Laboratory Astrophysics
The term "laboratory astrophysics" might sound like an oxymoron; after all, how can equipment in a small room possibly simulate cosmic effects seen in the vastness of space. But in fact, ...
'Ordinary' Black Hole Discovered 12 Million Light Years Away
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An international team of scientists has discovered an 'ordinary' black hole in the 12 million light year-distant galaxy Centaurus A. This is the first time that a normal-size black hole h...
Big Bang on Earth: Blasting a Mountaintop to Mine the Sky
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Cambridge, MA
Planet Starship: Runaway Planets Zoom at a Fraction of Light-Speed
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Cambridge, MA
Seven years ago, astronomers boggled when they found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theor...
The Earliest Stages of Planet Formation
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Small dust particles in a disk of gas around a young star, according to current models, gradually coagulate during the first million years until kilometer-sized objects are formed. These ...
Explosive Stars with Good Table Manners
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Cambridge, MA
An exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova plays a key role in our understanding of the universe. Studies of Type Ia supernovae led to the discovery of dark energy, whi...
The Origin of the Moon's Craters
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Moon's craters, together with samples of the surface returned during the Apollo program, tell the story of impacts from two different populations of small bodies. The first rocky collect...
The Origins of a Torus in a Galactic Nucleus
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Quasars are among the most energetic objects in the universe, with some of them as luminous as ten thousand Milky Way galaxies. Quasars are thought to have massive black holes at their c...
Local Views of Solar Storms
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This movie of the March 6, 2012 X5.4 solar flare was captured by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 171 Angstrom wavelength. The S...
Using Galaxies as Yardsticks
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Daniel Eisenstein is investigating the universe, using galaxies as his ruler, seeking to understand the cosmos' large-scale structure and confirm theories about the dark energy that drive...