01 July 2015
Ceres, Dawn, mysterious bright spots, and exploring the solar system
... unlikely, the mystery of Ceres’ bright spots drives home the point that even as we contemplate the possibility of interstellar voyages , our own solar system is still in many ways uncharted territory for humanity. And it’s not as if Ceres...
28 July 2015
Yale’s Jeffrey Kenny on cosmic wind in the NGC 4921 galaxy
....” Cosmic wind is something else entirely. We have known about cosmic winds for a while. They can sweep interstellar material from a galaxy, thus preventing the formation of future stars. How such processes happen isn’t often...
23 February 2016
Researchers probe black-hole mergers with fast-powered winds
... into a blast wave. The resulting coasting outflow forms external shocks due to interaction with the interstellar medium, producing synchrotron emission – a type of non-thermal radiation generated by charged particles spiralling around magnetic...
22 March 2016
Astronomers catch a supernova shock wave in visible light for the first time
... the mechanisms involved in these explosive but rare events, supernovae also play a significant role in enriching the interstellar medium with higher mass elements such as iron. Observations such as these can thus allows researchers to better...
13 April 2016
The mystery of neutrino mass to be solved by a calcium isotope
... the universe (at essentially the speed of light) without interference as they are not absorbed by intervening matter or deflected by interstellar magnetic fields. This makes them ideal candidates in which to study processes that can otherwise not...
09 May 2016
Ancient silicate grains reveal histories of stardust in the Galaxy
...at higher temperatures than the amorphous grains. These transmission electron microscope (TEM) images reveal that one interstellar grain consists of a small crystalline enstatite core within a non-crystalline (amorphous) silicate of similar elemental...
