news 2013

UAlberta astrophysicist's 3-D rendering helps international researchers get unprecedented look at gases escaping from nearby galaxy. UAlberta astrophysicist Erik Rosolowsky created this 3-D rendering of carbon monoxide in the starburst galaxy NGC 253. A University of Alberta astrophysicist's 3-D computer animation is helping an international research team get an unprecedented look at star-forming gases escaping from a nearby galaxy.

A team of astronomers including two researchers from UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory has made the first ever measurement of the magnetic field at a specific spot on the surface of a magnetar. Magnetars are a type of neutron star, the dense and compact core of a giant star which has blasted away its outer layers in a supernova explosion.

14 August 2013 Scientists using ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope have discovered that a curious dead star has been hiding one of the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe all along, despite earlier suggestions of an unusually low magnetic field. The object, known as SGR 0418+5729 (or SGR 0418 for short), is a magnetar, a particular kind of neutron star.

For more than a century scientists have known that Earth's ice ages are caused by the wobbling of the planet's orbit, which changes its orientation to the sun and affects the amount of sunlight reaching higher latitudes, particularly the polar regions. The Northern Hemisphere's last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago, and most evidence has indicated that the ice age in the Southern Hemisphere ended about 2,000 years later, suggesting that the south was responding to warming in the north.

Enceladus, a peculiarly small, geologically active moon of Saturn, emits an impressive plume of water vapor and ice from its southern pole, a bit like Yellowstone's Old Faithful. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, circling Saturn since 2004, has the pictures to prove it. Using Cassini data, Cornell astronomers have determined that the amount of this material erupting from Enceladus depends on tidal forces from Saturn - the same phenomenon that creates tides on Earth.

It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable "runaway greenhouse” stage, according to new research by astronomers at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria published July 28 Geoscience. In the runaway greenhouse stage, a planet absorbs more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium.

Albert Einstein's assertion that there's an ultimate speed limit - the speed of light - has withstood countless tests over the past 100 years, but that didn't stop University of California, Berkeley, postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from checking whether some particles break this law.

Don't miss the chance to quiz leading scientists from the Planck research team about their work, and how it may change our understanding of the universe, in a live webcast this week Even the most die-hard inflation advocate would have to accept that the universe, on large scales, looks odd George Efstathiou Live video stream starts here at 20:00 BST on 31 July.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue. Capturing black hole spin could further understanding of galaxy growth Astronomers have found a new way of measuring the spin in supermassive black holes, which could lead to better understanding about how they drive the growth of galaxies.

One of the toughest spots to work outside, between 3 modules with no space to manoeuvre Luca Parmitano and Chris Cassidy took these photographs of each other during their spacewalk. Shortly afterwards Luca reported water floating behind his head inside his helmet and NASA Mission Control decided to end the spacewalk early.

ANN ARBOR-New findings from NASA's Curiosity rover provide clues to how Mars lost its original atmosphere, which scientists believe was much thicker than the one left today. "The beauty of these measurements lies in the fact that these are the first really high-precision measurements of the composition of Mars' atmosphere," said Sushil Atreya, professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered evidence for an ancient delta on Mars where a river might once have emptied into a vast ocean. This ocean, if it existed, could have covered much of Mars's northern hemisphere-stretching over as much as a third of the planet.

British archaeology experts have discovered what they believe to be the world's oldest 'calendar', created by hunter-gatherer societies and dating back to around 8,000 BC. The Mesolithic monument was originally excavated in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, by the National Trust for Scotland in 2004. Now analysis by a team led by the University of Birmingham, published today (July 15, 2013) in the journal Internet Archaeology, sheds remarkable new light on the luni-solar device, which pre-dates the first formal time-measuring devices known to Man, found in the Near East, by nearly 5,000 years.

The length of the satellite record for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is currently too short to tell if the recently reported speed-up of ice loss will be sustained in the future or if it results from natural processes, according to a new study led by Dr Bert Wouters from the University of Bristol.

Cambridge, MA - The Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, has posed an enduring mystery. Why is it so hot? The Sun's visible surface is only 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but as you move outward the temperature shoots up to millions of degrees. It's like a campfire that feels hotter the farther away you stand.

2 July 2013 ESA's CryoSat satellite has found a vast crater in Antarctica's icy surface. Scientists believe the crater was left behind when a lake lying under about 3 km of ice suddenly drained. Far below the thick ice sheet that covers Antarctica, there are lakes of fresh water without a direct connection to the ocean.

A team of astronomers from the UK, Germany and Spain have observed the remnant of a stellar collision and discovered that its brightness varies in a way not seen before on this rare type of star. By analysing the patterns in these brightness variations, astronomers will learn what really happens when stars collide.

Cambridge, MA - All stars begin their lives in groups. Most stars, including our Sun, are born in small, benign groups that quickly fall apart. Others form in huge, dense swarms that survive for billions of years as stellar clusters. Within such rich and dense clusters, stars jostle for room with thousands of neighbors while strong radiation and harsh stellar winds scour interstellar space, stripping planet-forming materials from nearby stars.

An international team of astronomers has found that a nearby star previously thought to host two or three planets is in fact orbited by six or seven worlds, including an unprecedented three to five "super-Earths” in its habitable zone, where conditions could be right for life. This is the first time that so many super-Earths - planets more massive than Earth but less than 10 times more massive - have been detected in the same system.

Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in in the Earth's upper atmosphere in 1958, space scientists have believed that these belts consisted of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles — an inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions, and an outer ring of high-energy electrons.