Tag: astronomy

An experiment designed to mimic the dynamo at the Earth’s core is about to be turned on.

8:43 am

Mad scientists at their best! An experiment designed to mimic the dynamo at the Earth’s core is about to be turned on.

Ten years in the making, the US$2-million project is nearly ready for its inaugural run. Early next year, the sphere will begin whirling around while loaded with 13,000 kilograms of molten sodium heated to around 105 °C. Researchers hope that the churning, electrically conducting fluid will generate a self-sustaining electromagnetic field that can be poked, prodded and coaxed for clues about Earth’s dynamo, which is generated by the movement of liquid iron in the outer core. If it works, it will be the first time that an experiment that mirrors the configuration of Earth’s interior has managed to recreate such a phenomenon.

This is a really very cool experiment, as we really do not have a good understanding of how planetary magnetic fields are produced.

1 comment

Two newly discovered supermassive black holes weigh in as the heaviest known

11:48 am

Two newly discovered supermassive black holes weigh in as the heaviest known.

One of the newly discovered black holes is 9.7 billion solar masses and is located in the elliptical galaxy NGC 3842, which is the brightest galaxy in the Leo cluster of galaxies that sits 320 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Leo. The second is as large or larger and sits in the elliptical galaxy NGC 4889, which is the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster about 336 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices.

It is believed that these heavy supermassive black holes are the kind that produced quasars in the early universe.

1 comment

Voyager 1 at the edge

10:31 am

This week the American Geophysical Union (AGU) is having its annual fall meeting in San Francisco. Due to the wonders of technology, they are now making their press conferences available to reporters on line. Thus, I will be posting periodic updates after each conference. This will allow my readers to get a heads up on stories they will be seeing in the mainstream press in the next few hours.

Right now they are wrapping up a press conference from the team of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, in which they have described the spacecraft’s status.
» Read more

1 comment

The first observations of a star, just prior to going supernova

1:30 pm

Astronomers have for the first time observed the changes that took place in a binary star system in the years before one star in the system erupted as a supernova.

In the first survey of its kind, the researchers have been scanning 25 nearby galaxies for stars that brighten and dim in unusual ways, in order to catch a few that are about to meet their end. In the three years since the study began, this particular unnamed binary system in the Whirlpool Galaxy was the first among the stars they’ve cataloged to produce a supernova.

The astronomers were trying to find out if there are patterns of brightening or dimming that herald the end of a star’s life. Instead, they saw one star in this binary system dim noticeably before the other one exploded in a supernova during the summer of 2011.

Key quote: “Our underlying goal is to look for any kind of signature behavior that will enable us to identify stars before they explode,”

The supernova in question, 2011dh, was the closest supernova in decades, occurring in June 2011 in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51). See my previous posts here and here.

0 comments
1 … 159 160 161 162 163 … 188