https://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. The first early humans to use fire had no inkling of what it would lead to. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-aliens-terraforming-worlds.html Astrobiology Thu, 14 Sep 2023 13:10:08 EDT news613915801 Astronomers have conducted spectroscopic observations of a star-forming region known as IRAS 12272-6240. Results of this observational campaign shed more light on the nature of this massive and complex region. The study was detailed in a paper published June 25 on arXiv.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-star-forming-region-iras-probed.html Astronomy Mon, 06 Jul 2020 09:10:05 EDT news513242164 European astronomers have recently conducted a study of a star-forming dwarf galaxy candidate located in the halo of the galaxy NGC 4634. The new research, presented in a paper published August 8 on the arXiv pre-print server, provides insights into the nature and origin of this peculiar object. https://phys.org/news/2018-08-peculiar-star-forming-dwarf-galaxy-candidate.html Astronomy Tue, 21 Aug 2018 09:10:01 EDT news454053339 Astronomers may have solved the mystery of the peculiar volatile behavior of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other observatories suggest that the black hole is no longer being fed enough fuel to make its surroundings shine brightly. https://phys.org/news/2016-11-markarian-starvation-diet-black-hole.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Nov 2016 13:53:59 EST news397922025 Lie on the beach this summer and your body will be bombarded by about sextillion photons of light per second. https://phys.org/news/2016-08-ten-trillionths-suntan-galaxy.html Astronomy Thu, 11 Aug 2016 17:00:02 EDT news390152627 Astronomers have believed since the 1960s that a galaxy dubbed UGC 1382 was a relatively boring, small elliptical galaxy. Ellipticals are the most common type of galaxy and lack the spiral structure of disks like the Milky Way we call home. Now, using a series of multi-wavelength surveys, astronomers, including Carnegie's Mark Seibert, Barry Madore and Jeff Rich, have discovered that it is really a colossal Giant Low Surface Brightness disk galaxy that rivals the champion of this elusive class—a galaxy known as Malin 1. Malin 1 is some 7 times the diameter of the Milky Way. The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2016-07-small-elliptical-galaxy-giant-disk.html Astronomy Mon, 11 Jul 2016 13:18:19 EDT news387461887 A team of Australian and Spanish astronomers have caught a greedy galaxy gobbling on its neighbours and leaving crumbs of evidence about its dietary past. https://phys.org/news/2015-05-galaxy-snacking-habits-revealed.html Astronomy Wed, 20 May 2015 19:00:02 EDT news351366175 The brilliant explosions of dead stars have been used for years to illuminate the far-flung reaches of our cosmos. The explosions, called Type Ia supernovae, allow astronomers to measure the distances to galaxies and measure the ever-increasing rate at which our universe is stretching apart. https://phys.org/news/2015-03-astronomers-supernovae-cosmic-distances.html Fri, 27 Mar 2015 07:13:20 EDT news346659189 What makes one rose bush blossom with flowers, while another remains barren? Astronomers ask a similar question of galaxies, wondering how some flourish with star formation and others barely bloom. https://phys.org/news/2014-10-slow-growing-galaxies-window-early-universe.html Astronomy Thu, 16 Oct 2014 06:43:35 EDT news332660604 In the beginning, all was hydrogen – and helium, plus a bit of lithium. Three elements in all. Today's universe, however, has nearly a hundred naturally occurring elements, with thousands of variants (isotopes), and more likely to come. https://phys.org/news/2014-09-asu-astrophysicists-probe-early-universe.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:56:15 EDT news329572566 (Phys.org) —Watching a tree grow might be more frustrating than waiting for a pot to boil, but luckily for biologists, there are tree rings. Beginning at a tree trunk's dense core and moving out to the soft bark, the passage of time is marked by concentric rings, revealing chapters of the tree's history. https://phys.org/news/2013-11-galaxy-growth-tree.html Astronomy Fri, 01 Nov 2013 08:57:49 EDT news302515056 (Phys.org) —NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time. https://phys.org/news/2013-06-nasa-decommissions-galaxy-hunter-spacecraft.html Astronomy Sat, 29 Jun 2013 19:20:01 EDT news291748874 (Phys.org) —New global maps of Mars released on the 10th anniversary of the launch of ESA's Mars Express trace the history of water and volcanic activity on the Red Planet, and identify sites of special interest for the next generation of Mars explorers. https://phys.org/news/2013-06-ten-years-mars-global-views.html Space Exploration Mon, 03 Jun 2013 11:48:43 EDT news289478892 A duo of astronomers, Dr. Youichi Ohyama (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica or ASIAA, Taiwan) and Dr. Ananda Hota (UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in the Basic Sciences or CBS, India), has discovered a Blue Supergiant star located far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Over fifty-five million years ago, it emerged in an extremely wild environment, surrounded by intensely hot plasma (a million degrees centigrade) and amidst raging cyclone winds blowing at four-million kilometers per hour. Research using the Subaru Telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) revealed unprecedented views of the star formation process in this intergalactic context and showed the promise of future investigations of a possibly new mode of star formation, unlike that within our Milky Way. https://phys.org/news/2013-04-discovery-blue-supergiant-star-born.html Astronomy Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:15:47 EDT news284883331 (Phys.org)—The spectacular barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has ranked among the biggest stellar systems for decades. Now a team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Brazil has crowned it the largest-known spiral, based on archival data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission, which has since been loaned to the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena https://phys.org/news/2013-01-galex-reveals-largest-known-spiral-galaxy.html Astronomy Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:36:02 EST news277058143 (Phys.org)—A dying star is refusing to go quietly into the night, as seen in this combined infrared and ultraviolet view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core. https://phys.org/news/2012-10-helix-nebula-bigger-death-life.html Astronomy Thu, 04 Oct 2012 08:08:23 EDT news268556892 (Phys.org) -- This computer-simulated image shows gas from a star that is ripped apart by tidal forces as it falls into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space. https://phys.org/news/2012-07-image-black-hole-caught-stellar.html Astronomy Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:56:49 EDT news261291402 (Phys.org) -- This image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, or also known as M101, combines data in the infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-rays from four of NASA's space-based telescopes. This multi-spectral view shows that both young and old stars are evenly distributed along M101's tightly-wound spiral arms. Such composite images allow astronomers to see how features in one part of the spectrum match up with those seen in other parts. It is like seeing with a regular camera, an ultraviolet camera, night-vision goggles and X-ray vision, all at the same time. https://phys.org/news/2012-05-pinwheel.html Astronomy Fri, 25 May 2012 08:20:04 EDT news257152783 (Phys.org) -- Caltech has taken over operation from NASA of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space telescope that for the last nine years has been surveying the cosmos in ultraviolet light. In this first agreement of its kind, NASA is lending the telescope to Caltech, which has led the mission and will continue operating and managing it through the support of private funders. https://phys.org/news/2012-05-nasa-ultraviolet-space-telescope-caltech.html Space Exploration Thu, 17 May 2012 07:00:01 EDT news256455596 (PhysOrg.com) -- Supernova explosions and the jets of a monstrous black hole are scattering a galaxy's star-making gas like a cosmic leaf blower, a new study finds. The findings, which relied on ultraviolet observations from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and a host of other instruments, fill an important gap in the current understanding of galactic evolution. https://phys.org/news/2012-04-cosmic-leaf-blower-galaxy-star-making.html Astronomy Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:55:14 EDT news252748501 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or Galex, was placed in standby mode today as engineers prepare to end mission operations, nearly nine years after the telescope's launch. The spacecraft is scheduled to be decommissioned -- taken out of service -- later this year. The mission extensively mapped large portions of the sky with sharp ultraviolet vision, cataloguing millions of galaxies spanning 10 billion years of cosmic time. https://phys.org/news/2012-02-nasa-galaxy-evolution-explorer-standby.html Space Exploration Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:15:37 EST news247900503 (PhysOrg.com) -- Samir Salim has a lot of space to fit into a new NASA-funded database; about 11 million galaxies of it would be a ballpark estimate based on the number of galaxies for which distances can be estimated to about 3.5 billion light years, what astronomers still refer to as the relatively "local" universe. But the Indiana University astronomer and research scientist believes the vast archives produced by NASA space telescopes and ground-based observatories hold the right information to create the largest resource ever for the study of how star formation proceeds in galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2011-11-nasa-iu-astronomer-quest-largest-ever.html Astronomy Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:30:12 EST news241085732 (PhysOrg.com) -- VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction. The edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the face-on galaxy at the bottom of the image is VV 340 South. Millions of years later these two spirals will merge -- much like the Milky Way and Andromeda will likely do billions of years from now. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) are shown here along with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue). VV 340 is located about 450 million light years from Earth. https://phys.org/news/2011-08-cosmic-exclamation.html Astronomy Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:06:47 EDT news232358792 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission reached a major milestone last week when it successfully completed its Mission Critical Design Review (CDR). https://phys.org/news/2011-07-maven-mission-major-milestone.html Space Exploration Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:29:58 EDT news230567378 (PhysOrg.com) -- A five-year survey of 200,000 galaxies, stretching back seven billion years in cosmic time, has led to one of the best independent confirmations that dark energy is driving our universe apart at accelerating speeds. https://phys.org/news/2011-05-galaxy-evolution-explorer-dark-energy.html Astronomy Fri, 20 May 2011 07:44:00 EDT news225096093 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer may be closer to knowing why some of the most massive stellar explosions ever observed occur in the tiniest of galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2011-04-ultraviolet-spotlight-plump-stars-tiny.html Astronomy Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:04:02 EDT news222681817 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. The technique should help in the hunt for planets that lie beyond our solar system, because nearby, hard-to-see stars could very well be home to the easiest-to-see alien planets. https://phys.org/news/2011-04-galaxy-evolution-explorer-satellite-ferrets.html Astronomy Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:00:04 EDT news221479849 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using a comet as a far-flung laboratory, a Planetary Science Institute researcher has shown that the ionization lifetime of carbon is much shorter than what is currently used in calculations by comet scientists. https://phys.org/news/2010-12-carbon-comets-psi.html Space Exploration Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:59:34 EST news211557547 Astronomers have found mysterious, giant loops of ultraviolet light in aged, massive galaxies, which seem to have a second lease on life. Somehow these "over-the-hill galaxies" have been infused with fresh gas to form new stars that power these truly gargantuan rings, some of which could encircle several Milky Way galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2010-08-giant-ultraviolet-resurrected-galaxies.html Astronomy Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:03:33 EDT news200757794 (PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, astronomers have gone about their business of studying the cosmos with the assumption that stars of certain sizes form in certain quantities. Like grocery stores selling melons alone, and blueberries in bags of dozens or more, the universe was thought to create stars in specific bundles. In other words, the proportion of small to big stars was thought to be fixed. For every star 20 or more times as massive as the sun, for example, there should be 500 stars with the sun's mass or less. https://phys.org/news/2009-08-galaxies-demand-stellar-recount.html Astronomy Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:12:23 EDT news169924281