Physics & Astronomy News

On August 21, 2017, all of North America was treated to an eclipse of the sun. Viewers around the world can now see a wealth of images captured before, during, and after the eclipse by 11 spacecraft, at least three NASA aircraft, more than 50 high-altitude balloons, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station – each offering a unique vantage point for the celestial event.

Click here to view the 2017 solar eclipse photos

<p>How Gravity Can Bend Starlight</p>

<p>This illustration reveals how the gravity of a white dwarf star warps space and bends the light of a distant star behind it.</p>

<p>White dwarfs are the burned-out remnants of normal stars. The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of the dead star, called Stein 2051 B, as it passed in front of a background star. During the close alignment, Stein 2051 B deflected the starlight, which appeared offset by about 2 milliarcseconds from its actual position. This deviation is so small that it is equivalent to observing an ant crawl across the surface of a quarter from 1,500 miles away. From this measurement, astronomers calculated that the white dwarf's mass is roughly 68 percent of the sun's mass.</p>

<p>Stein 2051 B resides 17 light-years from Earth. The background star is about 5,000 light-years away. The white dwarf is named for its discoverer, Dutch Roman Catholic priest and astronomer Johan Stein.</p>

Observation confirms Einsteins general theory of relativity.
Astronomers have used NASA Hubble Space Telescope to repeat a century-old test of Einsteins general theory of relativity

<p>This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals an unusual sight: a runaway quasar fleeing from its galaxy's central hub. A quasar is the visible, energetic signature of a black hole. Black holes cannot be observed directly, but they are the energy source at the heart of quasars — intense, compact gushers of radiation that can outshine an entire galaxy.</p>

<p>The green dotted line marks the visible periphery of the galaxy. The quasar, named 3C 186, appears as a bright star just off-center. The quasar and its host galaxy reside 8 billion light-years from Earth. Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovas exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole. The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the center of the host galaxy.</p>

<p>The Hubble image combines visible and near-infrared light taken by the Wide Field Camera 3.</p>

<p>Courtesy: NASA</p>

Gravitational Wave Kicks Monster Black Hole Out of Galactic Core
Astronomers have uncovered a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the center of a distant galaxy by what could be the awesome power of gravitational waves.

<p>Composite ALMA and optical image of a young Milky Way-like galaxy 12 billion light-years away and a background quasar 12.5 billion light-years away. Light from the quasar passed through the galaxy's gas on its way to Earth, revealing the presence of the galaxy to astronomers. New ALMA observations of the galaxy's ionized carbon (green) and dust continuum (blue) emission show that the dusty, star-forming disk of the galaxy is vastly offset from the gas detected by quasar absorption at optical wavelengths (red). This indicates that a massive halo of gas surrounds the galaxy. The optical data are from the Keck I Telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Neeleman & J. Xavier Prochaska; Keck Observatory</p>

Milky Way-like Galaxies in Early Universe Embedded in 'Super Halos'
By harnessing the extreme sensitivity of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have directly observed a pair of Milky Way-like galaxies seen when the universe was only eight percent of its current age.

<p>NEOS Detector</p>

<p>Courtesy: ibs</p>

Finding the 'Ghost Particles' Might be More Challenging
Results from the NEOS experiment on sterile neutrinos differ partly from the theoretical expectations.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Reveals Details Of A Dramatic Past
ESA’s Swarm satellites are seeing fine details in one of the most difficult layers of Earth’s magnetic field to unpick – as well as our planet’s magnetic history imprinted on Earth’s crust.

Scientists Evade The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
The study, published in Nature, reports a technique to bypass the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Using Light to Control Curvature of Plastics
Researchers have developed a technique that uses light to get two-dimensional (2-D) plastic sheets to curve into three-dimensional (3-D) structures, such as spheres, tubes or bowls.

Science Facts

What Powered the Big Bang?

by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and ScienceIQ.com

: Image Courtesy Beyond Einstein

During the last decade, sky maps of the radiation relic of the Big Bang---first by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite and more recently by other experiments, including Antarctic balloon flights and NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)---have displayed the wrinkles imprinted on the Universe in its first moments. Gravity has pulled these wrinkles into the lumpy Universe of galaxies and planets we see today. Yet still unanswered are the questions: why was the Universe so smooth before, and what made the tiny but all-important wrinkles in the first place?

Quantum fluctuations during the Big Bang are imprinted in gravitational waves, the cosmic microwave background, and in the structure of today's Universe. Studying the Big Bang means detecting those imprints. Einstein's theories led to the Big Bang model, but they are silent on these questions as well as the simplest: 'What powered the Big Bang?' Modern theoretical ideas that try to answer these questions predict that the wrinkles COBE discovered arose from two kinds of primordial particles: of the energy field that powered the Big Bang; and gravitons, fundamental particles of space and time.

Measurements by missions of the Beyond Einstein program could separate these different contributions, allowing us to piece together the story of how time, space, and energy worked together to power the Big Bang.

Neutron Stars

Ordinary matter, or the stuff we and everything around us is made of, consists largely of empty space. Even a rock is mostly empty space. This is because matter is made of atoms. An atom is a cloud of ...
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X-rays can be produced by a high-speed collision between an electron and a proton.

X-Rays - Another Form of Light

A new form of radiation was discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physicist. He called it X-radiation to denote its unknown nature. This mysterious radiation had the ability to pass through ...
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On the first day of the Mapping Phase of the Mars Global Surveyor mission, MOC was greeted with this view of

Two Face? Absolutely!

During the Viking missions to Mars in the mid 1970s, the planet was imaged from orbit by the Viking 1 and 2 Orbiters. These spacecraft returned images of regions of the planet that, while similar to g ...
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Science Quote

'If one wishes to obtain a definite answer from Nature one must attack the question from a more general and less selfish point of view.'

Max Planck
(1858-1947)