“How worlds are born: JWST reveals exotic chemistry of planetary nurseries”

 

protoplanetary disc

 

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is aweing scientists and the public alike with its spectacular images of distant galaxies and its discoveries of dozens of new black holes. Yet JWST is also rewriting scientists’ understanding of objects on a slightly smaller, more relatable scale: how planets form from swirls of gas and dust around young stars. Such ‘protoplanetary’ disks are what the environs of the Sun would have been like 4.6 billion years ago, with planets coalescing from the whirling material around an infant star

Read the entire article here.

 



“‘Ghost’ particles from the sun could lead us straight to an invisible trove of dark matter”

 

Sun

 

Elusive dark matter particles may lurk deep within the heart of the sun, and researchers have discovered that we can use a detector buried in the Antarctic ice sheet to find them.

Dark matter is the inescapable conclusion from decades of cosmological observations. Everything from the rotation speed of stars within galaxies to the growth of the largest structures in the universe points to the existence of some kind of particle, currently unknown to physics, that rarely interacts with light or with normal matter, despite exerting a powerful gravitational influence all across the universe.

Read the entire article here.

 



“The Milky Way Is Warped, And a Giant Blob of Dark Matter Could Be Why”

 

Milky Way

 

A huge invisible mass could be the reason the Milky Way’s disk is warped and twisted.

A new study shows that a tilted, misaligned dark halo – the large blob of dark matter that wraps around and permeates our home galaxy – is the only explanation to date that explains all the features of the shape of the Milky Way.

Click here to read the complete article.

 



“New Calculations Show Most of The Universe Is Made of Dark Energy”

 

superbubble

 

A new measurement of the Universe has confirmed dark energy makes up close to 69 percent of the sum of everything.

That leaves the remaining 31 percent to matter; both of the normal variety – that’s the particles and forces making up everything we can see – and dark matter, the mysterious gravitational poltergeist responsible for movements and effects that can’t currently be explained any other way.

Read the entire article here.

 



“JWST Just Measured The Expansion Rate of The Universe. Astronomers Are Stumped”

 

Galaxy NGC-5584

 

The James Webb Space Telescope has measured the expansion rate of the Universe, and the results are not great news for the biggest crisis in cosmology.

The finding is in agreement with measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope. This means that there’s no error in the Hubble data, and we’re still at an impasse.

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“Rare polar ring galaxy is ‘one of the most spectacular’ astronomers have ever seen”

 

Ringed Galaxy

 

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes, from giant, slowly rotating ovals and fast-whirling spiral disks to faint ball-shaped blobs and dwarf irregulars. Most large, bright galaxies — including our own Milky Way — are orbited by a gang of much smaller dwarf galaxies.

Most of this we know from optical images, whether taken with small backyard telescopes or much bigger dedicated ground- and space-based telescopes that reveal the light from billions of distant suns. However, as we are discovering, what happens beyond the bright disk of stars may be even more interesting.

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“Did Webb find signs of life on exoplanet K2-18 b?”

 

artist concept of exoplanet K2-18b

 

Did the James Webb Space Telescope spot signs of life on a distant planet? On September 11, 2023, NASA announced that Webb made some exciting discoveries while observing an exoplanet called K2-18 b. They said the planet has methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, which indicates it might be a Hycean world, one with a deep hydrogen atmosphere and global water ocean. But the extraordinary news is that Webb found hints of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, only life produces dimethyl sulfide, such as bacteria and phytoplankton in oceans.

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“Scientists Trapped Light Inside a Metamaterial and Made It 10x More Magnetic”

 

trapped light

 

 

  • Finding new ways to control light and magnetism will enable new technologies that we never thought possible.
  • Scientists from the City College of New York (CCNY) developed a way to effectively trap light inside a metamaterial, and in turn make the light 10 times more magnetic.
  • This breakthrough could lead to the creation of technologies like magnetic lasers that can leverage strong magneto-optical interactions.

Read the full article here.

 



“Hubble Captures a Galactic Dance”

 

interacting galazies

 

This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of peculiar galaxies, and this group’s particular peculiarity might be odder than first meets the eye, as there are three galaxies interacting here, not just two.

The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N and is visible if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733.

Click here to read the full article.

 



“James Webb telescope: Baby star launches giant jets and shocks | BBC”

 

BABY STAR

 

Imagine you could go back in time 4.6 billion years and take a picture of our Sun just as it was being born. What would it look like?

Well, you can get a clue from this glorious new image acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Towards the centre of this object, called HH212, is a star coming into existence that is probably no more than 50,000 years old.

The scene would have looked much the same when our Sun was a similar age.

Click here to read the full article.

Link contributed by Gene Savoy, Jr.