In The News: Department of Physics and Astronomy
Black holes are known to be highly puzzling objects with features that sound like they come directly from a sci-fi movie.
A spectacular new image released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) gives us clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter could form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant planets.
A spectacular image of a star system 5,000 light-years from Earth could explain how giant planets are born.
Re “Titan submersible implosion: another safety lesson learned through tragedy” (Editorial, June 24): Despite our ability to adapt and our incredible intelligence, humans can’t live in the extreme conditions of the deep ocean. The use of an experimental submersible that was not tested with the full rigor necessary to operate it as a commercial vessel should never have been allowed.
For the first time, an international team caught a rapidly spinning pulsar that had just finished snacking on its companion star and was ready to destroy it with strong wind and radiation.
Questions still remain after a missing Titanic submersible suffered a 'catastrophic implosion' and left five people dead.
All stories start somewhere – even the incomprehensibly vast expanse above us has a beginning. Scientists have long studied the cosmos, searching for answers to the “how’s” and “why’s” of life, and that effort continues to this day.
The report of an alien sighting at a Las Vegas home made headlines around the world. The reported sighting was triggered when a mysterious fireball was seen falling from the sky. That's when numerous calls came to 911 with one Las Vegas caller claiming an alien was in their backyard. Astrophysicist Jason Steffen says it was a meteor, not a spaceship, and it probably landed in the ocean.
To reverse signals in time, we’ve always used a digital approach. Now, a new analog method could dramatically improve wireless communications.
The claim: Radar technology wouldn’t work if the Earth was a globe. Our rating: False.
Redshift and blueshift are used by astronomers to work out how far an object is from Earth.
Some planets outside our solar system are thought to be tidally locked, with one side always facing their star, creating a world divided into hot and cold. Now, it seems this set-up may not be permanent after all, allowing the two sides to flip.