http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers has discovered the most distant cluster of red galaxies ever observed using FourStar, a new and powerful near-infrared camera on the 6.5m Magellan Baade Telescope. The galaxy cluster is located 10.5 billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Leo. It is made up of 30 galaxies packed closely together, forming the earliest known "galaxy city" in the universe. The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. http://phys.org/news250261635.html Space & Earth Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:07:57 EST news250261635 Particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 brought to Earth in 2006 by NASA's Stardust spacecraft indicate that Jupiter formed more than three million years after the formation of the first solids in our Solar System. The new finding helps test Solar System formation theories, which do not agree on the timing of Jupiter though it is certain the formation of this giant planet affected how materials moved, collided, and coalesced during the complex planet-forming process. http://phys.org/news249818968.html Space & Earth Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:09:37 EST news249818968 Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have clocked the fastest wind yet discovered blowing off a disk around a stellar-mass black hole. This result has important implications for understanding how this type of black hole behaves. http://phys.org/news249061581.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:46:30 EST news249061581 New images of a nearby dwarf galaxy have revealed a dense stream of stars in its outer regions, the remains of an even smaller companion galaxy in the process of merging with its host. The host galaxy, known as NGC 4449, is the smallest primary galaxy in which a stellar stream from an ongoing merger has been identified and studied in detail. http://phys.org/news247936879.html Space & Earth Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:30:01 EST news247936879 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers from the Dark Cosmology Center at the Niels Bohr Institute have developed a groundbreaking method for measuring long distances in the universe using light from quasars. Quasars are active black holes and their light surpasses all other sources of light in the universe. This new groundbreaking method was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters in September, and now Physics World, the magazine of the UK's physical society has chosen this research as one of the most important breakthroughs in physics in 2011.  http://phys.org/news243507178.html Space & Earth Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:53:10 EST news243507178 Even the most powerful high-tech telescopes are barely able to record remote low-mass and thus faint stars. Together with researchers from Poland and Chile, an astrophysicist from the University of Zurich has now detected a low-mass star in globular cluster M22 for the first time through microlensing. The result indicates that the overall mass of globular clusters might well be explained without enigmatic dark matter. http://phys.org/news243167958.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:39:28 EST news243167958 (PhysOrg.com) -- In early November 1572, observers on Earth witnessed the appearance of a "new star" in the constellation Cassiopeia, an event now recognized as the brightest naked-eye supernova in more than 400 years. It's often called "Tycho's supernova" after the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who gained renown for his extensive study of the object. Now, years of data collected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope reveal that the shattered star's remains shine in high-energy gamma rays. http://phys.org/news243018275.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:05:12 EST news243018275 a kind of stellar fossils in the outer reaches of our galaxy, contain abnormally large amounts of heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium. Where these large amounts came from has been a mystery for researchers, since they are usually seen in much later generations of stars. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have been studying these ancient stars for several years with ESO's giant telescopes in Chile in order to trace the origin of these heavy elements and with recent observations they have concluded how they could have been formed in the early history of the Milky Way. The results are published in prestigious Astrophysical Journal Letters. http://phys.org/news240574433.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:14:00 EST news240574433 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. http://phys.org/news240155355.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:49:22 EST news240155355 The space between the galaxies wasn't always transparent. In the earliest times, it was an opaque, dense fog. How it cleared is an important question in astronomy. New observational evidence from the University of Michigan shows how high energy light from massive stars could have been responsible. http://phys.org/news237638072.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:34:52 EST news237638072 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have captured rare data of a flaring black hole, revealing new details about these powerful objects and their blazing jets. http://phys.org/news235806110.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Sep 2011 06:42:23 EST news235806110 (PhysOrg.com) -- Amsterdam astronomers have discovered a neutron star that confounds existing models for thermonuclear explosions in such extreme objects. In the case of the accreting pulsar IGR J17480-2446, it seems to be a strong magnetic field that causes some parts of the star to burn more brightly than the rest. The results of the study, by Yuri Cavecchi et al. (2011), are to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. http://phys.org/news235236165.html Space & Earth Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:23:24 EST news235236165 On Nov. 4, 2010, NASA's EPOXI spacecraft came within 450 miles of Comet Hartley 2, a small comet not even a mile in diameter, which takes about six and a half years to orbit the sun. Designated officially as 103P/Hartley 2, the comet thus became the fifth for which scientists have collected close-up images. http://phys.org/news231083510.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:30:01 EST news231083510 (PhysOrg.com) -- New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 light-years, were known before. Herschel's view reveals the entire ring for the first time, and a strange kink that has astronomers scratching their heads. http://phys.org/news230357252.html Space & Earth Wed, 20 Jul 2011 05:07:52 EST news230357252 (PhysOrg.com) -- A study using NASA's Swift satellite and the Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a second supersized black hole at the heart of an unusual nearby galaxy already known to be sporting one. http://phys.org/news226936087.html Space & Earth Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:48:34 EST news226936087 (PhysOrg.com) -- Across the universe, galaxies band together in clusters so huge it can take 10 million years for light to travel from one end of a galaxy cluster to the other. Probing these metropolises is no easy task. But Assistant Professor of Astronomy Andisheh Mahdavi has found a centuries-old math formula that could help scientists map the shape and size of galaxy clusters. http://phys.org/news226825033.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:34:57 EST news226825033 (PhysOrg.com) -- Cue the surfing music. Scientists have spotted the iconic surfer's wave rolling through the atmosphere of the sun. This makes for more than just a nice photo-op: the waves hold clues as to how energy moves through that atmosphere, known as the corona. http://phys.org/news226684922.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:02:27 EST news226684922 (PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny crystals of a green mineral called olivine are falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, according to observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. http://phys.org/news225712314.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 May 2011 10:52:24 EST news225712314 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a surprising twist, if you will, Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus, both of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have put forth in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, the notion that a cluster of gas clouds they've discovered, that lies far from what is currently believed to be the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, is likely the extension of one of the great arms that form our galaxy. http://phys.org/news225359734.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 May 2011 08:56:20 EST news225359734 (PhysOrg.com) -- A tumbling comet nucleus with a changing rotational rate has been observed for the first time, according to a new paper by a Planetary Science Institute researcher. http://phys.org/news224792485.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 May 2011 19:21:53 EST news224792485 Scientists said on Monday a rocky world orbiting a nearby star was confirmed as the first planet outside our solar system to meet key requirements for sustaining life. http://phys.org/news224756301.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 May 2011 09:18:36 EST news224756301 (PhysOrg.com) -- Late last year, astronomers noticed an asteroid named Scheila had unexpectedly brightened, and it was sporting short-lived plumes. Data from NASA's Swift satellite and Hubble Space Telescope showed these changes likely occurred after Scheila was struck by a much smaller asteroid. http://phys.org/news223229733.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:16:41 EST news223229733 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have discovered that two symmetrical jets shooting away from opposite sides of a blossoming star are experiencing a time delay: knots of gas and dust from one jet blast off four-and-a-half years later than identical knots from the other jet. http://phys.org/news221216914.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:08:50 EST news221216914 (PhysOrg.com) -- When two galaxies merge to form a giant, the central supermassive black hole in the new galaxy develops an insatiable appetite. However, this ferocious appetite is unsustainable. http://phys.org/news217768520.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:15:38 EST news217768520 Certain molecules do exist in two forms which are symmetrical mirror images of each other: they are known as chiral molecules. On Earth, the chiral molecules of life, especially amino acids and sugars, exist in only one form, either left-handed or right-handed. Why is it that life has initially chosen one form over the other? http://phys.org/news213967401.html Space & Earth Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:24:25 EST news213967401 (PhysOrg.com) -- A pair of neutron stars spiraling toward each other until they merge in a violent explosion should produce detectable gravitational waves. A new study led by an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, predicts for the first time where such mergers are likely to occur in the local galactic neighborhood. http://phys.org/news210520541.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:00:01 EST news210520541 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have caught sight of an unusual galaxy that has illuminated new details about a celestial "sandbar" connecting two massive islands of galaxies. The research was conducted in part with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. http://phys.org/news209830806.html Space & Earth Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:20:40 EST news209830806 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have discovered bucket loads of buckyballs in space. They used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to find the little carbon spheres throughout our Milky Way galaxy -- in the space between stars and around three dying stars. What's more, Spitzer detected buckyballs around a fourth dying star in a nearby galaxy in staggering quantities -- the equivalent in mass to about 15 of our moons. http://phys.org/news207478930.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:02:27 EST news207478930 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Arizona astronomers have developed a way to see faint planets previously hidden in their star's glare. The new mode enables scientists to search for planets closer to the star than has been previously possible. http://phys.org/news206291895.html Space & Earth Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:19:08 EST news206291895 Work by a team of University of Texas at Arlington astronomers could significantly broaden astrophysicists' search for planets in other solar systems by changing the way they think about the orbiting bodies. http://phys.org/news204970625.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:17:33 EST news204970625