When a fire extinguisher is opened, the compressed carbon dioxide forms ice crystals around the nozzle, providing a visual example of the physics principle that gases and plasmas cool as they expand. When our sun expels plasma ...
Space Exploration
Apr 15, 2020
17
661
To date astronomers have discovered over 4,000 planets orbiting other stars. Statistically, there should be over 100 billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy. They come in a wide range of sizes and characteristics, largely ...
Astronomy
Jan 9, 2020
2
1050
A year ago, NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew closer to the sun than any satellite in history, collecting a spectacular trove of data from the very edge of the sun's million-degree corona.
Space Exploration
Dec 4, 2019
168
629
Black holes are an important part of how astrophysicists make sense of the universe—so important that scientists have been trying to build a census of all the black holes in the Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomy
Oct 31, 2019
36
8167
West Virginia University researchers have helped discover the most massive neutron star to date, a breakthrough uncovered through the Green Bank Telescope in Pocahontas County.
Astronomy
Sep 16, 2019
43
4103
Experimenting at 4.1 million degrees Fahrenheit, physicists at Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine have found that an astronomical model—used for 40 years to predict the sun's behavior as well as the life and death ...
Plasma Physics
Sep 10, 2019
1
188
The sun's solar wind affects nearly everything in the solar system. It can disrupt the function of Earth's satellites and creates the lights of the auroras.
Space Exploration
Jul 29, 2019
67
913
It's one of the greatest and longest-running mysteries surrounding, quite literally, our sun—why is its outer atmosphere hotter than its fiery surface?
Space Exploration
Jun 4, 2019
13
1286
For five months in mid 2017, Emily Mason did the same thing every day. Arriving to her office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, she sat at her desk, opened up her computer, and stared at images ...
Astronomy
Apr 5, 2019
26
925
About 99 percent of the Sun's energy emitted as neutrinos is produced through nuclear reaction sequences initiated by proton-proton (pp) fusion in which hydrogen is converted into helium, say scientists including physicist ...
General Physics
Oct 24, 2018
8
2326
