Category: Astronomy

Astronomers don’t know what dark matter is, but they do know it takes up approximately 25% of the Universe. We can’t see it, but we can measure the effect of its gravity on stars and galaxies. A powerful detector, deep underground in a mineshaft in Minnesota might be able to get to the bottom of the mystery. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II project will attempt to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (aka WIMPS). These theoretical particles don’t normally interact with matter, but the occasional rare collision might be detectable.
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Astronomers have discovered a gamma ray source in the sky that acts like a natural clock. The object is called LS 5039, and consists of a massive blue star orbiting an unknown object – possibly a black hole. The two objects orbit each other closely, completing an orbit every four days. With each orbit, the black hole flies through the blue star’s stellar wind, and accelerates particles to gamma ray levels. This is the first time a source of gamma rays has been discovered with such a regular schedule.
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This is an image of galaxy NGC 1313, taken with the FORS instrument at the ESO’s Very Large Telescope. It’s classified as a starburst galaxy, because of the dense regions of furious star formation. NGC 1313 is relatively close to the Milky Way, located only 15 million light-years away. To say it’s forming many new stars is an understatement; NGC 1313 has a rate of star formation 1000x faster than the Milky Way. Galaxies like this usually went through a recent collision with another galaxy, but astronomers can’t find the culprit anywhere near.
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NASA’s Swift satellite has found a galaxy positively popping with supernovae. NGC 1316 has had two supernovae go off in just the last 5 months, and 4 within the 26 years. This makes NGC 1316 one of the most supernova rich galaxies ever discovered. So, what’s going on here? Astronomers know that the galaxy recently merged with a spiral galaxy, which can produce massive stars that explode as supernovae. However, all four supernovae have been Type 1a, which are formed when a white dwarf consumes material from a binary partner star. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence.
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NASA’s most powerful supercomputer has helped researchers simulate the halo of dark matter that surrounds the Milky Way. This dark matter is invisible to our telescopes; however, it does interact with regular matter through its gravity. This new computer simulation shows how the dark matter clumps together into “subhalos” within the larger halo surrounding the Milky Way. This is a bit of a puzzle, since the dark matter doesn’t match the clumping of the satellite galaxies that surround us.
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Dark energy isn’t new, in fact, it’s been around for at least 9 billion years. According to new data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, this mysterious force was already working to speed up the expansion of the Universe was only a few billion years old. Hubble measured the light from 24 of the most distant supernovae ever seen, and found that the Universe is further apart than it should be if only gravity was around to slow things down.
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Astronomers have turned up 20 new star systems in our corner of the Milky Way. The discoveries were made by the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) using the parallax method. The angles to various stars were measured at different times in the year – when the Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun. The closer a star is, the more its position will shift in the sky. This new batch of stars included the 23rd and 24th closest stars to the Earth.
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Most scientists believe that the Moon hasn’t seen any volcanic activity in billions of years, but there could be new evidence that volcanic gasses are continuing to vent out onto the lunar surface. A new story published in the journal Nature explains how researchers found a region on the Moon that looks freshly deposited, with very few impact craters. Another view, which actually reveals the surface minerals, shows that the region hasn’t been weathered nearly as much as the surrounding environment.
Continue reading “Maybe the Moon Isn’t Quite Dead Yet”