STELLAR CHEMISTRY - SKY NIGHTLY

Radar and ice could help detect an elusive subatomic particle

Mar 09, 2020 (SPX)

Physicists around the world have for decades been trying to detect neutrinos, which are constantly bombarding our planet and which are lighter than any other kn...

Where there's one, there's one hundred more

Mar 09, 2020 (SPX)

PSO J0309+27 - in short - was discovered by a team of researchers led by Silvia Belladitta, a PhD student at the University of Insubria, working for the Italian...

Dimming Betelgeuse likely isn't cold, just dusty, new study shows

Mar 09, 2020 (SPX)

But astronomers have more benign theories to explain the star's dimming behavior. And scientists at the University of Washington and Lowell Observatory believe ...

ALMA spots metamorphosing aged star

Mar 06, 2020 (SPX)

Sun-like stars evolve to puffed-up Red Giants in the final stage of their lives. Then, the star expels gas to form a remnant called a planetary nebula. There is...

A puzzle piece from stellar chemistry could change our measurements of cosmic expansion

Mar 06, 2020 (SPX)

Over the past decade or so, when Maria Bergemann, a Lise Meitner Research Group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, developed improved ways of mea...

Exciting apparatus helps atoms see the light

Mar 05, 2020 (SPX)

Their findings, published recently in Physical Review Research, mark progress toward a new platform for quantum information processing, which has the potential ...

Scientists shed light on mystery of dark matter

Mar 04, 2020 (SPX)

Up to 80% of the Universe could be dark matter, but despite many decades of study, its physical origin has remained an enigma. While it cannot be seen directly,...

Scientists seize rare chance to watch faraway star system evolve

Mar 03, 2020 (SPX)

The findings, recently published in The Astronomical Journal, suggest that the planet DS Tuc Ab - which orbits a star in a binary system - formed without being ...

Milky Way's warp caused by galactic collision, Gaia suggests

Mar 03, 2020 (ESA)

Astronomers have known since the late 1950s that the Milky Way's disc - where most of its hundreds of billions of stars reside - is not flat but somewhat curved...

Two stars merged to form massive white dwarf

Mar 03, 2020 (SPX)

They have discovered an unusual ultra-massive white dwarf around 150 light years from us with an atmospheric composition never seen before, the first time that ...

Quantum researchers able to split one photon into three

Feb 28, 2020 (SPX)

The occurrence, the first of its kind, used the spontaneous parametric down-conversion method (SPDC) in quantum optics and created what quantum optics researche...

Examining Ice Giants With NASA's Webb Telescope

Feb 27, 2020 (SPX)

The cold and remote giant planets Uranus and Neptune are nicknamed the "ice giants" because their interiors are compositionally different from Jupiter and Satur...

Radio waves detect particle showers in a block of plastic

Feb 27, 2020 (SPX)

In a paper recently accepted by Physical Review Letters, an international team of physicists working at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Lab...

The force is strong in neutron stars

Feb 27, 2020 (SPX)

In atomic nuclei, most protons and neutrons are far enough apart that physicists can accurately predict their interactions. However, these predictions are chall...

Joining forces to solve the neutrino mass puzzle

Feb 26, 2020 (SPX)

This will be thanks to the combined performance of two new neutrino experiments that are in the pipeline - the Upgrade of the IceCube experiment at the South Po...

New clues in the search for the oldest galaxies in the universe

Feb 26, 2020 (The Conversation)

I have been fortunate to lead a team of astronomers in discovering just such an example of an old galaxy cluster. How old? The light from the galaxy cluster, na...

Gemini South telescope captures exquisite planetary nebula

Feb 26, 2020 (SPX)

Located roughly 6500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Circinus (The Compass) this astronomical beauty formed during the final death throes of a...

Five millimeter diameter motor is powered directly with light

Feb 24, 2020 (SPX)

Rotational movement in nature is very rare, while at the same time ubiquitous in our civilization. While we can build a variety of rotary motors, they usually c...

What if we could teach photons to behave like electrons

Feb 24, 2020 (SPX)

But now, for the first time, a Stanford-led team has created a pseudo-magnetic force that can precisely control photons. In the short term, this control mechani...

A Cosmic Jekyll and Hyde

Feb 21, 2020 (SPX)

Astronomers found this volatile double, or binary, system in a dense collection of stars, the globular cluster Terzan 5, which is located about 19,000 light yea...