A team of scientists will expend 22 million computational hours during the next year on one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, simulating an event that takes less than five seconds. This astrophysics work explores how the laws of nature unfold in natural phenomena at unimaginably extreme temperatures and pressures. The Blue Gene/P supercomputer will serve as one of their primary tools for studying exploding stars.
Geologists call into question three decades of conventional wisdom regarding some of the physical processes that helped shape the Earth as we know it today. New research provides a direct challenge to the popular "late veneer hypothesis," a theory which suggests that all of our water, as well as several so-called "iron-loving" elements, were added to the Earth late in its formation by impacts with icy comets, meteorites and other passing objects.
Astrophysicists now say the fate of stars that venture too close to massive black holes could be even more violent than previously believed. Not only are they crushed by the black hole's huge gravity, but the process can also trigger a nuclear explosion that tears the star apart from within. In addition, shock waves in the pancake star carry a brief and very high peak of temperature outwards, that could give rise to a new type of X-ray or gamma-ray bursts.
Astronomers have predicted and confirmed the existence of a new type of variable star, with the help of the 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory. Called a "pulsating carbon white dwarf," this is the first new class of variable white dwarf star discovered in more than 25 years. Because the overwhelming majority of stars in the universe--including the sun--will end their lives as white dwarfs, studying the pulsations (i.e., variations in light output) of these newly discovered examples gives astronomers a window on an important end point in the lives of most stars.
Astronomers appear to have solved a long-standing mystery about the cause of anomalies in Jupiter's gossamer rings. A faint extension of the outermost ring beyond the orbit of Jupiter's moon Thebe, and other observed deviations from an accepted model of ring formation, result from the interplay of shadow and sunlight on dust particles that make up the rings.
Artificial intelligence being used at the European Space Operations Center is giving a powerful boost to ESA's Mars Express as it searches for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.
A new life-detecting instrument is preparing for a mission to the Red Planet. The Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector instrument, developed by a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, received approximately $2 million in NASA funding to further refine the design and technology for the European Space Agency's (ESA) 2013 ExoMars Rover Mission.
Astronomers have discovered a timing mechanism that allows them to predict exactly when a superdense star will unleash incredibly powerful explosions. The explosions occur on a neutron star, which is a city-sized remnant of a giant star that exploded in a supernova. But despite the neutron star?s small size, it contains more material than our sun.
As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events. Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.
Astronomers looking at the universe's distant past found nine young, unusually compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun. These young galaxies are the equivalent of a human baby that is 20 inches long, yet weighs 180 pounds.