How Planetesimals Are Born
What governs the size of a newly forming star as it emerges from the molecular cloud around it? The answer depends upon the ability of gravity to overcome internal pressure within the cloud, and that in turn depends upon exceeding what is known as the Jeans Mass, whose value will vary with the density of […]
Caught speeding: Clocking the fastest-spinning brown dwarfs (w/video)
Apr 08, 2021 (Nanowerk News) Astronomers at Western University have discovered the most rapidly rotating brown dwarfs known. They found three brown dwarfs that each complete a full rotation roughly once every hour. That rate is so extreme that if these “failed stars” rotated any faster, they could come close to tearing themselves apart. Identified […]
There Might Be Remnants of an Ancient Planet Buried Inside Earth? Yup
Researchers are fairly certain that we gained our favorite satellite, the moon, after a planet, Theia, collided with the proto-Earth 4.5 billion years ago. What’s not certain are the details surrounding Theia’s fate. Was it a hit-and-run, or did the mantles of the two planets merge? Qian Yuan, Earth scientist at Arizona State University, and […]
Wobbling muons hint strongly at the existence of bizarre new physics
Muons aren’t spinning the way the best physics model predicts. Why not? It may be due to completely unknown subatomic particles popping into and out of existence in the quantum foam. This isn’t some sort of sci-fi technobabble. This is from quite real experimental results, and may very well be the Universe telling us we […]
Alien raindrops are similar to those on Earth
Alien rain isn’t as foreign as you might expect. Showers on other worlds can definitely be exotic. On Saturn’s huge moon Titan, for example, liquid hydrocarbons fall through the skies, course down river channels and fill big lakes and seas. But those Titanian methane droplets — and the sulfuric acid globules that fall on Venus […]
“Death Star” Dueling Quasars Looming in the Sky: Hubble Spots Double Quasars in Merging Galaxies
This simulation shows the brilliant, flickering light from a pair of quasars. Astronomers in a recent study deduced that the blinking light is a telltale sign of the presence of two quasars and not a single object. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted (STScI) Seeing Dual Quasars Is Like Finding a Needle in a Haystack […]
Some Black Holes Are Impossible In Our Universe
If you take enough mass and compress it into a small enough volume of space, you’ll inevitably form a black hole. Any mass in the Universe will curve the fabric of spacetime around it, and the more severely curved that spacetime fabric is, the more difficult it is to escape from that mass’s gravitational pull. […]
Four Spiral Arms Walk into a Bar…
Title: The SEDIGISM survey: First Data Release and overview of the Galactic structure Authors: F Schuller, J S Urquhart, T Csengeri, D Colombo, A Duarte-Cabral, M Mattern, A Ginsburg, A R Pettitt, F Wyrowski, L Anderson, F Azagra, P Barnes, M Beltran, H Beuther, S Billington, L Bronfman, R Cesaroni, C Dobbs, D Eden, M-Y […]
Explaining Earth’s Carbon: Enter the ‘Soot Line’
Let’s take a look at how Earth’s carbon came to be here, through the medium of two new papers. This is a process most scientists have assumed involved molecules in the original solar nebula that wound up on our world through accretion as the gases cooled and the carbon molecules precipitated. But the first of […]
Lava tubes in Hawaii could be a dress rehearsal for Mars colonies
When humans build the first bases and habitats on other worlds, they’ll confront dangers and challenges unlike any faced by the astronauts who went before them. To prepare for such challenges, scientists are descending deep underground into lava tubes in Hawaii that simulate conditions on rocky alien worlds. There, mission crew members navigate uneven volcanic […]