News by Subject Space & Planetary

Astronomers obtained the first resolved image of disturbed gaseous clouds in a galaxy 11 billion light-years away by using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The team found that the disruption is caused by young powerful jets ejected from a supermassive black hole residing at the center of the host galaxy. This result will cast light on the mystery of the evolutionary process of galaxies in the early Universe.

Cornell University astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet's evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth's own geologic epochs. The models will be spectral templates for astronomers to use in the approaching new era of powerful telescopes, and in the hunt for Earth-like planets in distant solar systems.

A holographic cosmological model with a power-law term has been proposed by a Kanazawa University researcher to study thermodynamic properties on the horizon of the Universe. This model was found to satisfy the second law of thermodynamics. In addition, a relaxation-like process of the Universe was examined systematically to study maximization of the entropy on the horizon.

An unidentified X-ray signature recently observed in nearby galaxies and galaxy clusters is not due to decay of dark matter, researchers report.

Eighty-five percent of the universe is composed of dark matter, but we don't know what, exactly, it is.

Almost 35 years ago, scientists made the then-radical proposal that colossal hydrogen bombs called novae go through a very long-term life cycle after erupting, fading to obscurity for hundreds of thousands of years and then building up to become full-fledged novae once more. A new study confirms that the novae we observe flashing throughout the universe represent just a few percent of these cataclysmic variables, as they are known, with the rest "hiding" in hibernation.

Model developed by Brazilian researchers shows chaotic phase that placed objects in current orbits beginning within first 100 million years after formation of giant planets.