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Argonne expertise contributes to the foundation for future electron-ion collider
Argonne National Laboratory
Scientists from U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) national laboratories and a number of top U.S. research universities are proposing to build, within the next decade, an electron ion collider that will provide scientists with one of the best in-depth views of the interior of atomic nuclei.
Confirming a little-understood source of the process behind northern lights and the formation of stars
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Feature describes the first fully kinetic model of plasma particles showing that fast reconnection can indeed occur in partially ionized plasma.
Argonne researchers probe origins of Universe in NASA Spectral Sky Map Mission
Argonne National Laboratory
NASA has selected SPHEREx as its next Medium-Class Explorer Mission, for launch in 2023. The SPHEREx team includes scientists from the Computational Science and High Energy Physics divisions at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
Israel's First Moon Mission Will Conduct Scientific Measurements
Weizmann Institute of Science
The Weizmann Institute's Prof. Oded Aharonson, who is head of the SpaceIL international science team, has designed a project to measure and examine the Moon's magnetic field. The moon landing will make Israel the fourth country to reach the rocky outpost.
Big-Picture Research links Growth of Galaxies, Black Holes
University of California San Diego
UC San Diego's Alison Coil and colleagues James Aird (University of Leicester, UK) and Antonis Georgakakis (National Observatory of Athens) recently published research findings to reveal how supermassive black holes are growing at the center of galaxies, and how that growth relates to the growth of galaxies themselves.
Preparing for a New Tool to Study the 'Glue That Binds Us All'
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
For several decades, the nuclear science community has been calling for a new type of particle collider to pursue - in the words of one report - "a new experimental quest to study the glue that binds us all." This glue is responsible for most of the visible universe's matter and mass. To learn about this glue, scientists are proposing a unique, high-energy collider that smashes accelerated electrons, which carry a negative charge, into charged atomic nuclei or protons, which carry a positive charge.
All the data in the sky, alerted via UW eyes
University of Washington
The Zwicky Transient Facility has identified more than a thousand new objects and phenomena in the sky, including supernovae and near-Earth asteroids. University of Washington scientists led the development of the ZTF's alert system, which informs teams of possible new objects in the sky.
Hubble Reveals Dynamic Atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured a pair of storms on the solar-system ice giants Uranus (left) and Neptune (right). The dark vortex on Neptune, seen at top center, is the fourth storm spotted by Hubble since 1993. The snapshot of Uranus, like the image of Neptune, reveals a dominant feature: a vast bright stormy cloud cap across the north pole. The images are part of a Hubble program that annually monitors the outer solar-system planets.
Liberal Sprinkling of Salt Discovered Around a Young Star
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
New ALMA observations show there is ordinary table salt in a not-so-ordinary location: 1,500 light-years from Earth in the disk surrounding a massive young star.
Novel Experiment Validates a Widely Speculated and Important Mechanism During the Formation of Stars and Planets
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Feature describes use of Magnetorotational Instability Experiment at PPPL to confirm an important mechanism involved in star formation.
New Theory Illustrates the Development of the Universe May be Different Than we Thought
Stony Brook University
Theoretical physicists are presenting a new idea that suggests an alternative history of the universe is possible. Let by Stony Brook University, details of the study are published in Physical Review Letters.
Scientists Find 'New' Science Instrument on Mars Rover Curiosity
Johns Hopkins University
NASA's Curiosity Rover may have been ambling around the Gale Crater on Mars for nearly seven years but scientists have found a way to use it for something new: making the first surface gravity measurements on a planet other than Earth.
Success after a three-year sprint
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab)
The first prototype detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is taking data and producing extraordinary pictures of particle tracks.
Hubble Accidentally Discovers a New Galaxy in Cosmic Neighborhood
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered an unusually isolated dwarf galaxy that was hidden behind a forest of foreground stars in the nearby globular star cluster NGC 6752. A fraction of the size of our Milky Way, the diminutive galaxy is a largely unchanged living fossil from the universe's early days.
UD's 'Fighting Astrophysicist' Named a Ted Fellow
University of Delaware
An astrophysicist, a pro boxer and a TED Fellow walk into a room. And it's Federica Bianco. Her outside-the-box approach to life, learning and interdisciplinary adventure has caught the imagination of the TED Fellows program, as she will be one of only 20 fellows worldwide in the 2019 class.
Concrete in Space
Penn State College of Engineering
"Be prepared." This famous mantra isn't just for the Boy Scouts of America. The need to build durable infrastructure on other planets is coming, and we must be ready. To prepare, Penn State researchers have teamed up with NASA to explore how cement solidifies in microgravity environments.
Berkeley Lab Researcher Wins Machine-Learning Competition With Code That Sorts Through Simulated Telescope Data
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
To help solve a big data program for a new telescope that will conduct a major sky survey of the from the high desert of Chile, a scientific collaboration launched a competition to find the best way to train computers to identify the many types of objects it will be imaging. A researcher at Berkeley Lab beat out more than 1,000 participating teams to win the first phase of the competition.
Hubble Sees Plunging Galaxy Losing Its Gas
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope spotted galaxy D100 being stripped of its gas as the wayward spiral plunges towards the center of the giant Coma cluster containing more than 1,000 galaxies. Gas is the lifeblood of a galaxy, fueling the birth of new stars. Once it is stripped of all of its gas, D100 will enter retirement and shine only by the feeble glow of its aging, red stars (such as galaxy D99 -- just below and to the left of D100) in this image.
Where Is Earth's Submoon?
Carnegie Institution for Science
Pasadena, CA-- "Can moons have moons?" This simple question--asked by the four-year old son of Carnegie's Juna Kollmeier--started it all. Not long after this initial bedtime query, Kollmeier was coordinating a program at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) on the Milky Way while her one-time college classmate Sean Raymond of Universite de Bordeaux was attending a parallel KITP program on the dynamics of Earth-like planets. After discussing this very simple question at a seminar, the two joined forces to solve it. Their findings are the basis of a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
How to Escape a Black Hole: Simulations Provide New Clues to What's Driving Powerful Plasma Jets
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
New simulations led by researchers working at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have combined decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in plasma jets that allows them to steal energy from black holes' powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths.
Birth of Massive Black Holes in the Early Universe Revealed
Georgia Institute of Technology
An international research team has shown that when galaxies assemble extremely rapidly -- and sometimes violently -- that can lead to the formation of very massive black holes. In these rare galaxies, normal star formation is disrupted and black hole formation takes over.
Seeing double could help resolve dispute about how fast the universe is expanding
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
The question of how quickly the universe is expanding has been bugging astronomers for almost a century. Different studies keep coming up with different answers -- which has some researchers wondering if they've overlooked a key mechanism in the machinery that drives the cosmos
Chasing a supernova
Argonne National Laboratory
Alec Lancaster, a theoretical physics and applied mathematics major at Loyola University Chicago, is part of the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program, funded by DOE's Office of Science. He spent the summer looking for a specific kind of supernova in the data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), an intensive five-year probe of the southern sky. The ultimate goal of the research is to use known properties of those supernovae to determine the accelerated rate of expansion of the universe.
Safety in numbers: mobile robots could save lives during emergency evacuations
Penn State College of Engineering
To address the unique challenges that emergency evacuation scenarios present, Alan Wagner, assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, and a team of researchers propose to use a coordinated collection of mobile robots as authority figures to direct evacuees for rapid, orderly and safe evacuations, thanks to a $1.5M National Science Foundation grant.
Detailed Early Observations of a Nearby Supernova and Associated Jet Cocoon Provide New Insights about Gamma-ray Bursts
George Washington University
An international team of researchers including Chryssa Kouveliotou, a professor of physics at the George Washington University, discovered the missing link connecting hypernovae to gamma-ray bursts in the form of a hot cocoon around the jets of matter expelled by the central engine as these spread through the outer layers of the progenitor star.
WVU students receive NASA Space Grant fellowships
West Virginia University - Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Eight students from West Virginia University's Eberly College of Arts and Sciences have been awarded undergraduate fellowships from the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Scientists Team Up With Industry to Mass-Produce Detectors for Next-Gen Cosmic Experiment
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Chasing clues about the infant universe in relic light known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, Berkeley Lab scientists are devising more elaborate and ultrasensitive detector arrays to measure the properties of this light with increasing precision.
The super wolf blood moon, 'a full 62 luxurious minutes of totality'
Virginia Tech
Citizen scientists help discover new exoplanet in 'habitable zone'
University of Chicago
A new planet roughly twice the size of Earth has been discovered located within the "habitable zone"--the range of distances from a star where liquid water may exist on the planet's surface. A research team that included a UChicago graduate student confirmed the finding after volunteer citizens flagged a crucial piece of evidence in data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.
Antarctic ice sheet could suffer a one-two climate punch
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Variations in the axial tilt of the Earth have significant implications for the rise and fall of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the miles-deep blanket of ice that locks up huge volumes of water that, if melted, would dramatically elevate sea level and alter the world's coastlines. New research matches the geologic record of Antarctica's ice with the periodic astronomical motions of the Earth.
Astronomers find signatures of a 'messy' star that made its companion go supernova
University of Washington
On Jan. 10 at the 233rd American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, an international team of astronomers announced that they have identified the type of companion star that made its partner in a binary system, a carbon-oxygen white dwarf star, explode.
NASA's Hubble Helps Astronomers Uncover Brightest Quasar in the Early Universe
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the brightest object ever seen at a time when the universe was less than one billion years old. The brilliant beacon is a quasar, the core of a galaxy with a black hole ravenously eating material surrounding it. The quasar would have gone undetected without its light being turbo-boosted by the gravitational field of a closer galaxy that is bending and amplifying the distant quasar's light.
What 100,000 Star Factories in 74 Galaxies Tell Us about Star Formation across the Universe
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The ALMA telescope is conducting an unprecedented survey of nearby disk galaxies to study their stellar nurseries. With it, astronomers are beginning to unravel the complex and as-yet poorly understood relationship between star-forming clouds and their host galaxies.
Professor's work on detection of fast radio bursts detailed in Nature
West Virginia University
When researchers first began working on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, they envisioned a radio telescope that would make precise measurements of the acceleration of the Universe to improve the knowledge of why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Instead, it has become ideal for detecting fast radio bursts--radio flashes happening from far outside the Milky Way galaxy.
Turn, turn, turn: New findings bring physicists closer to understanding the formation of planets and stars
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
New findings further the understanding of a machine known as the magnetorotational instability experiment, which is named for and brings us closer to detecting the source of the instability that causes interstellar gas and dust to collapse into celestial bodies.
Meet Catherine Trewhella: Mapping Terrestrial Analogs for Martian Samples
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Catherine Trewhella, a recent graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and current intern at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, is taking a microscopic look at rocks at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science user facility. Her research will help prepare scientists for analyzing samples brought back from outer space, specifically Mars.
University of Kentucky Professor Leads Effort to Develop World's Largest, Most Inclusive 'Stellar Library'
University of Kentucky
The MaNGA Stellar Library, or MaStar for short, is named after the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey it was designed to support.
Young Planets Orbiting Red Dwarfs May Lack Ingredients for Life
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars may be dry and lifeless, according to astronomers using the Hubble telescope to study an eroding debris disk encircling the nearby star AU Microscopii. Life-nurturing ingredients, including water, may be blown away before they can reach young planets.
Dark Energy Survey completes six-year mission
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab)
After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey will finish taking data on Jan. 9.
Edwin A. Bergin Wins the 2019 Heineman Prize for Astrophysics
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
The Heineman Foundation, the American Institute of Physics and American Astronomical Society congratulate Edwin A. Bergin, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of Michigan, for winning the 2019 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, which he wins "for his pioneering work in astrochemistry and innovative contributions to our understanding of the physics and chemistry of star and planet formation, and for his tireless efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in astronomy."
Triangulum Galaxy Shows Stunning Face in Detailed Hubble Portrait
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has produced this detailed portrait of the Triangulum galaxy (M33), displaying a full spiral face aglow with the light of nearly 25 million individually resolved stars. It is the largest high-resolution mosaic image of Triangulum ever assembled, composed of 54 Hubble fields of view spanning an area more than 19,000 light-years across.
NAU's Trujillo on team discovering farthest solar system object ever seen
Northern Arizona University
Astronomy professor Chad Trujillo is on a team that's searching for Planet X, and while they're still looking for the elusive orb, the team has discovered other planets and more moons around Jupiter.
Engineering Researchers Hit Record with 17 Payloads on the International Space Station
University of Alabama at Birmingham
The December launch of the SpaceX CRS-16 carried the Engineering and Innovative Technology Department's newly designed Rapid Freezer.
New findings reveal the behavior of turbulence in the exceptionally hot solar corona
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Astrophysicists are keen to learn why the sun's corona is so hot. Scientists at PPPL have completed research that may advance the search.
Hubble Takes a Close Look at the Brightest Comet of the Year
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed comet 46P/Wirtanen on December 13, when the comet was 7.4 million miles (12 million kilometers) from Earth.
Faint Glow Within Galaxy Clusters Illuminates Dark Matter
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
A new method of tracking dark matter using the faint "intracluster" glow within massive galaxy clusters could shed light on the elusive nature of dark matter -- a major mystery of modern astrophysics.
Image Release: ALMA Gives Passing Comet Its Close-up
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
As comet 46P/Wirtanen neared Earth on December 2, astronomers using the ALMA took a remarkably close look the innermost regions of the comet's coma, the gaseous envelope around its nucleus.
GlueX Completes First Phase
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
An experiment that aims to gain new insight into the force that binds all matter together has recently completed its first phase of data collection. The Gluonic Excitations Experiment, or GlueX, is designed to produce and study hybrid mesons, which are particles that are built of the same stuff as ordinary protons and neutrons: quarks bound together by the "glue" of the strong force. But unlike ordinary mesons, the glue in hybrid mesons behaves differently by actively contributing to the particles' properties.
Massive New Dark Matter Detector Gets Its 'Eyes'
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter detector, which will soon begin its deep-underground search for particles thought to account for most matter in the universe, now has "eyes."
Alien Imposters: Planets with Oxygen Don't Necessarily Have Life
Johns Hopkins University
Lab simulations nix common wisdom that atmospheric oxygen and organic compounds are good evidence that a planet harbors life.
Fragmenting Disk Gives Birth to Binary Star 'Odd Couple'
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
ALMA discovered two young stars forming from the same swirling protoplanetary disk; one has more in common with planets than the other.
Data Scientist Peter Fox Chosen as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has elected Peter Fox, data scientist and professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as a Fellow of the society, in recognition of his "distinguished, innovative, and sustained fundamental contributions in Earth and space science informatics and data science research, education, and service."
Tangled magnetic fields power cosmic particle accelerators
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Magnetic field lines tangled like spaghetti in a bowl might be behind the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe. That's the result of a new computational study by researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which simulated particle emissions from distant active galaxies.
Hubble Finds Far-Away Planet Vanishing at Record Speed
Johns Hopkins University
In their quest to learn more about planets beyond our own solar system, astronomers discovered that a medium-sized planet roughly the size of Neptune is evaporating at a rate 100 times faster than a previously discovered planet of similar size.
In Search of Missing Worlds, Hubble Finds a Fast Evaporating Exoplanet
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
To date, astronomers have discovered two warm Neptunes that are leaking their atmospheres into space. The most recent finding using Hubble, a planet cataloged as GJ 3470b, is losing its atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than that of the previously discovered evaporating warm Neptune, GJ 436b.
UNLV Study Unlocks Clues to How Planets Form
University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)
UNLV researchers Shangjia Zhang and Zhaohuan Zhu led a team of international astronomers in a study that used the powerful ALMA telescope to discover that in other parts of the Milky Way Galaxy there is potentially a large population of young planets -- similar in mass to Neptune or Jupiter -- at wide-orbit that are not detectable by other current planet searching techniques.
NASA's Webb Telescope Will Provide Census of Fledgling Stars in Stellar Nursery
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Astronomers will use the upcoming NASA James Webb Space Telescope to study star birth in the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which contains some of the same conditions that existed in galaxies during the universe's peak star-formation epoch.
The Epoch of Planet Formation, Times Twenty
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
ALMA has yielded stunning, high-resolution images of 20 nearby protoplanetary disks and given astronomers new insights into the variety of features they contain and the speed with which planets can emerge.
Texas Tech Biochemist Helps Uncover New Ways to Make Plant-Based Medicines in Space and on Earth
Texas Tech University
According to a study published today, John D'Auria and his colleagues report that, by discovering the genes and enzymes plants use to form the second ring in tropane alkaloids' core structure, they will be able to develop new, novel ways to produce these important chemicals.
Compelling Evidence for Small Drops of Perfect Fluid
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Nuclear physicists analyzing data from the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have published additional evidence that collisions of miniscule projectiles with gold nuclei create tiny specks of the perfect fluid that filled the early universe.
Interactive Website Reveals the Unseen Universe
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
A new website with interactive sliders lets visitors explore the multiwavelength cosmos and learn the secrets that are revealed by going beyond visible light.
Experiments at PPPL show remarkable agreement with satellite sightings
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Feature describes striking similarity of laboratory research findings with observations of the four-satellite Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission that studies magnetic reconnection in space.
Topping Off a Telescope with New Tools to Explore Dark Energy
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Key components for the sky-mapping Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, weighing about 12 tons, were hoisted atop the Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, and bolted into place Wednesday, marking a major project milestone.
Celebratory Galaxy Photo Honors 25th Anniversary of NASA's First Hubble Servicing Mission
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Over the past 28 years Hubble has photographed innumerable galaxies. One especially photogenic galaxy, M100, was used to demonstrate Hubble's optical repair that was conducted by space shuttle astronauts 25 years ago this month. This picture flips between Hubble's first image of the galaxy that was blurry due to a flaw in its primary mirror. The second image shows the galaxy in crystal-clear focus after astronauts installed vision-corrected instruments on Hubble.
Hubble Uncovers Thousands of Globular Star Clusters Scattered Among Galaxies
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Hubble has completed a survey of over 22,000 globular star clusters scattered throughout the giant Coma cluster of galaxies 300 million light-years from Earth. Containing the oldest known stars in the universe, about 150 globular clusters orbit our Milky Way.
Ohio Against the Universe
Ohio State University
A planet discovered by a team co-led by Ohio State University astronomers spent this week crushing other planets in an international, intergalactic competition known as the ExoCup.
2019 LAD Early Career Award Goes to Brett McGuire
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has named Dr. Brett McGuire of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) the recipient of its 2019 Early Career Award.
Planetary Geologist and Undergrads Embedded at JPL for NASA's InSight Mars Landing
State University of New York at Geneseo
Two undergraduate researchers will join Geneseo planetary geologist Nick Warner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Nov. 26 in Pasadena, Calif., for the scheduled 3 p.m. ET landing of InSight, NASA's latest mission to Mars. The team will work for several weeks to characterize the area around the lander and make recommendations to NASA engineers on where to place the sensitive geological instruments that will explore the planet's crust, mantle and core.
Scientists Discover New "Pinwheel" Star System
New York University
An international team of scientists has discovered a new, massive star system--one that also challenges existing theories of how large stars eventually die.
STScI Visualizations of the Universe Form Heart of New "Deep Field" Film
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
November 16 marks the premiere of a unique film and musical experience inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope's famous Deep Field image. It represents a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Grammy award-winning American composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, producers Music Productions, multi award-winning artists 59 Productions, and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of our Universe features a variety of Hubble's stunning imagery and includes 11 computer-generated visualizations of far-flung galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters developed by STScI. The film is available on YouTube and will be shared with the world through screenings and live performances around the globe.
Trans-Galactic Streamers Feeding Most Luminous Galaxy in the Universe
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The most luminous galaxy in the universe has been caught in the act of stripping away nearly half the mass from at least three of its smaller neighbors.
Cosmic Fireworks
University of Delaware
It's not every day you get to observe a gamma-ray binary system. In fact, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience comparable to seeing Halley's Comet or a solar eclipse. Here's what a UD team saw.
Astronomers Find Possible Elusive Star Behind Supernova
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Astronomers may have finally uncovered the long-sought progenitor to a specific type of exploding star by sifting through NASA Hubble Space Telescope archival data. The supernova, called a Type Ic, is thought to detonate after its massive star has shed or been stripped of its outer layers of hydrogen and helium.
UNH Scientists Help Provide First-Ever Views of Elusive Energy Explosion
University of New Hampshire
Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have captured a difficult-to-view singular event involving "magnetic reconnection"--the process by which sparse particles and energy around Earth collide producing a quick but mighty explosion--in the Earth's magnetotail, the magnetic environment that trails behind the planet.
NASA telescope's 'non-detection' of first interstellar object in solar system leads team of astronomers to conclusions about mystery object's size, reflectivity
Northern Arizona University
Led by Northern Arizona University astronomy professor David Trilling, the group determined 'Oumuamua's general size, which was too small to be seen by the telescope, as well as finding it may be 10 times more reflective than comets in the solar system.
NASA's Webb Telescope Will Investigate Cosmic Jets From Young Stars
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Young stars, like young children, are messy eaters, swallowing most of the material falling onto them but spitting the rest out. The gas a newborn star fails to eat gets ejected outward at supersonic speeds, creating shock waves that heat the interstellar medium and cause it to glow in infrared light. NASA's Webb telescope will examine stellar outflows and shocks to learn more about how stars like our sun form.
Southern Research Tests Parts 3-D Printed in Space for NASA
Southern Research
Engineers at Southern Research are helping NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center explore the capabilities of additive manufacturing technologies that have major logistics implications for the nation's ambitious future space missions.
From the Cosmos to Fusion Plasmas, PPPL Presents Findings at Global APS Gathering
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Invited Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory talks at 60th American Physical Society-Department of Plasma Physics annual meeting.
Astronomers Unveil Growing Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Deep inside the dusty, messy cores of merging galaxies are pairs of black holes feasting on material and moving closer to coalescence. Near-infrared images by the Hubble and Keck telescopes are giving astronomers their best glimpse yet of this process.
Galaxy-Scale Fountain Seen in Full Glory
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
ALMA observations of Abell 2597 show the first clear and compelling evidence for the simultaneous infalling and outflow of gas driven by a supermassive black hole.
Johns Hopkins Scientist Finds Elusive Star with Origins Close to Big Bang
Johns Hopkins University
Astronomers have found what could be one of the universe's oldest stars, a body almost entirely made of materials spewed from the Big Bang.
"Dust Up" on International Space Station Hints at Sources of Structure
American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics
Imagine looking under your couch and instead of finding fluffy dust bunnies, you see the dust is arranged in straight lines--you might wonder what caused this order.
Laser Blasting Antimatter into Existence
American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics
Antimatter is an exotic material that vaporizes when it contacts regular matter. If you hit an antimatter baseball with a bat made of regular matter, it would explode in a burst of light. It is rare to find antimatter on Earth, but it is believed to exist in the furthest reaches of the universe.
A Stellar Achievement: Magnetized Space Winds in the Laboratory
American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics
New insights have been gained about stellar winds, streams of high-speed charged particles called plasma that blow through interstellar space. These winds, created by eruptions from stars or stellar explosions, carry with them strong magnetic fields which can interact with or effect other magnetic fields
Flying Focus: Controlling Lasers through Time and Space
American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics
Scientists have produced an extremely bright spot of light that can travel at any speed--including faster than the speed of light. Researchers have found a way to use this concept, called "flying focus," to move an intense laser focal point over long distances at any speed. Their technique includes capturing some of the fastest movies ever recorded.
Laboratory Experiments Probe the Formation of Stars and Planets
American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics
The cosmos is a void dotted with stars and an ever-increasing number of newly-observed planets beyond our solar system. Yet, how these stars and planets formed out of clouds of interstellar dust and gas remains mysterious.
NASA Pushes Exploration of Oceans in Our Solar System
Envision a yellow submarine on a rocket to Europa as a future culmination in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new $7 million NASA Astrobiology grant is fueling an alliance of oceanic astrobiology researchers who will unify their focus to probe oceans on our solar system neighbors for signs of life.
Naturally Occurring "Batteries" Fueled Organic Carbon Synthesis on Mars
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
A natural "battery" of briny liquids and volcanic minerals may have produced Mars' organic carbon, according to new analysis of three Martian meteorites by a team including researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Scientists make first detailed measurements of key factors related to high-temperature superconductivity
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
In independent studies reported in Science and Nature, scientists from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University report two important advances: They measured collective vibrations of electrons for the first time and showed how collective interactions of the electrons with other factors appear to boost superconductivity.
Hubble Reveals a Giant Cosmic "Bat Shadow"
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Like a fly that wanders into a flashlight's beam, a young star's planet-forming disk is casting a giant shadow, nicknamed the "Bat Shadow." Hubble's near-infrared vision captured the shadow of the disk of this fledgling star, which resides nearly 1,300 light-years away in a stellar nursery called the Serpens Nebula. In this Hubble image, the shadow spans approximately 200 times the length of our solar system. It is visible in the upper right portion of the picture. The young star and its disk likely resemble what the solar system looked like when it was only 1 or 2 million years old.
VIDEO: 5,000 Robots Merge to Map the Universe in 3D
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
How do you create the largest 3D map of the universe? It's as easy as teaching 5,000 robots how to "dance." DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, is an experiment that will target millions of distant galaxies by automatically swiveling fiber-optic positioners to point at them and gather their light. In creating this detailed map, scientists hope to learn more about dark energy, which is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Hubble Captures the Ghost of Cassiopeia
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
The Hubble telescope has photographed the "Ghost Nebula," which has eerie, semitransparent flowing veils of gas and dust. The creepy-looking nebula is located 550 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.
Electricity in Martian dust storms helps to form perchlorates
Washington University in St. Louis
The zip of electricity in Martian dust storms helps to form the huge amounts of perchlorate found in the planet's soils, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. It's not lightning but another form of electrostatic discharge that packs the key punch in the planet-wide distribution of the reactive chemical, said Alian Wang, research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences.
Scientists present ideas for next-gen accelerator experiments
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
When the FACET-II facility at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory opens its doors to scientists from around the world in early 2020, it'll offer exceptional conditions for experiments that aim to revolutionize the field of accelerator physics.
Image Release: ALMA Maps Europa's Temperature
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
A new series of four images of Europa taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has helped astronomers create the first global thermal map of this cold satellite of Jupiter.
In 5-10 Years, Gravitational Waves Could Accurately Measure Universe's Expansion
University of Chicago
In a new paper published in Nature, three University of Chicago scientists estimate that given how quickly LIGO researchers saw the first neutron star collision, they could have a very accurate measurement of the rate of the expansion of the universe within five to ten years.
Surprise finding: Discovering a previously unknown role for a source of magnetic fields
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Feature describes unexpected discovery of a role the process that seeds magnetic fields plays in mediating a phenomenon that occurs throughout the universe and can disrupt cell phone service and knock out power grids on Earth.
Penn State Engineers to Study Use of Beamed Microwave Energy to Launch Space Vehicles
Penn State College of Engineering
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has awarded two Penn State College of Engineering faculty members funding totaling more than $823,000 for a three-year program to develop and use a facility to study the use of beamed microwave energy to launch space vehicles off the surface of Earth.
Superflares From Young Red Dwarf Stars Imperil Planets
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
Violent outbursts of seething gas from young red dwarf stars may make conditions uninhabitable on the planets that orbit them. Scientists found that flares from the youngest red dwarfs they surveyed are much more energetic than when the stars are older. They also detected one of the most intense stellar flares ever observed in ultraviolet light -- more energetic than the most powerful flare from our Sun ever recorded.