(PhysOrg.com) -- Stars form as gravity coalesces the gas and dust in interstellar clouds until the material produces clumps dense enough to become stars. But precisely how this happens, and whether or not ...
Jan 23, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Black holes are irresistible sinks for matter and energy. They are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational clutches. Massive black holes (equal to millions or even ...
Jan 16, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night. Most stars, likely including our sun, grew up in cosmic turmoil — as illustrated in ...
Jan 10, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Star formation is studied by astronomers not only because it produces new stars and planetary systems. It also generates copious amounts of ultraviolet light that heats dust which in turn ...
Jan 09, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Matter in the universe after the big bang consisted almost entirely of hydrogen and helium atoms. Only later, after undergoing fusion reactions in the nuclear furnaces of stars, did these ...
Dec 19, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Perhaps the most astonishing and revolutionary discovery in cosmology was Edwin Hubble's observation that galaxies are moving away from us with velocities that are proportional to their distances. ...
Dec 12, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The earliest stages in the life of a star are among the most mysterious. This is primarily because stars form inside dark clouds of material that block optical light, and because they form ...
Dec 06, 2011
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In the distant reaches of the universe, almost 13 billion light-years from Earth, a strange species of galaxy lay hidden. Cloaked in dust and dimmed by the intervening distance, even the Hubble Space Telescope ...
Dec 01, 2011
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The cosmos constantly changes. Stars are born, live out their lives, and die - sometimes calmly, sometimes explosively. Galaxies form, grow, and collide dramatically. A new exhibition and website, developed ...
Nov 30, 2011
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Black holes are among the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity. A black hole is thought to be point-like in dimension, but it is surrounded by an imaginary surface, or "edge," ...
Nov 29, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The path traveled by a light beam will bend in the presence of matter. This remarkable prediction, reached by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, was confirmed by observations of ...
Nov 21, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers once thought that the process of star formation was more-or-less controlled by the simple coalescence of material by gravity, leading eventually to a new star. But they have come ...
Nov 15, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Complex molecules, including many organic species, exist in a wide range of environments in the cosmos, and are especially abundant in giant molecular clouds of gas and dust where new stars ...
Nov 08, 2011
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In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner ...
Nov 03, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova. Its precursor star exploded in 1054 AD in an event that was recorded by Chinese and (quite probably) Anasazi Indian astronomers. It is called ...
Oct 31, 2011
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