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Thorough astronomical observations have revealed that the long-held belief that states that spiral galaxies form over time, through various shape modifications, is probably wrong. Experts now believe that the galaxies formed from structures that developed a short time after the hypothetical Big Bang explosion that cr... |
9 February 2010
02:34 GMT |
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The most widely accepted astronomical theory on the origins of the Universe at this point says that everything exploded into being following an initial collision of elementary particles. This event, known as the Big Bang, was massive, and released a lot of energy and light. Some of the photons that were emitted durin... |
3 February 2010
04:55 GMT |
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One of the most potent sources of astronomical knowledge at this point are supercomputer simulations. Powerful processors take into account data that experts input, and then show all possible outcomes in a certain system. However, though significant progress has been made in this field, one large problem endured, and... |
30 January 2010
04:42 GMT |
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Like every aspect of our civilization, the Sun, galaxies, and the Universe in general work on fuel. In the case of stars, this is represented by hydrogen and helium fuels. When a car, or a star, runs out of whatever is powering it, it stops, or turns into a black hole. A new series of calculations has revealed that t... |
27 January 2010
03:28 GMT |
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Dark energy is a hypothesized force in the Universe that is believed to be largely responsible for the ever-accelerating speed at which the Cosmos expands. This was inferred from the fact that galaxies appeared to be moving away from each other, which is consistent with a scenario in which the entire cosmic bubble is... |
26 January 2010
10:51 GMT |
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One of the most difficult-to-achieve goals in astrophysics today is establishing the approximate weight of the universe. This can be done by combining two sets of data, one that estimates the mass of all visible matter in the Universe, and another that attempts to put some values on the mass of dark matter that lurks... |
26 January 2010
10:02 GMT |
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One of the most used methods of analyzing the distribution of dark matter throughout the Universe is called weak gravitational lensing (WGL). At this point, our technology has not yet evolved to a point where we can observe the elusive stuff directly, so we must rely on indirect observations to assess some of its mos... |
20 January 2010
05:10 GMT |
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Scientists have been trying for a very long time to come to terms with some of the most basic properties of the Universe. In spite of the term “basic,” they are actually fairly difficult to discover, and so a group of experts is currently proposing a new way of approaching this issue. According to Raphael... |
18 January 2010
11:20 GMT |
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The recently launched WISE telescope began its survey mission yesterday, once experts concluded that all of its systems were up and operational according to specifications. The new instrument reached orbit on December 14, and mission controllers have been dealing with testing and calibrating it ever since. Its lens c... |
15 January 2010
16:01 GMT |
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The Herschel Space Observatory is the largest instrument of its kind ever launched in the Earth's orbit. Designed to provide astronomers and astrophysicists with deep insight into the origins of the Universe, and also into some of the most concealed and cold objects in the skies, the telescope was launched toget... |
15 January 2010
14:01 GMT |
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For many years, astronomers have been trying to explain how it is that dwarf galaxies, the small companions around more massive systems, tend to have less mass and less stars at their cores. Traditionally, it's the other way around, with massive galaxies such as the Milky Way featuring a core that is both more m... |
14 January 2010
03:08 GMT |
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Searching for life, preferably intelligent one, is one of the main goals in astronomy today. While most people know that chances are relatively slim for a third-degree encounter to actually take place, we don't lose hope because we believe finding life is a game of chance – the more exoplanets we find, the... |
13 January 2010
05:56 GMT |
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Scientists analyzing the night sky and looking at galaxies have attempted over the years to explain why galaxies form in various shapes and sizes, but have been unable to do so despite their best attempts. However, it would appear that, recently, a team has managed a breakthrough, when experts at the Embry-Riddle Uni... |
12 January 2010
02:43 GMT |
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The famous Hubble Space Telescope, with its newly installed, advanced scientific components, is now able to look extremely far back into the history of the early Universe, at a time when everything around us was just a fraction of its current age. Such a deep look was taken recently, when the telescope peeked at a ti... |
6 January 2010
03:06 GMT |
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Astronomers propose a new theory related to the core of very large stars. They say that, when the inner parts of such a celestial body become too hot, they start forming matter-antimatter pairs. Naturally, when this happens, the basic laws of physics dictate that a violent annihilation between the two occurs, and thi... |
5 January 2010
16:01 GMT |
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The Herschel Space Telescope, a 2.2-billion-euro project launched by the European Space Agency last May, recently managed to snap a photo of the early Universe. Using an instrument that was in part developed by experts at the University of Colorado in Boulder (UCB), the observatory looked back in time to an age when ... |
4 January 2010
07:01 GMT |
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Lately, it seems that the word “avatar” must be present in every conversation since probably everyone is hardly waiting for the new James Cameron movie. Still, not so many people know about the Onverse team effort to develop an “Online Universe” where you can create an avatar, find it a home a... |
2 January 2010
13:31 GMT |
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Until recently, the widely held view on galactic formation and development was that these space structures tended to form from primordial building blocks. Experts thought that, in the billions of years that passed since the Universe first appeared, these blocs evolved on their own, and that making them out was imposs... |
30 December 2009
07:05 GMT |
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Ever since Hubble got its new set of eyes, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), astronomers have been treated to a wealth of new scientific data of the Deep Field, a portion of the night skies just 1/12th of the surface of the Moon. The new observation instrument is very effective at its job, mostly because of its massive... |
28 December 2009
01:50 GMT |
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Experts have recently come to believe that some of the earliest stars in the Universe, which formed more than 13 billion years ago, may have been fueled by dark matter originally. This type of matter was hypothesized more than a decade ago, but thus far scientists have been unable to detect it directly. But some beli... |
21 December 2009
11:14 GMT |
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After a number of delays prompted by bad weather and a minor glitch, the WISE infrared space telescope was finally launched earlier today. The new mission took off at 6:09:33 am PST (1409:33 GMT), aboard a Delta II delivery vehicle, from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Exp... |
14 December 2009
09:52 GMT |
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Ever since scientists first attempted to combine quantum mechanics with the theory of general relativity, there were those among them who argued that space and time (spacetime) was quantized at the Planck scale. As far back as the 1960s, expert John Wheeler devised a new word to explain the quantization of the struct... |
9 December 2009
18:01 GMT |
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British scientists managing the XMM-Newton space telescope are getting ready to celebrate the observatory's tenth birthday tomorrow. The European Space Agency (ESA) will organize a special event in Madrid, Spain, in order to celebrate the event. Over the course of its mission, the small bus-sized instrument has ... |
9 December 2009
04:16 GMT |
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Benefiting from its newly revamped scientific instruments, the Hubble Space Telescope has recently taken one of the most amazing pictures ever. Using infrared wavelengths, the observatory was able to imagine galaxies so far away from the Earth, that they must have formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang expl... |
9 December 2009
01:21 GMT |
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At the beginning, our Universe wasn't a very complex place, from a chemical perspective. Hydrogen and helium, the first two elements in the periodic table, reigned supreme, as they still do today, inside stars and massive gas clouds across the Cosmos. Later on, heavier elements developed, like metals and non-met... |
3 December 2009
18:01 GMT |
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Astronomers managing the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) have recently announced that the new camera aboard the observatory, called CanariCam, has recently seen its first light. The term is used in astronomy to indicate the first observations conducted with a new instrument, similar to a ship's maiden voyage. The... |
3 December 2009
16:01 GMT |
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According to officials at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the space agency's new Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite has just been fitted inside its nose fairing. The device will protect the sensitive, infrared-wavelength telescope as it makes its way to the Earth's orbit. The sch... |
2 December 2009
02:44 GMT |
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Researchers at the McMaster University have recently revealed that the new data sets sent back by the Herschel Space Observatory (HSO) are providing them with new windows into the appearance, development and demise of galaxies. The telescope has been especially constructed to analyze regions of the electromagnetic sp... |
1 December 2009
11:02 GMT |
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Scientists in the Asian nation are excited about the fire-up of their latest synchotron, a particle accelerator featuring a 30-GeV Main Ring. The J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex) is managed by a multi-national T2K neutrino collaboration, and has over the weekend made its first neutrino observations.... |
28 November 2009
05:46 GMT |
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The volcanic dome of Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, has been recognized for many years as one of the most suited locations for building ground-based telescopes. Its unique vantage point allows telescopes built here to make out details of the Universe that can only be seen from only a handful of other places around the world. ... |
17 November 2009
18:41 GMT |
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Next to the International Space Station (ISS), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is arguably the most complex and amazing human scientific project ever constructed. Its main goal is to recreate the conditions that existed just a few fractions of a second after the beginning of the Universe, immediately after the event ... |
15 November 2009
05:30 GMT |
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According to scientists at the Durham University, the galaxies in the early Universe were highly active when it came to forming new stars, and generated about 50 of the new suns every year. The experts determined that previous estimates about the setup inside these galaxies were a bit off, in that their ability to fo... |
11 November 2009
01:13 GMT |
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According to the standard cosmological model, the Big Bang – the event that created our Universe – took place about 13.7 billion years ago. After that, the Cosmos began expanding and producing all types of structures, which would eventually differentiate in things we know today, such as galaxy, clusters a... |
7 November 2009
04:12 GMT |
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The standard cosmological model holds that there is a type of matter known as dark matter permeating the Universe, which accounts for the massive discrepancies that exist between how much matter the Universe has, and the amount it should have, according to predictions. Astronomers hypothesized that dark matter should... |
6 November 2009
02:40 GMT |
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The nature of time has remained something that has fascinated humans since the dawn of time, and the first division of a day into smaller intervals. Many have wondered about how to split it as accurately as possible, whereas others have been wondering if the concept is derived from physical laws or not. Over the last... |
3 November 2009
17:01 GMT |
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The “Cosmic Web” is a concept that is often used to refer to the underlying support structure that our Universe has, which we cannot see with our eyes or scientific instruments but know it's there. This web, which is charged with keeping galaxies together, and at times channelling them into superclus... |
3 November 2009
07:01 GMT |
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A new international astronomical cooperation effort, led by experts at the Cardiff University, in the United Kingdom, has brought to light new evidence that the standard cosmological model in use today, which includes the existence of dark matter and dark energy, is in tune with reality. The proof was collected using... |
3 November 2009
03:34 GMT |
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The Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) is a collaborative effort among a number of agencies in the United States and Europe, and was originally scheduled to scout for signs of dark energy, the force believed to be behind the ever-accelerating expansion of the Universe. NASA and the US Department of Energy (DOE) fail to... |
28 October 2009
03:01 GMT |
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Over the next decade, as new-generation telescopes will be built around the world, scientists will need to keep an eye on all datasets that come out of these machines, interpret them, analyze them, and then draw conclusions based on them. But everyone agrees that this is a fantasy, something that will be impossible t... |
27 October 2009
07:20 GMT |
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Scientists at the US Department Of Energy's (DOE) Los Alamos National Laboratory have recently started running their model of the unseen Universe on the world's fastest supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner. The team that manages the simulation is part of the Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmo... |
27 October 2009
06:53 GMT |
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Astronomers handling the Chandra Space Telescope, one of NASA's four Great Observatories, have recently announced they they've discovered one of the most distant clusters of galaxies in the Universe, located at a distance of about 10.2 billion light-years away from our planet. According to the experts, the ... |
23 October 2009
02:26 GMT |
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Over recent years, a growing number of astronomers has come to believe that the Big Bang did not create just a single Universe, as in the one we inhabit, but many different ones, which only appear locally uniform. The Multiverse theory is catching wings fast, and physicists have recently taken another step for bringi... |
16 October 2009
03:20 GMT |
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Understanding the current state of the Universe has less to do with analyzing the way things are now, and more to do with finding out how things were in the early days, when the first galaxies and black holes appeared from the chaos that existed after the Big Bang. For this very purpose, experts with the Sloan Digita... |
14 October 2009
15:51 GMT |
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During the night of September 14-15, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) experienced its first light, in an event that marked the beginning of a new type of quest for dark matter. The new method relies on the now-emerging technology known as baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), which may have the ability... |
2 October 2009
05:37 GMT |
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The concept of entropy refers to a quantity used to measure chaos. Entropy has been on the rise in the Universe ever since the Big Bang, and a new scientific study, taking into account the latest astronomical data, has evidenced that massive black holes at the center of galaxies are the largest contributors to this i... |
2 October 2009
05:05 GMT |
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The Kepler Space Telescope, launched earlier this year, is, arguably, one of the best telescopes in the world today, especially when it comes to detecting small exoplanets around other stars. Its mirrors are high-tech enough to observe periodical variations in a star's brightness, which may only be caused by a p... |
2 October 2009
02:56 GMT |
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Though no clear evidence documenting the existence of dark matter was ever produced, astronomers believe it exists because, if not, they simply cannot explain phenomena in the Universe. Since the type of matter was first proposed, a number of years ago, all sorts of instruments have been mounted on telescopes, in an ... |
25 September 2009
19:01 GMT |
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It has become widely accepted among scientists that our Universe is roughly 13.7 billion years old. It's also known that the diameter of the observable Universe measures at least 93 billion light-years. However, if this is true, there is a hitch. In 13.7 billion light-years, light can only travel 13.7 billion li... |
25 September 2009
09:05 GMT |
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Scientists with alloted observation hours on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have recently announced that they've photographed the most distant galaxies ever observed with a telescope. Shuttle Atlantis' mission to the orbit-based observatory translated into a new batch of cameras and scientific equipment, ... |
17 September 2009
21:41 GMT |
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Through accurate scientific analyses of datasets collected in 2005 and 2007, experts at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration have managed to establish the most accurate limits on how gravitational waves formed and extended throughout the U... |
20 August 2009
04:04 GMT |
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