Showing 20 articles starting at article 461

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Mathematics: Statistics, Offbeat: Space

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

From Earth, giant elliptical galaxies resemble highly symmetric blobs, but what's their real 3D structure? Astronomers have assembled one of the first 3D views of a giant elliptical galaxy, M87, whose central supermassive black hole has already been imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope. M87 turns out to be triaxial, like a potato. The revised view provides a more precise measure of the mass of the central black hole: 5.37 billion solar masses.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers find that six of the earliest and most massive galaxy candidates observed by the James Webb Space Telescope so far appear to have converted nearly 100% of their available gas into stars, a finding at odds with the reigning model of cosmology.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Using new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy that could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the Big Bang.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Can humans endure long-term living in deep space? The answer is a lukewarm maybe, according to a new theory describing the complexity of maintaining gravity and oxygen, obtaining water, developing agriculture and handling waste far from Earth.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A lightning strike in New Port Richey, Florida, led to a chemical reaction creating a new material that is transitional between space minerals and minerals found on Earth. High-energy events, such as lightning, can cause unique chemical reactions. In this instance, the result is a new material -- one that is transitional between space minerals and minerals found on Earth.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration has culminated in a groundbreaking new image that reveals the most detailed map of dark matter distributed across a quarter of the entire sky, reaching deep into the cosmos. Findings provide further support to Einstein's theory of general relativity, which has been the foundation of the standard model of cosmology for more than a century, and offers new methods to demystify dark matter.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers have mapped the 'disk winds' associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion seen from Earth 340 years ago. Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, which makes it a unique opportunity to learn more about how such supernovae occur.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astrophysicists have measured a value for the 'clumpiness' of the universe's dark matter (known to cosmologists as 'S8') of 0.776, which does not align with the value derived from the Cosmic Microwave Background, which dates back to the universe's origins. This has intriguing implications for the standard cosmological model.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system's other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet's atmosphere. The Webb data demonstrates the observatory's unprecedented sensitivity for the faintest dusty rings, which have only ever been imaged by two other facilities: the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it flew past the planet in 1986, and the Keck Observatory with advanced adaptive optics.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long 'contrail' of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It's likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Of the many different kinds of stars, asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, usually slightly larger and older than our own sun, are known producers of interstellar dust. Dusty AGBs are particularly prominent producers of dust, and the light they shine happens to vary widely. For the first time, a long-period survey has found the variable intensity of dusty AGBs coincides with variations in the amount of dust these stars produce. As this dust can lead to the creation of planets, its study can shed light on our own origins.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The early universe was a rambunctious place where galaxies often bumped into each other and even merged together. Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based observatories, astronomers investigating these developments have made an unexpected and rare discovery: a pair of gravitationally bound quasars, both blazing away inside two merging galaxies. They existed when the universe was just 3 billion years old.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The amino acid abundances of two Ryugu particles were measured and compared with their rocky components. The results demonstrate the important role that water plays in the formation of amino acids on the giant precursors of asteroids like Ryugu. Our solar system formed from a molecular cloud, which was composed of gas and dust that was emitted into the interstellar medium (ISM), a vast space between stars. On collapse of the molecular cloud, the early sun was formed, with a large disk of gas and dust orbiting it. The dusty material collided to produce rocky material that would eventually grow in size to give large bodies called planetesimals.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

When it comes to measuring how fast the Universe is expanding, the result depends on which side of the Universe you start from. A recent study has calibrated the best cosmic yardsticks to unprecedented accuracy, shedding new light on what's known as the Hubble tension.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A new study probing the structure and evolution of galaxy clusters shows good agreement with the predictions of standard cosmological models.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers have observed an explosion 180 million light years away which challenges our current understanding of explosions in space, that appeared much flatter than ever thought possible.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers have discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the still-forming galaxy cluster around the Spiderweb galaxy -- the most distant detection of such hot gas yet. Galaxy clusters are some of the largest objects known in the Universe and this result further reveals just how early these structures begin to form.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists believe the gamma-ray emission, which lasted over 300 seconds, is the birth cry of a black hole, formed as the core of a massive and rapidly spinning star collapses under its own weight.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Asteroids sharing their orbits with the planet Neptune have been observed to exist in a broad spectrum of red color, implying the existence of two populations of asteroids in the region, according to a new study by an international team of researchers.