Physics & Astronomy News
Lava tubes, underground caves created by volcanic activity, could provide protected habitats large enough to house streets on Mars or even towns on the Moon.
Astronomers have observed the intriguing characteristics of an unusual type of object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
UNIST has introduced a new advanced energy harvesting system, capable of generating electricity by simply being attached to clothes, windows, and outer walls of a building.
Astronomers have used NASA Hubble Space Telescope to repeat a century-old test of Einsteins general theory of relativity
Astronomers have uncovered a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the center of a distant galaxy by what could be the awesome power of gravitational waves.
By harnessing the extreme sensitivity of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have directly observed a pair of Milky Way-like galaxies seen when the universe was only eight percent of its current age.
Results from the NEOS experiment on sterile neutrinos differ partly from the theoretical expectations.
Science Facts
Starburst, No, Not The Candy
by Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and ScienceIQ.com
A starburst galaxy is a galaxy experiencing a period of intense star forming activity. Although this activity may last for ten million years or more, that is like a month in the life of a ten billion year old galaxy. During a starburst, stars can form at tens, even hundreds of times greater rates than the star formation rate in normal galaxies. Many of these newly formed stars are very massive and very bright, so starburst galaxies are among the most luminous galaxies.The burst occurs over a region a few thousand light years in diameter. The most popular theory for the cause of a starburst is that it is triggered by a close encounter or collision with another galaxy. This collision sends shock waves rushing through the galaxy. These shock waves push on giant clouds of gas and dust, causing them to collapse and form a few hundred stars. The massive stars use up their fuel quickly and explode as supernovas, which produce more shock waves and more star formation. In this way, a chain reaction of star formation and supernovas can sweep through the central region of a galaxy, where most of the gas is located. When most of the gas is used up or blown away by the explosions, the starburst ends.
The infrared satellite IRAS discovered thousands of starburst galaxies. Many of the new stars remain surrounded by dust and gas for a million years. Their light is absorbed by the dust, which radiates away the heat as infrared radiation. The 'heat radiation' produced by hot sidewalks on a summer day is infrared radiation. Starburst galaxies are rare among nearby galaxies, but they were common many billions of years ago. The universe is expanding, so galaxies were much closer together in the past and collisions or close encounters were more frequent, causing more starbursts.
Reading The Colors of the Spectrum
Did you ever wonder how scientists can tell us so much about distant stars, for example, the surface temperature or chemical makeup of a star, light years away from Earth? Scientists can only use what ...
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Lunar Explorations
Ever since the beginning of intelligent life on Earth, the moon has been a focal point of human curiosity. Galileo’s discovery in 1610 that the moon had craters, valleys and mountains, instead of the ...
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Get the Point?
The discus and javelin first appeared in ancient game competitions in 708 B.C. Javelin events included both target throwing and distance throwing using a sling. By 1780, the javelin was adopted as an ...
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Science Quote
'There is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics. Failure to understand this fact constituted the basic philosophical error of so many investigators of the nineteenth century.'
Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)