Aerospace

It is believed that the formation and growth of most galaxies across the history of the universe has been fueled by supermassive black holes growing together with their host galaxy as they collect matter to attain millions of solar masses. Chasing the early stages of these extreme objects is among the missions of future powerful…

The earliest known light in our universe, known as the cosmic microwave background, was emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The patterning of this relic light holds many important clues to the development and distribution of large-scale structures such as galaxies and galaxy clusters. Distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), caused by…

Detection of a supernova with an unusual chemical signature by a team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Juna Kollmeier–and including Carnegie’s Nidia Morrell, Anthony Piro, Mark Phillips, and Josh Simon–may hold the key to solving the longstanding mystery that is the source of these violent explosions. Observations taken by the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie’s Las…

An international scientific team led by a Mexican researcher discovered globular clusters rotating at the same speed as the gas in the disk of the spiral galaxy Messier 106 (also known as M106 or NGC 4258) to which they belong. Because of their disk-like arrangement and speed, these distant objects could be relics of cosmic…

For the first time, a European research team involving the University of Göttingen has discovered the remains of a nova in a galactic globular cluster. A nova is an explosion of hydrogen on the surface of a star which makes it much brighter. The remains have formed a glowing nebula. The remnant is located near…

For Christopher Mason, PhD—a genomics expert whose lab focuses on survival of the human species on Earth, in space and on other planets—an astronaut with an identical twin is a dream come true. Mason, an associate professor of Computational Genomics at Weill Cornell Medicine, had previously reached out to NASA in 2010 hoping to gain access to…

An international team of astronomers, including faculty and alumni from UNLV, has discovered a new way to spot when collisions occur in distant galaxies between two neutron stars – incredibly dense, city-sized celestial bodies that possess the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe. A bright burst of X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory…

Research published this week in Science Advances shows that it may be possible to create rocket fuel that is much cleaner and safer than the hypergolic fuels that are commonly used today. And still just as effective. The new fuels use simple chemical “triggers” to unlock the energy of one of the hottest new materials,…

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and NASA research team has developed a new kind of airplane wing that is assembled with hundreds of tiny identical pieces that enable it to change shape and control flight. Rather than piecing together separate movable surfaces like ailerons to control the roll and pitch of the plane, the…

Little is known about the inner structure of the Moon, but a major step forward was made by a University of Rhode Island scientist who conducted experiments that enabled her to determine the temperature at the boundary of the Moon’s core and mantle. She found the temperature to be between 1,300 and 1,470 degrees Celsius,…

The sun’s magnetic field is ten times stronger than previously believed, new research from Queen’s University Belfast and Aberystwyth University has revealed. The new finding was discovered by Dr. David Kuridze, Research Fellow at Aberystwyth University. Dr. Kuridze began the research when he was based at Queen’s University Belfast and completed it when he moved…

Long ago on Mars, water carved deep riverbeds into the planet’s surface—but we still don’t know what kind of weather fed them. Scientists aren’t sure, because their understanding of the Martian climate billions of years ago remains incomplete. A new study by University of Chicago scientists catalogued these rivers to conclude that significant river runoff…

A team of scientists has proposed a powerful new test for inflation, the theory that the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction of a second right after the Big Bang. Their goal is to give insight into a long-standing question: what was the universe like before the Big Bang? Although cosmic inflation…

Giant planets like Uranus and Neptune may contain much less free hydrogen than previously assumed. Researchers from the German Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) drove shock waves through two different types of plastic to reach the same temperatures and pressures present inside such planets, and observed the behavior using ultra-strong X-ray laser pulses. Unexpectedly, one of these…

A Southwest Research Institute-led team has discovered that the surface geology on asteroid Bennu is older than expected. Early observations of the near-Earth asteroid (NEA) by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission indicate a surface that is between 100 million and 1 billion years old. “We expected small, kilometer-sized NEAs to have young, frequently refreshed surfaces,” said SwRI’s…

A research team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are trying to mimic the extreme conditions on exoplanets called “hot Jupiters” in the lab. Using a high-temperature oven, the researchers were able to heat a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, similar to the temperature of molten lava. Hot…

A fast-moving star may have been ejected from the Milky Way’s stellar disk by a cluster of young stars, according to researchers from the University of Michigan who say the star did not originate from the middle of the galaxy, as previously believed by astronomers. “This discovery dramatically changes our view on the origin of…

Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too. But when the dust settles in the solar system, it’s often in rings. Several dust rings circle the Sun. The rings trace the orbits of planets, whose gravity tugs dust into place around the Sun, as it…

Astronomers have discovered a binary star system with the closest high-mass young stellar objects ever measured, providing a valuable “laboratory” to test theories on high mass binary star formation. An international team led by the University of Leeds has determined the distance between the massive young star PDS 27 and its orbiting stellar companion to…

Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that have motivated Mars exploration for decades. A new paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science…

A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a Johns Hopkins study that used a new understanding of rock fracture…