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Cosmic Simulation Chamber Helps Recreate Formation of Planet-Forming Interstellar Dust

A team of scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., has successfully reproduced, right here on Earth, the processes that occur in the atmosphere of a red giant star and lead to the formation of planet-forming interstellar dust.

8 May 2014

Realistic Virtual Universe Created Using Illustris Computer Simulation

Move over, Matrix - astronomers have done you one better. They have created the first realistic virtual universe using a computer simulation called "Illustris." Illustris can recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube 350 million light-years on a side with unprecedented resolution.

8 May 2014

Oldest Stars on Outskirts of Clusters

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes, astronomers have made an important advance in the understanding of how clusters of stars come into being.

8 May 2014

US DOE Awards Early Career Research Program Funding to UO Particle Physicist

Stephanie A. Majewski, an experimental particle physicist at the University of Oregon, is among 35 U.S. scientists chosen to receive funding under the U.S. Department of Energy's Early Career Research Program.

8 May 2014

Researchers Probe Nature of Boundary Phase Transitions in Quantum Systems

"What a curious feeling," says Alice in Lewis Carroll's tale, as she shrinks to a fraction of her size, and everything around her suddenly looks totally unfamiliar. Scientists too have to get used to these curious feelings when they examine matter on tiny scales and at low temperatures: all the behaviour we are used to seeing around us is turned on its head.

8 May 2014

Planck Provides Detailed Picture of Galaxy’s Magnetic Fingerprint

The team—which includes researchers from the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto—created the map using data from the Planck Space Telescope. Since 2009, Planck has charted the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the light from the Universe a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

7 May 2014

New Light on Geometry of Magnetic Field in Neutron Stars

Neutron stars, the extraordinarily dense stellar bodies created when massive stars collapse, are known to host the strongest magnetic fields in the universe -- as much as a billion times more powerful than any man-made electromagnet. But some neutron stars are much more strongly magnetized than others, and this disparity has long puzzled astrophysicists.

7 May 2014

Scientists Discover Closest ‘Hypervelocity Star’

A University of Utah-led team discovered a "hypervelocity star" that is the closest, second-brightest and among the largest of 20 found so far. Speeding at more than 1 million mph, the star may provide clues about the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way and the halo of mysterious "dark matter" surrounding the galaxy, astronomers say.

7 May 2014

EPFL LASTRO Scientists Win ‘GRavitational LEnsing Accuracy Testing’ Image Processing Challenge

Scientists from the EPFL Laboratory of Astrophysics (LASTRO) win the GREAT3 image processing competition

7 May 2014

Advances in Controlling Appearance of Superconducting Phase in Materials

For the first time, scientists have a clearer understanding of how to control the appearance of a superconducting phase in a material, adding crucial fundamental knowledge and perhaps setting the stage for advances in the field of superconductivity.

6 May 2014