News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

NASA's continued quest to explore our solar system and beyond received a boost of new information this week with three key missions proving not only that they are up and running, but that their science potential is exceptional.

Scientists have measured the differential rotation on Sun-like stars for the first time, and their findings challenge current science on how stars rotate.

A UK team of astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143. The team, led by Professor Ken Pounds of the University of Leicester, used data from the European Space Agency's X-ray observatory XMM-Newton to observe the black hole. Their results appear in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A team led by researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB, UB-IEEC) and the University of Groningen has found, through the analysis of Gaia data, substructures which were unknown so far in the Milky Way. The findings, which appeared when combining positions and speed of six million stars from our galaxy's disk, have been published in the journal Nature.

A team including researchers from Nagoya University finds evidence of collisionless energy transfer occurring in the plasma of Earth's magnetosphere.

A simulation done by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology has suggested what astronomers should look for if they search the skies for a direct collapse black hole in its early stages.

Two of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way--the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds--may have had a third companion, astronomers believe. Research published today describes how another 'luminous' galaxy was likely engulfed by the Large Magellanic Cloud some three to five billion years ago.