Thursday 6 July 2017

Hubble pushed beyond limits to spot clumps of new stars in distant galaxy

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By applying a new computational analysis to a galaxy magnified by a gravitational lens, astronomers have obtained images 10 times sharper than what Hubble could achieve on its own.
via Science Daily
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Hubble Pushed Beyond Limits to Spot Clumps of New Stars in Distant Galaxy


Gravitational lens helps reveal "fireworks" in the early universe

When the universe was young, stars formed at a much higher rate than they do today. By peering across billions of light-years of space, Hubble can study this early era. But at such distances, galaxies shrink to smudges that hide key details. Astronomers have teased out those details in one distant galaxy by combining Hubble’s sharp vision with the natural magnifying power of a gravitational lens. The result is an image 10 times better than what Hubble could achieve on its own, showing dense clusters of brilliant, young stars that resemble cosmic fireworks.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-27

How to make 'your own supernova'

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Researchers are using the largest, most intense lasers on the planet, to for the first time, show the general public how to recreate the effects of supernovae, in a laboratory.
via Science Daily
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Cosmic barbecue: Researchers spot 60 new 'hot Jupiter' candidates

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Sixty potential new 'hot Jupiters' -- highly irradiated worlds that glow like coals on a barbecue grill and are found orbiting only 1% of Sun-like stars -- have been discovered by researchers.
via Science Daily
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CERN Data Centre passes the 200-petabyte milestone

First discovery of an exoplanet with SPHERE/VLT

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An exoplanet has been discovered by an international team of astronomers by direct imaging using SPHERE, an instrument designed and developed by a consortium of 12 European institutes on the Very Large Telescope ESO, based in Chile. The instrument, which corrects in real time the terrestrial atmospheric turbulences and occults the light of the star, allows to take a real «photography» of the exoplanet.
via Science Daily
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LHCb announces a charming new particle

Image representing the new particle observed by LHCb, containing two charm quarks and one up quark. (Image: Daniel Dominguez/CERN)

Today at the EPS Conference on High Energy Physics in Venice, the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has reported the observation of Ξcc++(Xicc++) a new particle containing two charm quarks and one up quark. The existence of this particle from the baryon family was expected by current theories, but physicists have been looking for such baryons with two heavy quarks for many years. The mass of the newly identified particle is about 3621 MeV, which is almost four times heavier than the most familiar baryon, the proton, a property that arises from its doubly charmed quark content. It is the first time that such a particle has been unambiguously detected.

Nearly all the matter that we see around us is made of baryons, which are common particles composed of three quarks, the best-known being protons and neutrons. But there are six types of existing quarks, and theoretically many different potential combinations could form other kinds of baryons. Baryons so far observed are all made of, at most, one heavy quark.

Finding a doubly heavy-quark baryon is of great interest as it will provide a unique tool to further probe quantum chromodynamics, the theory that describes the strong interaction, one of the four fundamental forces,” said Giovanni Passaleva, new Spokesperson of the LHCb collaboration. “Such particles will thus help us improve the predictive power of our theories.”

In contrast to other baryons, in which the three quarks perform an elaborate dance around each other, a doubly heavy baryon is expected to act like a planetary system, where the two heavy quarks play the role of heavy stars orbiting one around the other, with the lighter quark orbiting around this binary system,” added Guy Wilkinson, former Spokesperson of the collaboration.

Measuring the properties of the

Ξcc++ will help to establish how a system of two heavy quarks and a light quark behaves. Important insights can be obtained by precisely measuring production and decay mechanisms, and the lifetime of this new particle.

The observation of this new baryon proved to be challenging and has been made possible owing to the high production rate of heavy quarks at the LHC and to the unique capabilities of the LHCb experiment, which can identify the decay products with excellent efficiency. The Ξcc++ baryon was identified via its decay into a Λc+ baryon and three lighter mesons K-, π+ and π+.

The observation of the Ξcc++ in LHCb raises the expectations to detect other representatives of the family of doubly-heavy baryons. They will now be searched for at the LHC.

This result is based on 13 TeV data recorded during run 2 at the Large Hadron Collider, and confirmed using 8 TeV data from run 1. The collaboration has submitted a paper reporting these findings to the journal Physical Review Letters.

Find out more:

 
 

via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/07/lhcb-announces-charming-new-particle

Atlas, Daphnis, and Pan

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Atlas, Daphnis, and Pan are small, inner, ring moons of Saturn, shown at the same scale in this montage of images from the still Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. In fact, Daphnis was discovered in Cassini images from 2005. Atlas and Pan were first sighted in images from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Flying saucer-shaped Atlas orbits near the outer edge of Saturn's bright A Ring while Daphnis orbits inside the A Ring's narrow Keeler Gap and Pan within the A Ring's larger Encke Gap. The curious equatorial ridges of the small ring moons could be built up by the accumulation of ring material over time. Even diminutive Daphnis makes waves in the ring material as it glides along the edge of the Keeler Gap.

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Preparing for Mercury: BepiColombo stack completes testing

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ESA’s Mercury spacecraft has passed its final test in launch configuration, the last time it will be stacked like this before being reassembled at the launch site next year.


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/BepiColombo/Preparing_for_Mercury_BepiColombo_stack_completes_testing

First look at gravitational dance that drives stellar formation

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Swirling motions in clouds of cold, dense gas have given, for the first time, an active insight into how gravity creates the compact cores from which stars form in the interstellar medium.
via Science Daily
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Re-making planets after star-death

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Astronomers may have found an answer to the 25-year-old mystery of how planets form in the aftermath of a supernova explosion.
via Science Daily
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2-D layered devices can self-assemble with precision

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Squid-inspired proteins can act as programmable assemblers of 2-D materials, like graphene oxide, to form hybrid materials with minute spacing between layers suitable for high-efficiency devices including flexible electronics, energy storage systems and mechanical actuators, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers.
via Science Daily

Calm lakes on Titan could mean smooth landing for future space probes

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The lakes of liquid methane on Saturn's moon, Titan, are perfect for paddling but not for surfing. New research has found that most waves on Titan's lakes reach only about 1 centimeter high.
via Science Daily
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