the UK, the US, and Canada has proven that neutrinos emitted by the Sun can change from one type to another as they make their way to the Earth. |
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| RADAR REVEALS FIVE DOUBLE ASTEROID SYSTEMS ORBITING EACH OTHER NEAR EARTH, LIKELY FORMED IN CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH PLANET |
| A montage of radar images, captured with the Arecibo Observatory radar telescope, of binary asteroid 2000 DP107, showing the smaller body (about 300 meters in diameter) circling the larger body (about 800 meters) at a distance of 2.6 kilometers every 42 hours. Jean-Luc Margot, Caltech A higher-resolution copy of this image (900 x 1386 pixels, 733K) is available here.
Binary asteroids -- two rocky objects orbiting about one another -- appear to be common in Earth-crossing orbits, astronomers using the world's two most powerful astronomical radar telescopes report. And it is probable, they say, that these double asteroid systems have been formed as a result of gravitational effects during close encounters with at least two of the inner planets, including Earth. |
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| PHYSICISTS DELVE INTO MYSTERY OF MASSIVE PARTICLE |
| It seems every time physicists make a discovery, they find new frontiers waiting on the horizon, each with a new potential for understanding nature.
Some Kansas State University professors are at one of those frontiers, as they explore the world of the "top quark," the latest mystery in the world of physics. |
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| STRENGTHENING THE CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS |
| When it was announced last month that the Mars Odyssey satellite had found water ice beneath the planet's frozen carbon dioxide south polar ice cap, Dr. Lidija Siller, a physicist from the University of Newcastle, England, felt excited. "I believe that the data I have explains how this water became trapped underneath the surface", she said. |
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| ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER A NEW CLASS OF OBJECTS IN TWO NEARBY GALAXIES |
| Astronomers searching for globular star clusters
in a nearby galaxy have discovered an entirely new class of objects, unlike
anything previously described. Much larger and fainter than typical globular
clusters, the new objects were first detected in Hubble Space Telescope images
of the lenticular galaxy NGC 1023. They may hold clues to how galaxies of this
type formed. |
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| CATACLYSM 3.9 BILLION YEARS AGO WAS CAUSED BY ASTEROIDS, NOT COMETS, RESEARCHERS SAY |
| The bombardment that resurfaced the Earth 3.9 billion years ago was produced by asteroids, not comets, according to David Kring of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Barbara Cohen, formerly at the UA and now with the University of Hawaii. Their findings appear today in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets, published by the American Geophysical Union. |
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| THE NEW BIOLOGY OF ROCKS: 'ARE THERE MEDICAL IMPLICATIONS OF GEOMICROBIOLOGY?' |
| If microbial life is found on Mars, will it be native to the planet or something carried there from Earth? Either way, will it be safe to return samples of such organisms to Earth? Astrobiology, the search for life elsewhere, says a University of Illinois microbiologist, is making us look a lot closer at microbial life on Earth – how it adapts and its relationship to emerging infectious diseases. |
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| ALIEN LIFE FORMS MORE LIKELY TO BE FOUND OUTSIDE SOLAR SYSTEM, SAYS COLORADO PROF |
| The chance of detecting life outside our own solar system probably is greater than discovering it on neighboring planets and moons like Mars or Europa, a moon of Jupiter, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder professor. |
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| TANGO BETWEEN BLACK HOLE AND STAR REMNANT MAY EXPLAIN COSMIC EXPLOSION, MIT TEAM REPORTS |
| Gamma-ray bursts, extremely powerful explosions occurring in distant parts of the universe, may be the energetic offspring of a cosmic dance between black holes and their dance-partner stars, said scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University in the Feb. 21 issue of Science. |
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| PARTNER-SWAPPING PULSAR? |
| Astronomers are a step closer to understanding how millisecond (super-fast spinning) pulsars evolved after an unusual observation at an Australian radio telescope. |
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| ANTARCTIC MICROBES COULD LIVE ON MARS |
| New Zealand and Canadian scientists have uncovered microbes in Antarctica that live in hostile conditions mirroring those on Mars.
The scientists discovered long-lived colonies of insecticidal fungi and a common species of Penicillium bacteria at two sites in Antarctica's Dry Valleys - so-called because they are ice-free - living three to eight centimetres beneath the surface. |
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| MORE EVIDENCE FOR 'NANOBES' |
| An Australian researcher may have quietly strengthened the evidence for extra-terrestrial life last week at — of all things — a micro-electronics conference.
Dr Philippa Uwins of the University of Queensland announced at a conference in Adelaide on Monday that she had confirmed the presence of DNA in tiny nanoscale structures believed to be the smallest autonomous living organisms on Earth, called 'nanobes'. |
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| WHAT MAKES EUROPA PINK? DOES EUROPA'S ROSY GLOW BETRAY A FLOURISHING COLONY OF BUGS? |
| The red tinge of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, could be caused by frozen bits of bacteria. Their presence would also help explain Europa's mysterious infrared signal. |
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| ASTRONOMERS UNVEIL FIRST DETECTION OF DARK MATTER OBJECT IN THE MILKY WAY |
| Astronomers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with an international team of researchers, have directly detected and measured the properties of a gravitational microlensing event in the Milky Way. |
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| ARTIST'S CONCEPT - ‘HOT JUPITER’ AROUND THE STAR HD 209458 |
| This is an artist's impression of the gas-giant planet orbiting the yellow, Sun-like star HD 209458, 150 light-years from Earth. Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to look at this world and make the first direct detection of an atmosphere around an extrasolar planet. |
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| DISCOVERY OF BURIED IMPACT CRATERS ON MARS WIDENS POSSIBILITY OF ANCIENT MARTIAN OCEAN |
| Soon after Mars was formed, it was bombarded by numerous large meteorites and asteroids. Scientists have discovered an unexpectedly large grouping of impact basins buried under Mars' northern plains that resulted from this pounding. They used Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) topographic data to find them, because they can’t be seen in images of the Martian surface. |
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| SCIENTISTS EXPECT TO 'SEE' MINIATURE BLACK HOLES |
| An article soon to be published in the conference proceedings of Snowmass 2001, "The Future of Particle Physics," fuels excitement that scientists will be able to see the traces of miniature black holes created in an accelerator. |
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| COMPLEX MOLECULE FOUND IN SPACE |
| The compound vinyl alcohol has been found in space, raising hopes of clues to the origin of complex organic molecules. The molecule was found in an interstellar cloud of dust and gas near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy by radio astronomers using the National Science Foundation's 12 Meter Telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona. |
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| BLACK HOLES TAKE THE PLUNGE |
| For the first time computer simulations by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics predict what astronomers will "see" with gravitational wave telescopes during the collision of two black holes. |
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| YOUNG STARS IN ORION MAY SOLVE MYSTERY OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM |
| Scientists may have to give the Sun a little more credit. Exotic isotopes present in the early Solar System--which scientists have long-assumed were sprinkled there by a powerful, nearby star explosion--may have instead been forged locally by our Sun during the colossal solar-flare tantrums of its baby years. |
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| CHANDRA PROBES NATURE OF DARK MATTER |
| Scientists have precisely determined the distribution of dark matter in a distant galaxy cluster with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. These new measurements serve to narrow the field of candidates that explain “dark matter,” the invisible and unknown material that comprises most the Universe. |
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| CHANDRA CATCHES MILKY WAY MONSTER SNACKING |
| For the first time, a rapid X-ray flare has been observed from the direction of the supermassive black hole that resides at the center of our galaxy. This violent flare captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has given astronomers an unprecedented view of the energetic processes surrounding this supermassive black hole. |
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| HEAVY METAL STARS. LA SILLA TELESCOPE DETECTS LOTS OF LEAD IN THREE DISTANT BINARIES |
| Very high abundances of the heavy element Lead have been discovered in three distant stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. |
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| MOON A CHIP OFF THE EARTH BLOCK |
| The Moon probably formed after a Mars-sized object collided with a fully-formed Earth, new computer simulations suggest.
The calculations, presented by Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas and Erik Asphaug of the University of California at Santa Cruz, provide the most sophisticated scenario yet of the Moon's birth. |
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| ASTRONOMERS FIND LINK BETWEEN EARLIEST ILLUSTRATION OF SUNSPOTS IN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN AND AN OBSERVATION OF AURORA IN MEDIEVAL KOREA |
| Scientists at the University of Warwick and the University of Durham have linked the very first historical illustration of sunspots, recorded in Medieval England in 1182, with the appearance of the aurora borealis 5 days later in Korea. |
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| 'TADPOLE HUNTERS' MAY NET FORMING PLANETS |
| Researchers using CSIRO's Australia Telescope have found they can spot the dusty blobs that might be planet systems in the making.
This will help astronomers hunt more effectively for these elusive objects, and better estimate how many planet-forming systems are out there. |
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| COMETS AND METEORITES ARE THE FIRST GENETICS ON THE EARTH |
| Russian scientists have produced a new vision of the hypothesis put forward by researchers from the Berkley University and National Laboratory. According to it, meteorite bombardment could have played a key role in life evolution on the Earth. |
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