Our galaxy might hold thousands of ticking 'time bombs'

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the Hollywood blockbuster "Speed," a bomb on a bus is rigged to blow up if the bus slows down below 50 miles per hour. The premise - slow down and you explode - makes for a great action movie plot, and ...

X-ray laser takes aim at cosmic mystery

Scientists have used powerful X-rays from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, to study and measure, in atomic detail, a key process at work in extreme plasmas like those found ...

Telescopes help solve ancient supernova mystery

(PhysOrg.com) -- A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space ...

Massive Black Hole Implicated in Stellar Destruction

(PhysOrg.com) -- New results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes suggest that a dense stellar remnant has been ripped apart by a black hole a thousand times as massive as the Sun. If confirmed, ...

A cosmic holiday ornament, Hubble-style

(Phys.org)—'Tis the season for holiday decorating and tree-trimming. Not to be left out, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. The intricate ...

Cassini sheds light on cosmic particle accelerators

(Phys.org)—During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the ...

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