Space: Exploration Space: Structures and Features
Published

NASA's Webb takes its first-ever direct image of distant world      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Astronomers have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable. The image shows how Webb's powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Full 3-D view of binary star-planet system      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Astronomers using the VLBA have produced a full, 3-D view of a binary star system with a planet orbiting one of the stars. Their achievement promises important new insights into the process of planet formation.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

ALMA witnesses deadly star-slinging tug-of-war between merging galaxies      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

While observing a newly-dormant galaxy, scientists discovered that it had stopped forming stars not because it had used up all of its gas but because most of its star-forming fuel had been thrown out of the system as it merged with another galaxy. What's more, if proven common, the results could change the way scientists think about galaxy mergers and deaths.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

ALMA discovers birth cry from a baby star in the Small Magellanic Cloud      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have observed 'baby stars' in the Small Magellanic Cloud, having an environment similar to the early universe. Toward one of the baby stars, they found molecular outflow, which has similar properties to those seen in the Milky Way galaxy, giving a new perspective on the birth of stars.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Discovery of the oldest visible planetary Nebula hosted by a 500-million-year-old Galactic cluster -- a rare beauty with a hot blue heart      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Astronomers have discovered a rare celestial jewel -- a so-called Planetary Nebula (PN) inside a 500 million-year-old Galactic Open Cluster (OC) called M37 (also known as NGC2099). This is a very rare finding of high astrophysical value.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

X-shaped radio galaxies might form more simply than expected      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Using new simulations, astrophysicists implemented simple conditions to model the feeding of a supermassive black hole and the organic formation of its jets and accretion disk. When the researchers ran the simulation, the simple conditions organically and unexpectedly led to the formation of an X-shaped radio galaxy. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the galaxy's characteristic X-shape resulted from the interaction between the jets and the gas falling into the black hole.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Quantum heat pump: A new measuring tool for physicists      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Physicists have built a quantum scale heat pump made from particles of light. This device brings scientists closer to the quantum limit of measuring radio frequency signals, useful in for example the hunt for dark matter.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

NASA's Webb detects carbon dioxide in exoplanet atmosphere      (via sciencedaily.com) 

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet. The finding offers evidence that in the future Webb may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

An extrasolar world covered in water?      (via sciencedaily.com) 

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet that could be completely covered in water.

Energy: Nuclear Engineering: Graphene
Published

The electron slow motion: Ion physics on the femtosecond scale      (via sciencedaily.com) 

How do different materials react to the impact of ions? This is a question that plays an important role in many areas of research -- for example in nuclear fusion research, when the walls of the fusion reactor are bombarded by high-energy ions. However, it is difficult to understand the temporal sequence of such processes. A research group has now succeeded in analyzing on a time scale of one femtosecond what happens to the individual particles involved when an ion penetrates materials such as graphene or molybdenum disulphide.

Engineering: Graphene
Published

Microscopic color converters move small laser-based devices closer to reality      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have used an atomically thin material to build a device that can change the color of laser beams. Their microscopic device -- a fraction of the size of conventional color converters -- may yield new kinds of ultra-small optical circuit chips and advance quantum optics.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

ESO telescope images a spectacular cosmic dance      (via sciencedaily.com) 

ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has imaged the result of a spectacular cosmic collision -- the galaxy NGC 7727. This giant was born from the merger of two galaxies, an event that started around a billion years ago. At its center lies the closest pair of supermassive black holes ever found, two objects that are destined to coalesce into an even more massive black hole.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Black hole collisions could help us measure how fast the universe is expanding      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Astrophysicists have laid out a method for how to use pairs of colliding black holes to measure how fast our universe is expanding -- and thus help illuminate how the universe evolved, what it is made out of, and where it's going.

Engineering: Graphene
Published

Super­con­duct­ing diode with­out mag­netic field in mul­ti­layer graphene      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Superconductors are the key to lossless current flow. However, the realization of superconducting diodes has only recently become an important topic of fundamental research. An international research team has now succeeded in reaching a milestone: the demonstration of an extremely strong superconducting diode effect in a single two-dimensional superconductor.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Ready for its close-up: New technology sharpens images of black holes      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Using new computational algorithms, scientists have measured a sharp ring of light predicted to originate from photons whipping around the back of a supermassive black hole.

Engineering: Graphene
Published

Unexpected quantum effects in natural double-layer graphene      (via sciencedaily.com) 

An international research team has detected novel quantum effects in high-precision studies of natural double-layer graphene. This research provides new insights into the interaction of the charge carriers and the different phases, and contributes to the understanding of the processes involved.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Astronomers confirm star wreck as source of extreme cosmic particles      (via sciencedaily.com) 

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope confirms one supernova remnant as a launch site for some of our galaxy's highest-energy protons.

Space: Structures and Features
Published

First stars and black holes      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Just milliseconds after the universe's Big Bang, chaos reigned. Atomic nuclei fused and broke apart in hot, frenzied motion. Incredibly strong pressure waves built up and squeezed matter so tightly together that black holes formed, which astrophysicists call primordial black holes. Did primordial black holes help or hinder formation of the universe's first stars, eventually born about 100 million years later?

Space: Structures and Features
Published

Stars determine their own masses      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Using new simulations, astrophysicists discovered that star formation is a self-regulatory process. In other words, stars themselves set their own masses. This helps explain why stars formed in disparate environments still have similar masses.

Space: Structures and Features Space: The Solar System
Published

Planet formation: ALMA detects gas in a circumplanetary disk      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study planet formation have made the first-ever detection of gas in a circumplanetary disk. What's more, the detection also suggests the presence of a very young exoplanet.