Milky Way Could Lose Two Arms
	Since the days of radio observations, astronomers believed that the Milky Way galaxy, in which our solar system is located, has four spiral arms wrapped around the central galactic nucleus. But radio observations are only able to detect concentrations of gas in the galaxy and what previously appeared to be two spiral arms can’t seem to show up at all in a recent investigation carried out in the infrared spectrum with NASA's Spitzer Sp ... [read more >>]
	04 June 2008, 02:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Spitzer Pictures Omega Centauri Star Cluster
	Globular star clusters are believed to be amongst the oldest objects in the universe, some of them probably being more than 12 billion years old. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is home to about 200 globular star clusters, amongst which the Omega Centauri star cluster, the biggest and brightest of all. Although it is located about 18,300 light years away from Earth, the Omega Centauri star cluster is clearly visible with the naked eye ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2008, 03:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

'Islands of Stability', the Holy Grail of Physicists
	The heavy elements occupy an area of the periodic table where other elements cannot be, and decay in fractions of seconds – an island in the sea, as nuclear physicists like to call it. This caused scientists to believe that other such islands, 'island of stability', may exist well beyond some of the superheavy elements in the periodic table of elements. Basically, what lies beyond the atomic number 114 is unknown, however researc ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 05:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NASA Discovers the Tiniest Black Hole Ever
	The biggest black hole ever found in the universe weighs a staggering 18 billion times the mass of the Sun; however, NASA now discovered what seems to be the smallest black hole ever known. It has a mass 3.8 times that of the Sun and a diameter of about 24 kilometers. It was discovered with the help of NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite back in 2001, inside a binary system, known as XTE J1650-500, within our galaxy. Even ... [read more >>]
	02 April 2008, 03:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Compressing Stellar Cores
	Nickel 56 is one of nickel's unstable isotopes which is not occurring naturally here on Earth. However, it is formed during the supernova explosion at the end of a star's life. Physicists from the IPN Orsay and the GANIL claim they have been able to compress the nucleus of Nickel 56 for the first time, in order to study how stars behave right when they are compressed, before the supernova explosion occurs. By doing so, researcher ... [read more >>]
	01 April 2008, 10:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Universe's Precise Age: 13.73 Billion Years
	After two additional years of measurements with NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which narrowed the uncertainty by a few tens of millions of years, last week astronomers finally confirmed the precise age of the universe: 13.73 billion years, give or take 120 million years. "Everything is tightening up and giving us better and better precision all the time. It's actually significantly better than pr ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 05:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Search for Dark Matter Shifts Towards Earth
	The Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Cryogenic Dark Matter Search Experiment spokesperson, Blas Cabrera, from Stanford University, claims that their scientists are currently spearheading the search for the best candidates for dark matter. The CDMS experiment is located in a mine in Soudan, and is sensitive enough to detect the interactions between Weakly Interacting Particles and normal matter. Cabrera ... [read more >>]
	27 February 2008, 11:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Giving People Rating Stars in Real Life?
	Rating is all the latest buzz when it comes to Internet reviewing. You choose a movie or a book, or even a service based on how many stars other people that have already viewed / read / used it have awarded. It’s sort of like blending into the crowd and losing your personality when taking other people you don’t know for granted. At least that’s how I see it. Philipp Lenssen of Blogoscoped quoted Reza Behforooz, working at Goo ... [read more >>]
	19 February 2008, 13:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Sound of Quantum Drums
	Two different drums should in fact produce two different sound spectrums, which pretty much means that if one were to identify one of the two, then he/she could do it just by listening for the unique sound it gives off. It may not seem like a very important property for most of us, but the truth is that we rely on to make accurate spectroscopy measurements, in order to study the composition of distant stars just by observing the light it g ... [read more >>]
	11 February 2008, 08:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Do Stars Shine?
	The beginning of the 20th century found mankind right in the middle of a struggle to learn even more about the universe we live in. Einstein published his theory of relativity, resolving a long debate in the field of physics, while Hans Bethe from the Cornell University published for the first time an approximated model of the basic reactions that power stars. In his papers from 1939 he predicted that our Sun receives energy from ... [read more >>]
	25 January 2008, 04:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Black Holes Have 'Monsters'
	All matter in the universe is characterized by a number called entropy, which measures the disorder inside an object. Probabilistic calculations reveal that all the stars in the universe might contribute with about 1E+79 units of entropy, or 1 followed by 79 zeros, if you want. However, a recently published study shows that a single black hole may contribute with more disorder than all the stars in the universe. In 1970, Step ... [read more >>]
	19 January 2008, 04:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hubble Observes Mysterious Blue Star Clusters
	Located at about 12 million light years away in the so-called Arp's Loop, the strange stellar structures are wondering alone through intergalactic space, while most stellar clusters are usually included into galaxies or orbit in their vicinity. It seems that these particular clusters have originated from a galactic collision between three known galaxies, more than 200 million years ago, and have masses equivalent to at least ... [read more >>]
	09 January 2008, 03:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Dirty Image of the Universe
	We mostly view the universe as a regular structure filled with matter and light in every direction, while in fact it is anything but that. The universe is a cosmic mess, with galaxies randomly placed and linked together by filaments of matter some billions of light-years long. Forget about light! Only four percent of the matter in the universe is actually visible, meaning it is lit by light coming from the neighboring stars, inc ... [read more >>]
	07 January 2008, 09:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are All Cosmic Objects Spherical?
	First of all, let's leave the cosmic objects aside for a moment and let's talk a bit about gravity. The gravitational force has been the first elementary force to be fully understood by physicists, however, what physical phenomena causes it remains mostly a mystery even today. Furthermore, this inability to understand gravity seems to affect the way how we understand the structure, origins and the inevitable end of the universe. ... [read more >>]
	05 January 2008, 03:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Beautiful Supernovae Cradle Rocky Planets Formation
	Now, we mostly know what nuclear reactions take place in the cores of the stars to create heavy elements that are spread into space following the supernovae explosions, but what types of supernovae are necessary for this process has been, so far, mostly unknown, considering the fact that stars like our own are relatively stable over tens of billions of years. Heavy elements are critical for the formation of rocky planets simi ... [read more >>]
	21 December 2007, 03:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Neutron Stars Become Even Stranger
	Once believed to be a type of black holes, neutron stars usually form during the late stages of a star's life. They have masses ranging from 1.4 to 2.1 times that of the Sun and compact the matter in a volume from 20 to 40 kilometers in diameter, causing all matter that falls on their surface to disintegrate into elementary particles. It is believed that protons and electrons inside them merge to create neutron particles, thus their w ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 05:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Unbelievable: Galaxy Spins Both Ways!
	As we all know by now, our solar system is located in one of the arms of a spiral galaxy, which we call the Milky Way, that is part of a collection of galaxies known as the local group. Original studies on the Milky Way and the galaxies in its vicinity showed that spiral galaxies consist of a massive core composed of thousands of stars packed around a supermassive black hole, surrounded by a thin disk of matter stretching hundreds of thous ... [read more >>]
	13 December 2007, 02:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

James Webb's Keen Eyes Will Be Tested
	One of the instruments operating in the infrared light domain will be tested just before Christmas, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. The Mid-InfraRed Instrument equipping the James Webb Space telescope will have the role of observing the universe in the infrared spectrum, because the objects scientists are interested in are so cold that they are no able to radiate shorter wavelengths than light in the visible spectrum ... [read more >>]
	10 December 2007, 05:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Cosmic Cannibalism Is no Big Deal
	Even though our imagination picturing a binary system of stars usually involves Earth-like landscapes presenting two stars on the sky at the same time, it seems that we might not be so imaginative as previously thought as this reaction is just a bias towards something familiar, while the true picture shows universe as somehow out of the ordinary. According to astronomers, as much as half of the stars in the visible universe might be part o ... [read more >>]
	08 December 2007, 05:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Built for Life, not for Tourism
	Ever wondered why we haven't been visited by aliens yet? Common sense and scientific evidence suggest that our universe is just right for our existence, and for the existence of other possible species and civilizations. However, if this presumption were to be false, that would mean that the cosmic constants that describe the universe would need to be slightly different, and thus, we would not exist. A second property of the unive ... [read more >>]
	07 December 2007, 07:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What It Takes to Destroy a Gas Giant
	The general theory about how rocky planets like our own form is pretty well understood, as gas and dust remnant from the process of star formation collapse and stick together to form a rough rock, in the shape of a ball which collides with other such objects to form a planet. Nevertheless, the formation process of giant planets such as Jupiter is somehow puzzling. For example, most of the planets found outside our solar system are gas g ... [read more >>]
	06 December 2007, 02:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

White Dwarfs Get Kicked When They Are Born
	New images captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show how white dwarfs are kicked from the place of the original star, when they form. While observing the NGC 6397 globular star cluster, which consists of a dense accumulation of stars, Hubble has spotted a white dwarf traveling at relatively high speed. Most of the time, the stars that gather inside similar star cluster are thought to be massive and to end their lives as white dwa ... [read more >>]
	04 December 2007, 11:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Supermassive Black Holes Hide Within Quasars
	The theory regarding the formation process of a black hole is closely related to that of the life of a star. The general belief is that these strange objects represent one of the possible final stages of a star that has a mass at least ten times greater than that of the Sun. However, the most massive black holes can only be found in so-called 'quasars' or Quasi Stellar Radio Sources which, during the interaction between the matte ... [read more >>]
	30 November 2007, 03:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

UX Tau A: Youngest Solar System
	UX Tau A is now considered the youngest solar system ever discovered to date. The system is located in a region of sky about 450 light years away in the Taurus constellation that provides conditions for new star formation. By using images provided by the NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, taken during star observations, astronomers at the University of Michigan noticed gaps in the protoplanetary disks of gas spinning around these stars, ... [read more >>]
	29 November 2007, 03:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Young Galaxies Reveal How the Milky Way Evolved
	An astronomer once estimated that, if someone counted every grain of sand existing on all the beaches on Earth, it would not be enough to equal the enormous number of galaxies observed in the visible universe. But even with such a high number of galaxies visible on the sky, young galaxies that can reveal how the spiral galaxies form are extremely hard to find. For the first time, a team of astronomers observed galaxies that might have acte ... [read more >>]
	28 November 2007, 02:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Solar Systems Don't Need Stars
	New models regarding the solar system formation argue that certain solar systems might exist without a central star, or might have incredibly small, faint stars. The evidence was found while studying models of miniature versions of the solar system, results suggesting the other existing solar systems would not necessarily need to look like our own. Astronomers discovered the stars are not essential for a solar system to form, ... [read more >>]
	22 November 2007, 07:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Acidification Stops Star Formation
	By observing nearby galaxies, using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope situated in Hawaii, astronomer Floris van der Tak observed in the dust clouds outside our galaxy, the first acidic cloud. The stellar and planetary formation might be explained through acidification inhibition, but astronomers cannot know for certain until the completion of the SRON Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared space telescope, which is scheduled to launch ... [read more >>]
	22 November 2007, 06:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Strange Small Stars
	It is a well-known fact that white dwarfs are one of the possible final stages of a star's life. But recently astronomers discovered a new type of white dwarfs which seem to have pure carbon atmospheres that cannot be explained through the current models. Stars are formed through a process that involves the collapse of large quantities of gas, which eventually light up as the pressure at the core grows bigger. Being mostly composed ... [read more >>]
	22 November 2007, 03:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Will Future Space Telescopes Observe?
	Even with the help of large space telescopes, we might never find the answers to some of the most intriguing mysteries of the universe. Though mankind has a number of space telescopes in the close orbit of the Earth, scientists want even more powerful tools to make detailed observations of the universe, to build better models that would fully explain the galaxy formation process, or to understand the mysteries related to quasars and black ... [read more >>]
	21 November 2007, 09:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Novel Way to Identify Stars
	A new method of identifying a star in the sky is being designed with the help of advanced software and search engines. The project was initiated by David Hogg, an astronomer at the New York University in the effort of creating Internet database from amateur photographs to find and name stars and point the region of the sky that was photographed. People will be able to upload pictures of the sky and learn what celestial bodies ... [read more >>]
	20 November 2007, 09:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Sun Might be Smaller than Thought
	New studies reveal that the Sun might be actually smaller than previously calculated. If this is proven to be correct, then all the properties regarding the internal temperature and density could be slightly different and will need recalculating. These are critical in helping scientists make future predictions about the space weather and answer certain questions about the solar system. Just like the gas giants, the Sun has no solid surface ... [read more >>]
	19 November 2007, 10:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Brilliant Stars Reveal Diamonds
	Diamonds are often compared to stars and viceversa, sparkling with bright light. The explosion which created the whole observable universe produced matter composed of 99.9 percent hydrogen. Even today most of the matter present in the universe is still in the form of molecular hydrogen. Stars are made up of this widespread element, plus a small amount of helium and traces of other heavier elements which define the star's metalicity, w ... [read more >>]
	15 November 2007, 08:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Earths are Forming Elsewhere
	Rocky planets similar to our own could be forming in the Pleiades cluster, astronomers reported on Wednesday. HD 23514, a star within the cluster is surrounded by a number of hot dust particles that could form the building block necessary to build planets. The discovery of the dust cloud, is the first evidence that rocky planets might be forming in the cluster, and solar systems similar to our own might be as common as the stars themselves ... [read more >>]
	15 November 2007, 04:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Explode, Collapse, Repeat
	SN 2006gy is the brightest supernova ever observed. It was first discovered last year, in the constellation Perseus, about 240 million light years away, when during an explosion it displayed a luminosity one hundred times more than a typical supernova. Since there is no theoretical explanation for this event, two teams of researchers have developed two competing theories. The team led by Stan Woosley at the University of California, San ... [read more >>]
	15 November 2007, 03:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stars with High Metalicity Have Less Companions
	New studies in astrophysics bring an unexpected result. Stars with high metalicity have fewer stellar companions. The research was conducted at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales and could help in the search for stars that have Earth-like planets. The metalicity is a scientific term that describes the proportion of chemical elements of which a cosmic body is made of, other than hydrogen an ... [read more >>]
	09 November 2007, 08:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

We Found the Planets, but Are There Any Aliens?
	After 18 years of careful observation conducted on the 55 Cancri planetary system, scientists announced yesterday the confirmation of the discovery of the fifth planet, making 55 Cancri the biggest planetary system known today. 55 Cancri is a binary system composed of two components: a yellow dwarf star similar to the Sun named 55 Cancri A and a red dwarf star named 55 Cancri B separated by more than 1000 astronomical units. C ... [read more >>]
	07 November 2007, 02:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

ESA Prepares a New X-ray Telescope
	A new X-ray telescope is prepared by the European Space Agency, to further study the origins of the Universe. XEUS or X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy aims to study the fundamental laws of the Universe, the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes and the galaxies. XEUS will be 30-50 times more sensitive that the XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission), previously launched by the European Space Agency in 1999, and will be pl ... [read more >>]
	06 November 2007, 03:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Gravitational Waves – The One Thing Einstein Wasn't Sure of
	Einstein's famous quote: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe" is not exactly accurate. He wasn't sure of another thing, the existence of the gravitational waves. In fact, he repeatedly changed his mind regarding the existence of this phenomenon, although he theorized them, then denied their existence, then proclaimed it again. What are these waves and ... [read more >>]
	18 July 2007, 08:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Could This Comet Hit Earth in the Next Millennium?
	This comet is one of the few that really spawned some controversy regarding the possibility of a collision with Earth and was even classified as having "a non-zero possibility of impact." This means it could hit our planet or the Moon, sometime around 3044, or at least that is what astronomers thought about four decades ago. There are some problems with this comet, starting from the fact that its trajectory has been found to ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2007, 06:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Did You Know How Insignificant the Earth Really Is in the Universe?
	We like to think highly of ourselves, in particular but also in general. The human race did this, the human race did that, we could someday go, become, explore... But most people never really realize how insignificant the Earth really is in the grand scheme of the Universe. If we compare Earth's size with that of some of the most important celestial bodies we have discovered so far, it makes most of us think that we're nothin ... [read more >>]
	07 July 2007, 08:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Astronomers Claim to Have Seen the First Light of the Universe
	Astronomers claim to have captured images showing the very first light that appeared in the Universe. Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and a new digital technique, they took a picture of the sky and saw light originating from the first stars that appeared in the Universe, more than 13 billion light-years away. Using very deep exposures, they took pictures of clusters of bright, supermassive stars, more than 1,000 times the mas ... [read more >>]
	04 July 2007, 06:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Find Extrasolar Planets and Hidden Stars
	Finding planets orbiting stars at great distances from our solar system is not an easy job, but there seems to be many of them out there, according to recent observations. And that's a great thing, since it's actually harder than finding a needle in a hay stack. It's more like looking for a firefly flying in front of a lighthouse. Stars often have planets and maybe other, fainter, companions around them, but because these ... [read more >>]
	20 June 2007, 11:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Talking Star Teaches You How to Read The Night Sky
	If you would like to know more about those “giant balls of gas that got stuck in the black blueish sky”, as well as constellation names and positions, then it's safe to assume that this gadget might interest you. Hammacher Schlemer, the retailer of luxury goods, is selling a device that shows you how to distinguish between real stars and fireflies. You won't be hearing phrases like “Not there, that's a road ligh ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2007, 08:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New View of Cosmic Dust Clouds
	Almost all small and medium-size stars will end up as white dwarfs, after nearly all the hydrogen in their cores has been fused into helium. Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, such a star goes through a red giant phase and then expels most of its outer material (creating a planetary nebula) until only the hot (T > 100,000 K) core remains, which then settles down to become a young white dwarf which shines from residual heat. ... [read more >>]
	06 April 2007, 09:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Jump Ultimate Stars Cheats and Unlockables (Nintendo DS)
	Jump Ultimate Stars is a fighting video game developed by Ganbarion and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It is the sequel to the popular Nintendo DS title, Jump Super Stars. The game was released in Japan on November 23, 2006. It is similar to Nintendo's multi-character platform beat'em-up series, Super Smash Bros., except that it uses characters from Weekly Jump rather than Nintendo. It keeps many features from its pre ... [read more >>]
	07 March 2007, 07:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia