Just how stars and black holes in the Universe are able to form from rotating matter is one of the big questions of astrophysics. What we do know is that magnetic fields figure prominently into the picture. However, our current ...
Astronomy
Aug 15, 2013
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A team of astronomers from the University of Anitoquia, Medellin, Colombia, have discovered a graveyard of comets. The researchers, led by Anitoquia astronomer Prof. Ignacio Ferrin, describe how some of these objects, inactive ...
Space Exploration
Aug 2, 2013
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An ultradense ("hypermassive") neutron star is formed when two neutron stars in a binary system finally merge. Its short life ends with the catastrophic collapse to a black hole, possibly powering a short gamma-ray burst, ...
Astronomy
Jul 26, 2013
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Mathematicians in Scotland calculate that "self-replicating" alien probes could already have explored our solar system and may still be here but undetectable to our current technologies.
In 2011 ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered a gas cloud with several times the mass of the Earth accelerating towards the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way (eso1151. This cloud is now making its closest approach ...
Astronomy
Jul 17, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Red dwarf stars are the commonest type of stars, making up about 75% of the stars in our Galaxy. They are much smaller and much less massive than our Sun and for that reason a lot dimmer. If planets are found ...
Astronomy
Jul 2, 2013
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(Phys.org) —An international team of astronomers may have found a new way to map quasars, the energetic and luminous central regions typically found in distant galaxies. Team leader Prof. Andy Lawrence of the Royal Observatory ...
Astronomy
Jul 1, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Magnetars – the dense remains of dead stars that erupt sporadically with bursts of high-energy radiation - are some of the most extreme objects known in the Universe. A major campaign using NASA's Chandra ...
Astronomy
May 23, 2013
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(Phys.org) —A team of researchers from the U.S. and Israel has deduced that the winds that blow on Uranus and Neptune are confined to relatively thin atmospheric layers. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the ...
(Phys.org) —Bright arcs are smeared around the heart of galaxy cluster Abell S1077 in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope. The arcs are stretched images of distant galaxies distorted by the cluster's ...
Astronomy
May 15, 2013
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