Space & Time News

April 10, 2020

Top Headlines

Spiral galaxy illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) Alexandr Mitiuc / stock.adobe.com

The Milky Way's Satellites Help Reveal Link Between Dark Matter Halos and Galaxy Formation

Apr. 6, 2020 Just like we orbit the sun and the moon orbits us, the Milky Way has satellite galaxies with their own satellites. Drawing ... read more

Black hole illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) hallowedland / stock.adobe.com

Hubble Finds Best Evidence for Elusive Mid-Sized Black Hole

Mar. 31, 2020 Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as 'intermediate-mass,' which betrayed its existence ... read more

Periodic table (stock image). | Credit: (c) alexphoto71 / stock.adobe.com

Weighing in on the Origin of Heavy Elements

Mar. 30, 2020 Nuclear physicists conducted a physics experiment that utilizes novel techniques to study the nature and origin of heavy elements in ... read more

ALMA radio antennas at night (stock image). | Credit: (c) Christian / stock.adobe.com

The Strange Orbits of 'Tatooine' Planetary Disks

Mar. 19, 2020 Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found striking orbital geometries in protoplanetary disks around binary stars. While disks ... read more

Latest Headlines

updated 6:18pm EDT

Doubts About Basic Assumption for the Universe

Apr. 8, 2020 No matter where we look, the same rules apply everywhere in space: countless calculations of astrophysics are based on this basic principle. A recent study, however, has thrown this principle into ... read more

In a First, NASA Measures Wind Speed on a Brown Dwarf

Apr. 9, 2020 Not quite planets and not quite stars, brown dwarfs are cosmic in-betweeners. Learning about their atmospheres could help us understand giant planets around other ... read more

Looking for Dark Matter

Apr. 9, 2020 Dark matter is thought to exist as 'clumps' of tiny particles that pass through the earth, temporarily perturbing some fundamental constants. A new article sets out two novel methods for measuring ... read more

Belle II Yields First Results in Search of the Z' Boson

Apr. 8, 2020 The Belle II experiment started about one year ago. The work deals with a new particle in the context of dark matter, which accounts for about 25 percent of the ... read more

New Info on Interstellar Magnetic Field in Solar Neighborhood

Apr. 8, 2020 An international research team has mapped the interstellar magnetic field structure and interstellar matter distribution in the solar ... read more

First-Ever Photo Proof of Powerful Jet Emerging from Colliding Galaxies

Apr. 7, 2020 Researchers have reported the first detection of a relativistic on-axis jet emerging from two colliding galaxies -- the first photographic proof that merging galaxies can produce jets of fast-moving ... read more

Are Gamma-Ray Bursts Powered by a Star's Collapsing Magnetic Fields?

Apr. 7, 2020 In its final moments of life, a distant massive star releases an intense burst of high-energy gamma radiation - a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) - the brightest sources of energy in the universe, detectable ... read more

Saturn illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) revers_jr / stock.adobe.com

What Makes Saturn's Atmosphere So Hot

Apr. 6, 2020 New analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft found that electric currents, triggered by interactions between solar winds and charged particles from Saturn's moons, ... read more

Sulfur 'Spices' Alien Atmospheres

Apr. 6, 2020 They say variety is the spice of life, and now new discoveries suggest that a certain elemental 'variety' -- sulfur -- is indeed a 'spice' that can perhaps point to signs of ... read more

Predicting in-Flight Air Density for More Accurate Landing

Apr. 2, 2020 Knowing the air density outside of a spacecraft can have a substantial effect on its angle of descent and ability to hit a specific landing spot. But sensors that can withstand the harsh hypersonic ... read more

Earlier Headlines

Discovery of Life in Solid Rock Deep Beneath Sea May Inspire New Search for Life on Mars

Apr. 2, 2020 Newly discovered single-celled creatures living deep beneath the seafloor have provided clues about how to find life on Mars. These bacteria were discovered living in tiny cracks inside volcanic ... read more

Discovery Challenges Nuclear Theory

Apr. 1, 2020 A discovery by a team of nuclear physicists could change how atoms are understood by scientists and help explain extreme phenomena in outer ... read more

New Global Groundwater Maps

Mar. 31, 2020 Researchers have developed new satellite-based, weekly global maps of soil moisture and groundwater wetness ... read more

Shining sun (stock image). | Credit: (c) oraziopuccio / stock.adobe.com

On Mars or Earth, Biohybrid Can Turn Carbon Dioxide Into New Products

Mar. 31, 2020 Chemists have created a hybrid system of bacteria and nanowires that captures energy from sunlight and transfers it to the bacteria to turn carbon dioxide and water into organic molecules and oxygen. ... read more

High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory Tests Speed of Light

Mar. 31, 2020 New measurements confirm, to the highest energies yet explored, that the laws of physics hold no matter where you are or how fast you're ... read more

Mars (stock image; elements furnished by NASA). | Credit: (c) grejak / stock.adobe.com

A Martian Mash Up: Meteorites Tell Story of Mars' Water History

Mar. 30, 2020 Researchers probed Martian meteorites to reconstruct Mars' chaotic history. Their findings suggest that Mars might not have had a global magma ... read more

ALMA Resolves Gas Impacted by Young Jets from Supermassive Black Hole

Mar. 27, 2020 Astronomers obtained the first resolved image of disturbed gaseous clouds in a galaxy 11 billion light-years away by using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The team found that ... read more

Paired With Super Telescopes, Model Earths Guide Hunt for Life

Mar. 26, 2020 Astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet's evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth's own geologic epochs. The models will be spectral templates ... read more

Looking for Dark Matter Close to Home

Mar. 26, 2020 Eighty-five percent of the universe is composed of dark matter, but we don't know what, exactly, it ... read more

Astronomers Use Slime Mould to Map the Universe's Largest Structures

Mar. 26, 2020 The behaviour of one of nature's humblest creatures and archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are helping astronomers probe the largest structures in the ... read more

Holographic Cosmological Model and Thermodynamics on the Horizon of the Universe

Mar. 26, 2020 A holographic cosmological model with a power-law term has been proposed by a researcher to study thermodynamic properties on the horizon of the Universe. This model was found to satisfy the second ... read more

Shining Light on Sleeping Cataclysmic Binaries

Mar. 24, 2020 Almost 35 years ago, scientists made the then-radical proposal that colossal hydrogen bombs called novae go through a very long-term life cycle after erupting, fading to obscurity for hundreds of ... read more

New 3D View of Methane Tracks Sources

Mar. 23, 2020 NASA's new 3-dimensional portrait of methane concentrations shows the world's second largest contributor to greenhouse ... read more

Star Formation Project Maps Nearby Interstellar Clouds

Mar. 23, 2020 Astronomers have captured new, detailed maps of three nearby interstellar gas clouds containing regions of ongoing high-mass star formation. The results of this survey, called the Star Formation ... read more

Black Hole Team Discovers Path to Razor-Sharp Black Hole Images

Mar. 18, 2020 A team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within black hole images from extreme gravitational light ... read more

New Telescope Design Could Capture Distant Celestial Objects With Unprecedented Detail

Mar. 18, 2020 Researchers have designed a new camera that could allow hypertelescopes to image multiple stars at once. The enhanced telescope design holds the potential to obtain extremely high-resolution images ... read more

Precision Mirrors Poised to Improve Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detectors

Mar. 18, 2020 Deformable mirrors, which are used to shape and control laser light, have a surface made of tiny mirrors that can each be moved, or actuated, to change the overall shape of the mirror. S have, for ... read more

Frozen-Planet States in Exotic Helium Atoms

Mar. 18, 2020 Scientists describe the configuration and energy levels of antiprotonic helium that can potentially be produced by colliding slow antiprotons with ordinary helium at ... read more

On the Origin of Massive Stars

Mar. 18, 2020 A scene of stellar creation, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, sits near the outskirts of the famous Tarantula Nebula. This cloud of gas and dust, as well as the many young and massive ... read more

Scientists Discover Pulsating Remains of a Star in an Eclipsing Double Star System

Mar. 16, 2020 Scientists have discovered a pulsating ancient star in a double star system, which will allow them to access important information on the history of how stars like our Sun evolve and eventually ... read more

Thursday, April 2, 2020