Nearby pulsar’s gamma-ray ‘halo’ linked to antimatter puzzle
30.12.2019
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a faint but sprawling glow of high-energy light around a nearby pulsar. If visible to the human eye, this gamma-ray “halo” would appear about 40 times bigger in the sky than a full Moon. This structure may provide the solution to a long-standing mystery about the amount of …
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ESO found out black holes’ breakfast at the Cosmic Dawn
29.12.2019
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have observed reservoirs of cool gas around some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These gas halos are the perfect food for supermassive black holes at the centre of these galaxies, which are now seen as they were over 12.5 billion years ago. This food storage might explain …
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ALMA spots most distant dusty galaxy hidden in plain sight
12.12.2019
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have spotted the light of a massive galaxy seen only 970 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy, called MAMBO-9, is the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy that has ever been observed without the help of a gravitational lens. “Observations with new and more capable technology …
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Scientists inch closer than ever to signal from cosmic dawn
05.12.2019
In a paper on the preprint site ArXiv and soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers present the first analysis of data from a new configuration of the MWA designed specifically to look for the signal of neutral hydrogen, the gas that dominated the universe during the cosmic dark age. The analysis sets a …
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Cracking 60-year-old mystery of Sun’s magnetic waves
05.12.2019
A Queen’s University Belfast scientist has led an international team to the ground-breaking discovery of why the Sun’s magnetic waves strengthen and grow as they emerge from its surface, which could help to solve the mystery of how the corona of the Sun maintains its multi-million degree temperatures. Dr David Jess from the School of …
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Highest-energy light from a gamma-ray burst ever
21.11.2019
It has been decades since the discovery of the first gamma-ray burst, yet some of their fundamental traits remain unclear. An international team of researchers, including two astrophysicists from the George Washington University, Chryssa Kouveliotou and Alexander van der Horst, now has taken the next step in understanding the physical processes at work during these …
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Massive, Spinning Black Holes Could Be the Result of ‘Pac-Man-Like’ Mergers
14.11.2019
Scientists have reported detecting gravitational waves from 10 black hole mergers to date, but they are still trying to explain the origins of those mergers. The largest merger detected so far seems to have defied previous models because it has a higher spin and mass than the range thought possible. In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters published on November 1, …
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2019 Nobel Prize in Physics
31.10.2019
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2019 “for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos” with one half to James Peebles, Princeton University, USA “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and the other half jointly to Michel …
Strontium in the Kilonova Wreckage
31.10.2019
Strontium was spotted in the aftermath of a collision between two neutron stars. This is the first time a heavy element has ever been identified in a kilonova, the explosive aftermath of these types of collision. The kilonova, AT2017gfo, emerging from the gravitational-wave–discovered neutron star merger, GW170817 was the first kilonova where detailed spectra were …
The new grant for TAIGA
24.10.2019
The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation allocated a grant in the amount of 87.5 million rubles (for two years 2019-2020) for the construction of the largest TAIGA gamma observatory (Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic ray physics and Gamma-ray Astronomy). TAIGA is designed for the study of gamma rays and charged …