Polarized light is a familiar phenomenon because the scattering or reflection of light results in one of its two components being preferentially absorbed. The majority of sunlight on Earth, for example, is preferentially ...
Astronomy
Jun 26, 2020
0
158
A black hole, at least in our current understanding, is characterized by having "no hair," that is, it is so simple that it can be completely described by just three parameters, its mass, its spin and its electric charge. ...
Astronomy
Jun 15, 2020
3
452
Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are dark patches of cold dust and gas seen in the sky against the bright diffuse infrared glow of warm dust in our galaxy. These IRDCs, massive and rich in molecules, are natural sites for star ...
Astronomy
Jun 5, 2020
0
658
Astronomers studying how star formation evolved over cosmic time have discovered that quiescent galaxies (galaxies that are currently not making many new stars) frequently have active galactic nuclei. These AGN accrete material ...
Astronomy
Jun 2, 2020
2
88
Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and the Black Hole Initiative (BHI), have shed light on how black holes grow over time by developing a new model to predict if growth by accretion or by mergers ...
Astronomy
Jun 1, 2020
1
2049
Of the roughly 4,300 exoplanets confirmed to date, about ten percent of them are classified as "hot Jupiters." These are planets with masses between about 0.4 and 12 Jupiter-masses and orbital periods less than about 110 ...
Astronomy
May 15, 2020
0
8
The sparsely distributed hot gas found today between galaxies, the intergalactic medium (IGM), is ionized. The early universe started off hot, but then it rapidly expanded and cooled allowing its main constituent, hydrogen, ...
Astronomy
Apr 27, 2020
2
186
Technological advances in recent years have increased the sensitivity of radio interferometers like the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to the radio emission from astronomical sources in their continuum (not only in ...
Astronomy
Apr 13, 2020
0
14
The path of a light beam is bent by the presence of mass, as explained by General Relativity. A massive body can therefore act like a lens—a so called "gravitational lens"—to distort the image of an object seen behind ...
Astronomy
Mar 30, 2020
16
493
About 85% of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter, whose nature remains a mystery, and the rest is of the kind found in atoms. Dark matter exhibits gravity but otherwise does not interact with normal matter, ...
Astronomy
Mar 19, 2020
23
929
