Rapid destruction of Earth-like atmospheres by young stars
University of ViennaThe discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form
The discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form
The discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form on these planets fundamentally important in modern science. Fundamentally important for the habitability of a planet is whether or not it can hold onto an atmosphere, which requires that the atmosphere is not completely lost early in the lifetime of the planet.
Scientists are excited by the prospect of stripping catalysts down to single atoms. Attached by the millions to a supporting surface, they could offer the ultimate in speed and specificity. Now researchers have taken an important step toward understanding single-atom catalysts by deliberately tweaking how they’re attached to the surfaces that support them – in this case the surfaces of nanoparticles.
Using a new X-ray technique, a team of researchers was able to watch in real time as a molecule split apart into two new molecules. The method could be used to look at chemical reactions that other techniques can’t catch, for instance in catalysis, photovoltaics, peptide and combustion research. The team, led by researchers from Brown University in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, published their results in March in Angewandte Chemie.
The spin direction of protons was reversed, for the first time, using a nine-magnet device, potentially helping tease out details about protons that affect medical imaging and more.
Antiquark spin contribution to proton spin depends on flavor, which could help unlock secrets about the nuclear structure of atoms that make up nearly all visible matter in our universe.
By examining data from the Cassini spacecraft’s last close encounter with Saturn’s moon Titan, scientists have found that its methane-filled lakes are up to 300 feet deep, much deeper than previously thought.
A team of researchers led by Berkeley Lab has observed chirality for the first time in polar skyrmions in a material with reversible electrical properties – a combination that could lead to more powerful data storage devices that continue to hold information, even after they’ve been turned off.
The world’s most advanced particle accelerator for investigating the quark structure of the atom's nucleus has just charmed physicists with a new capability. The production of charm quarks in J/ψ (J/psi) particles by CEBAF at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility confirms that the facility has expanded the realm of precision nuclear physics research with electron beams to higher energies.
As the spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 plunges into a galaxy cluster, gas is being pulled off of it as though it faced a cosmic headwind. Within that gas, stars are forming to create the appearance of giant, blue tentacle-like streamers. Astronomers, puzzled that stars could form within such tumult, plan to use Webb to study this galaxy and its stellar offspring.
Dr. Blagoy Rangelov, assistant professor of physics at Texas State University, gives insight to the black hole image that captivated audiences around the world last week.
An international team of astronomers has discovered a new way to spot when collisions occur in distant galaxies between two neutron stars – incredibly dense, city-sized celestial bodies that possess the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe. The team’s findings validate predictions first made in 2013 by UNLV astrophysicist Bing Zhang, a member of the research team and one of the study’s corresponding authors.
Pressure in the middle of a proton is about 10 times higher than in a neutron star.
Astronomers have discovered a third planet in the Kepler-47 system, securing the system's title as the most interesting of the binary-star worlds.
A team optimized software for Intel’s high-speed communication network to accelerate particle physics and machine learning codes.
Storing extremely slow neutrons in a novel trap enables precise measurement of a basic property of particle physics.
A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world, according to a new paper from a team of astronomers that includes Carnegie's Johanna Teske, Paul Butler, Steve Shectman, Jeff Crane, and Sharon Wang.
We gaze up at them, we wish upon them, we even sing about swinging on them. But the one thing we haven’t been able to do with stars is figure out how big they are…until now.
A team of astronomers used a newly commissioned radio telescope in South Korea to make the first high-resolution observations of the molecular clouds within a star-forming region of the Milky Way. The first good look at the region indicated large molecular clouds about 180 light years across.
We chat with Notre Dame geologist and moon expert Clive Neal, who is part of a team that will examine previously sealed lunar samples obtained during the Apollo missions. In addition, we look at the School of Architecture's Rome Studies Program, as it marks its 50th Anniversary in the Eternal City.
After watching YouTube videos of people supercooling water in a bottle and then triggering it to freeze by banging it, something about this concept solidified for Matthew M. Szydagis, an assistant professor of physics at the University at Albany, State University at New York, especially when he saw it again during the Disney movie “Frozen.” During the 2019 American Physical Society April Meeting in Denver, Szydagis will describe how this inspired him to explore whether a subatomic particle like dark matter can trigger the freezing of supercooled water.
Researchers hoping to better interpret data from the detection of gravitational waves generated by the collision of binary black holes are turning to the public for help. West Virginia University assistant professor Zachariah Etienne is leading what will soon become a global volunteer computing effort. The public will be invited to lend their own computers to help the scientific community unlock the secrets contained in gravitational waves observed when black holes smash together.
A Harvard physicist has shown that wormholes can exist: tunnels in curved space-time, connecting two distant places, through which travel is possible. But don’t pack your bags for a trip to other side of the galaxy yet; although it’s theoretically possible, it’s not useful for humans to travel through, said the author of the study, Daniel Jafferis, from Harvard University, written in collaboration with Ping Gao, also from Harvard and Aron Wall from Stanford University.
In this video, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project participants share their insight and excitement about the project and its potential for new and unexpected discoveries.
A University of Arkansas researcher is part of a team of astronomers who have identified an outburst of X-ray emission from a galaxy approximately 6.5 billion light years away, which is consistent with the merger of two neutron stars to form a magnetar -- a large neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field. Based on this observation, the researchers were able to calculate that mergers like this happen roughly 20 times per year in each region of a billion light years cubed.
This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The first direct visual evidence of a black hole will help scientists understand how the universe behaves under conditions of extreme gravity, forces so strong that they warp the fabric of space and time.
A new, first-of-its-kind space weather model reliably predicts space storms of high-energy particles that are harmful to many satellites and spacecraft orbiting in the Earth’s outer radiation belt.
This tip sheet highlights interesting presentations from the upcoming 2019 APS April Meeting in Denver -- a major international meeting that features talks and presentations about discoveries in astrophysics, particle physics, energy research and many other areas of modern physics. The meeting runs from Saturday, April 13 through Tuesday, April 16 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, located at 1550 Court Place in downtown Denver.
Rocky, Earth-like planets orbiting our closest stars could host life, according to a new study that raises the excitement about exoplanets.
NASA has selected 24 new Fellows for its prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). The program enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observation, experimentation, or instrument development. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support.
Astrophysicist Patrick Brady has been elected spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration as new run begins with Virgo.
An international team of researchers has put a theory speculated by the late Stephen Hawking to its most rigorous test to date, and their results have ruled out the possibility that primordial black holes smaller than a tenth of a millimeter make up most of dark matter.
On April 1 the dome of the Mayall Telescope near Tucson, Arizona, opened to the night sky, and starlight poured through the assembly of six large lenses that were carefully packaged and aligned for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument project.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will hold a press conference on April 10 to announce a groundbreaking result.
A dusty, doughnut-shaped feature, long thought an essential part of the "engines" of active galaxies, is found in one of the most powerful galaxies in the Universe.
A West Virginia University physicist is using her experiences as a Cottrell Scholar to further her research efforts and create a new curriculum. Weichao Tu, an assistant professor of physics in the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been named a 2019 Cottrell Scholar.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, all-sky surveys, and several other ground- and space-based telescopes, an international team of astronomers watching asteroid (6478) Gault say it has spun up so fast that its ejected dusty material formed two long, thin, comet-like tails. Each tail represents an episode in which the asteroid gently shed its material — key evidence that Gault is beginning to come apart.
Astronomers who study stars contributed to the analysis of a planet discovered by NASA's new TESS Mission. It's the first planet identified by TESS for which the oscillations -- "starquakes" -- of the planet's host star could be measured.
The GRAVITY instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has made the first direct observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. This method revealed a complex exoplanetary atmosphere with clouds of iron and silicates swirling in a planet-wide storm.
NASA’s new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is designed to ferret out habitable exoplanets, but with hundreds of thousands of sunlike and smaller stars in its camera views, which of those stars could host planets like our own? A team of astronomers from Cornell University, Lehigh University and Vanderbilt University has identified the most promising targets for this search in the new “TESS Habitable Zone Star Catalog,” published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Using high-resolution adaptive optics imaging from the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have uncovered one of the oldest star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. The remarkably sharp image looks back into the early history of our Universe and sheds new insights on how our Galaxy formed.
Information on the 2019 American Physical Society April Meeting in Denver, which explores research from “Quarks to Cosmos.” It runs from Saturday, April 13 through Tuesday, April 16 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. At the meeting, the latest breaking research in particle and astrophysics will be presented -- from long views of massive, ancient objects in the universe to short-lived, subatomic interactions. The meeting will also feature thoughtful presentations by experts in education, policy, the history of physics, and many other areas.
A University of Adelaide researcher, alongside members of an international team, has won an AU$16 million ERC Synergy Grant to use plasma energy to produce fertilisers which provides the opportunity for new business models and could even lead to crops on Mars.