New study finds mysterious lack of dark matter in Sun’s neighbourhood The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighbourhood was expected to be filled with dark… [Read more…]
February 3, 2012
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory are part of an international team that has pooled their radio observations into a database, producing the highest precision map to date of the magnetic field within our own Milky Way galaxy. The team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), used the database they created and… [Read more…]
December 18, 2011
This magnificent 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire southern and northern celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). The… [Read more…]
August 30, 2011
First glimpse into birth of the Milky Way – For almost 20 years astrophysicists have been trying to recreate the formation of spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way realistically. Now astrophysicists from the University of Zurich present the world’s first realistic simulation of the formation of our home galaxy together with astronomers from the… [Read more…]
August 30, 2011
— After nine months of number-crunching on a powerful supercomputer, a beautiful spiral galaxy matching our own Milky Way emerged from a computer simulation of the physics involved in galaxy formation and evolution. The simulation by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Zurich solves a longstanding… [Read more…]
August 27, 2011
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope may have solved the mystery of how the Milky Way continues to spawn new stars at a consistent rate despite its diminishing gas reserves. They say the galaxy is being supplied by clouds of gas originating from outside of the Milky Way, and that these findings could help refine… [Read more…]
July 21, 2011
Scientists recently detected an organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life, in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets could exist. Glycolaldehyde, (HOCH 2 -CH = O) the simplest of the monosaccharide sugars, can react with the substance propenal to form ribose, a central constituent of Ribonucleic acid (RNA), thought to be… [Read more…]
July 20, 2011
New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 light-years, were known before. Herschel’s view reveals the entire ring for the first time, and a strange kink that… [Read more…]
July 19, 2011
Evidence is emerging that a small galaxy, with a huge central black hole, must have recently collided with the Milky Way, say astronomers The Milky Way gives the impression of a beautiful, calm field of stars. At the heart of all this is a supermassive black hole that sits, innocently, at the galactic centre. In… [Read more…]
May 2, 2011
An Engine of Massive Star Creation? A dark, mysterious cloud of dust (extending from the center, right) seems to flow out from a bright explosion in this false-color image in infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope. These views have revealed that the mystery cloud, called M17 SWex, is forming stars at a furious rate… [Read more…]
physicsworld newscientist.com NASA dailygalaxy technologyreview science2.0
April 18, 2012
0