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| Venus Express reboots the search for active volcanoes on Venus |
| ESA’s Venus Express has measured a highly variable quantity of the volcanic gas sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus. Scientists must now decide whether this is evidence for active volcanoes on Venus, or linked to a hitherto unknown mechanism affecting the upper atmosphere. |
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| XMM-NEWTON DETECTS X-RAY 'SOLAR CYCLE' IN DISTANT STAR |
| For years, astronomers have wondered whether stars similar to the Sun go through periodic cycles of enhanced X-ray activity, like those often causing troubles to telephone and power lines here on Earth. |
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| MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MINI-GALAXIES |
| The missing building-blocks of giant galaxies may finally have been found, according to an international team of astrophysicists. |
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| URANUS AND NEPTUNE SHARE MAGNETIC SECRETS |
| Uranus and Neptune's weird magnetic fields are unlike Earth's, and now U.S. researchers have explained why. |
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| HOT DEBATE OVER SOLAR STORMS |
| The mechanism behind solar storms due to hit Earth again in the next few days and a possible connection with the magnetic reversal of the Sun is being hotly debated in light of new research. |
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| RECORD BREAKING NEUTRON STARS STUN EXPERTS |
| The discovery of the fastest-orbiting pair of neutron stars ever found has raised hopes that a key mystery of fundamental physics, the existence of gravitational waves, can be solved. |
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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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| 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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| 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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| A GASSY SURPRISE FOUND ON PLUTO |
| Pluto, a planet so puzzling that some astronomers say it isn't a planet at all, seems to be defying the laws of atmospheric physics. |
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| FLATTEST STAR EVER SEEN. VLT INTERFEROMETER MEASUREMENTS OF ACHERNAR CHALLENGE STELLAR THEORY. |
| To a first approximation, planets and stars are round. Think of the Earth we live on. Think of the Sun, the nearest star, and how it looks in the sky.
But if you think more about it, you realize that this is not completely true. Due to its daily rotation, the solid Earth is slightly flattened ("oblate") - its equatorial radius is some 21 km (0.3%) larger than the polar one. Stars are enormous gaseous spheres and some of them are known to rotate quite fast, much faster than the Earth. This would obviously cause such stars to become flattened. But how flat? |
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| MILLION-STAR CLUSTER IN NEARBY GALAXY REPORTED |
| A small, bizarre cluster of a million young stars, enshrouded in thick gas and dust in a nearby dwarf galaxy, has been confirmed by Jean Turner, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, and her colleagues, in the June 5 issue of the journal Nature. |
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| HUBBLE WATCHES LIGHT FROM MYSTERIOUS ERUPTING STAR REVERBERATE THROUGH SPACE |
| In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy. |
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| DOUBLE ERUPTION ON SUN |
| For the first time ever, astronomers have captured an image of the Sun with two large solar prominences occurring at the same time. |
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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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| LABORATORY ASTROPHYSICIST DISCOVERS NEW SOURCE OF HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINOS |
| A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory astrophysicist, working with an international group of researchers, has discovered that high-energy neutrinos -- particles that rarely interact with other matter -- are produced in the accretion discs of neutron stars in amounts significant enough to be detected by the next-generation of neutrino telescopes. |
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| STAR-EATING MONSTER BORN IN A FAR AWAY CLUSTER |
| The deadly embrace between a collapsing cannibal star and its hapless companion probably began in a globular cluster some 30 million years ago, a French-Argentinian team announced. |
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| VOLCANOES ON JOVIAN MOON SPEW SALT INTO ATMOSPHERE. DISCOVERY EXPLAINS 1970s OBSERVATION OF SODIUM ABOVE IO. |
| Astronomers at The Johns Hopkins University, the Observatoire de Paris, and other institutions have solved a nearly 30-year-old mystery surrounding Jupiter's moon Io, showing that volcanoes there appear to be shooting gaseous salt into the moon's thin atmosphere. |
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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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| NEW THEORY UNRAVELS MAGNETIC INSTABILITY |
| Reconnection, the merging of magnetic field lines of opposite polarity near the surface of the sun, Earth and some black holes, is believed to be the root cause of many spectacular astronomical events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, but the reason for this is not well understood. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory now have a new theory that may explain the instability and advance the understanding of these phenomena. |
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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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| HOW SMALL ARE SMALL STARS REALLY? |
| At a distance of only 4.2 light-years, Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to the Sun currently known [2]. It is visible as an 11-magnitude object in the southern constellation of Centaurus and is the faintest member of a triple system, together with Alpha Centauri, the brightest (double) star in this constellation. |
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| SUNSPOT STRUCTURE SEEN FOR THE FIRST TIME |
| The most detailed images ever taken of the Sun have for the first time shown sunspots have an internal structure, opening the door to a better understanding of these still mysterious blotches on the face of the Sun, Swedish astronomers report this week. |
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| LEARNING ABOUT ASTROPHYSICAL JETS IN THE LAB |
| Many astronomical objects, from galactic nuclei to black holes surrounded by accretion disks, emit very long plumes of plasma, called astrophysical jets. |
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| RECORD-HIGH MAGNETIC FIELDS IN LAB MAY ALLOW RE-CREATIONS OF EXTREME ASTROPHYSICAL PHENOMENA |
| Using a new technique, researchers from Imperial College, London, and the Rutherford Appleton lab in the UK have created super-strong magnetic fields that are hundreds of times more intense than any previous magnetic field created in an Earth laboratory and up to a billion times stronger than our planet's natural magnetic field. Such intense magnetic fields may soon enable researchers to recreate extreme astrophysical conditions, such as the atmospheres of neutron stars and white dwarfs, in their very own laboratories. |
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| AGEING STARS FIELD WELL IN THE BEAUTY STAKES |
| The finding by a team of European astronomers that old stars have a much higher magnetic field than our own Sun might explain the complex and beautiful shapes of planetary nebula. |
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| SOME COSMIC RAYS ORIGINATE WITHIN SOLAR SYSTEM, RESEARCHERS FIND |
| Researchers have found that a portion of anomalous cosmic rays -- charged particles accelerated to enormous energies by the solar wind -- results from interactions with dust grains from a belt of comet-sized objects near Pluto's orbit. These objects make up what is known as the Kuiper Belt, a remnant of the formation of the solar system. |
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| MSU ASTRONOMER PART OF INTERNATIONAL TEAM THAT IDENTIFIES ANCIENT STAR |
| A Michigan State University astronomer is part of an international team that has identified an ancient star, one that may be the oldest ever found and which provides clues to what the universe was made of shortly after the Big Bang. |
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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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| ILLUMINATING THE BIG BANG |
| Australian researchers have developed technology that will help astronomers world-wide in their attempts to detect gravitational waves.
A team headed by Honours student, Mr Kirk McKenzie, in the Australian National University’s Department of Physics have demonstrated the principle of using squeezed light to improve the sensitivity of interferometers built to detect gravity waves. Squeezed light is light where the phase of the wave is much more precisely known than usual. |
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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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| ASTRONOMERS FIND JUPITER-LIKE WEATHER ON BROWN DWARFS |
| For the first time, researchers have observed planet-like weather acting as a major influence on objects outside our solar system, scientists from UCLA and NASA report May 23. |
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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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| NASA SPACECRAFT PROVIDES CRITICAL LINK IN SUN-EARTH CHAIN. TIMED OBSERVES ATMOSPHERE'S RESPONSE TO RECENT SOLAR STORMS. |
| NASA's TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics) spacecraft recently observed our atmosphere's response to a series of strong solar storms, providing important new information on the final link in the Sun-Earth Connection (SEC) chain of physical processes connecting the Sun and Earth. |
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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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| GAMMA-RAY BURST MYSTERY SOLVED? |
| Scientists have provided what they are calling "compelling evidence" that gamma-ray bursts are in fact caused by the collapse of massive stars, called supernovae. |
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| NEPTUNE'S RING MYSTERY SOLVED |
| The mystery of why Neptune's ring system contains strange bright crescents may have been solved by two American astronomers.
Recent observations of the eighth planet had shown that the conventional theory - the bright arcs in the rings are caused by the vertical motion of Galatea, a nearby moon – could not be correct. |
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| LITHIUM-FREE STARS PLUG HOLE IN BIG BANG |
| A team of British astronomers have uncovered a cannibalistic explanation for why some very ancient stars have no lithium, thereby clearing up one of the mysteries surrounding the Big Bang theory. |
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| ULTRABASS SOUNDS OF THE GIANT STAR XI HYA |
| Observations of the solar sound waves (known as "helioseismology") have resulted in enormous progress in the exploration of the interior of the Sun, otherwise hidden from view. As is the case on Earth, seismic techniques can be applied and the detailed interpretation of the observed oscillation periods has provided quite accurate information about the structure and motions inside the Sun, our central star. |
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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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| MOST DISTANT GROUP OF GALAXIES KNOWN IN THE UNIVERSE |
| Using the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), a team of astronomers from The Netherlands, Germany, France and the USA [1] have discovered the most distant group of galaxies ever seen, about 13.5 billion light-years away.
It has taken the light now recorded by the VLT about nine-tenths of the age of the Universe to cover the huge distance. We therefore observe those galaxies as they were at a time when the Universe was only about 10% of its present age. |
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| SEEING THE UNIVERSE IN A BRAND NEW LIGHT |
| Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a novel device that could lead to an ultraviolet (UV) light detector approximately 10 times more sensitive than the UV detectors now on the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing astronomers to observe important objects throughout the universe for the first time. |
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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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| YALE ASTRONOMER EXPLORES THE FINAL MOMENTS OF MERGING BLACK HOLES |
| A slow dance lasting up to10 million years between a super-massive black hole and a smaller one culminates in a violent outflow of energy, possibly powering the bright light known as a quasar, a Yale researcher and collaborator have found. |
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| A GIANT STAR FACTORY IN NEIGHBORING GALAXY NGC 6822 |
| Resembling curling flames from a campfire, this magnificent nebula in a neighboring galaxy is giving astronomers new insight into the fierce birth of stars as it may have more commonly happened in the early universe. The glowing gas cloud, called Hubble-V, has a diameter of about 200 light-years. A faint tail of nebulosity trailing off the top of the image sits opposite a dense cluster of bright stars at the bottom of the irregularly shaped nebula. |
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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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| THE TERRIBLE TWOS: WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IF OUR SUN HAD A TWIN |
| How would our Sun behave differently if it had a closely orbiting twin? While astronomers don't know the exact answer, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed an intriguing star system that is beginning to provide important clues. |
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| THE UNIVERSE, NEWTON: IT'S NOT AS WE KNOW IT |
| An international collaboration of physicists, led by an Australian team, has discovered that one of the fundamental physical constants isn't so constant after all. |
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| IN POWERFUL GAMMA-RAY BURSTS, NEUTRINOS MAY FLY OUT FIRST, SCIENTISTS SAY |
| The most powerful explosions in the universe, gamma-ray bursts, may come with a 10-second warning: an equally violent burst of ultra-high-energy particles called neutrinos. |
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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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| PHYSICISTS COUNT SUBATOMIC PARTICLES RELEASED BY THE SUN |
| The sun not only radiates light all over the place, but it also emits millions of tiny invisible particles called neutrinos. A team of Texas A&M University physicists has reported in the journal Physical Review C one of the most precise results about the number of solar neutrinos by using an original approach starting a new sub-discipline within nuclear astrophysics. |
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| CHANDRA SHEDS LIGHT ON THE KNOTTY PROBLEM OF THE M87 JET |
| NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has given astronomers their most detailed look to date at the X-ray jet blasting out of the nucleus of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy 50 million light years away in the constellation Virgo. The X-ray image of the jet reveals an irregular, knotty structure similar to that detected by radio telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope. At the extreme left of the image, the bright galactic nucleus harboring a supermassive black hole shines. |
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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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| ANCIENT BLACK HOLE SPEEDS THROUGH SUN'S GALACTIC NEIGHBORHOOD, DEVOURING COMPANION STAR |
| Data from the Space Telescope Science Institute's Digital Sky Survey has played an important supporting role in helping radio and X-ray astronomers discover an ancient black hole speeding through the Sun's galactic neighborhood. The rogue black hole is devouring a small companion star as the pair travels in an eccentric orbit looping to the outer reaches of our Milky Way galaxy. |
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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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| 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 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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| VIRTUAL TELESCOPE OBSERVES RECORD-BREAKING ASTEROID. NEW DATA SHOW THAT '2001 KX76' IS LARGER THAN CERES |
| Ceres, the first asteroid (minor planet) to be discovered in the Solar System, has held the record as the largest known object of its kind for two centuries.
However, recent observations at the European Southern Observatory with the world's first operational virtual telescope 'Astrovirtel' have determined that the newly discovered distant asteroid "2001 KX76" is significantly larger, with a diameter of 1200 km, possibly even 1400 km. |
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| DANCING AROUND THE BLACK HOLE |
| Summary Supermassive Black Holes are present at the centres of many galaxies, some weighing hundreds of millions times more than the Sun. These extremely dense objects cannot be observed directly, but violently moving gas clouds and stars in their strong gravitational fields are responsible for the emission of energetic radiation from such "active galaxy nuclei" (AGN). A heavy Black Hole feeds agressively on its surroundings. When the neighbouring gas and stars finally spiral into the Black Hole, a substantial fraction of the infalling mass is transformed into pure energy. |
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| HUBBLE PHOTOGRAPHS WARPED GALAXY AS CAMERA PASSES MILESTONE |
| NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of an unusual edge-on galaxy, revealing remarkable details of its warped dusty disk and showing how colliding galaxies spawn the formation of new generations of stars. |
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| ‘THE DISH’ TESTS EINSTEIN'S WARPED SPACE |
| In the most precise astrophysics experiment ever made, Australian and U.S. astronomers have used CSIROs Parkes radio telescope to measure the distortion of space-time near a star 450 light-years (more than 4 000 million million kilometres) from Earth. |
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| BROWN DWARFS ARE STELLAR EMBRYOS EVICTED BY SIBLINGS, ACCORDING TO STUDY |
| Brown dwarfs, essentially stunted stars, were most likely ejected from newborn, multiple-star systems before they had a chance to accumulate enough mass to ignite the hydrogen in their interiors and flower, according to a new study. |
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| MUONS CHALLENGE THE BASIC PHYSICAL THEORY OF THE SUBATOMIC WORLD'S ORGANIZATION |
| Studying a magnetic trace of subatomic particles, muons, scientists came to the conclusion which contradicts the dominant physical models of the subatomic world’s organization. Over 30 years, the standard model of the world’s physical organization had been withstanding all critical opinions pertaining to the properties prediction and elementary particles interaction. Despite the obvious success of the theory, physicists suspected they dealt with uncompleted picture of the subatomic world. During the experiment an international team of researchers carried out at Bruckheiven’s National Laboratory of New-York, a negligible deviation from the standard model’s prediction for a magnetic field of muons. The results were announced on February 8th at the laboratory colloquium.
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