Astronomy
- Astronomy
Big Bang Confirmed: Seeing twists and turns of primordial light
The latest observations of the cosmic microwave background reveal that photons from adjacent patches of the sky have slightly different polarizations.
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- Astronomy
Found: Gamma-ray background information
Resolving a 30-year-old mystery, astronomers say they have identified the source of the faint, high-energy glow of radiation known as the gamma-ray background.
- Astronomy
X-ray telescope vanishes
Astro-E, a Japanese X-ray observatory, fell back to Earth and burned up just after launch on Feb. 9.
- Astronomy
Craft spies new class of gamma-ray sources
Roughly half the 120 unidentified sources of high-energy gamma-ray emissions in the Milky Way—those at midgalactic latitudes—may comprise a new class of objects and originate from a belt of massive stars that lies only a few hundred light-years from the solar system.
- Astronomy
Hole in the Middle: Are midsize black holes the missing link?
Two teams of astronomers reported that they had confirmed the existence of a new class of black hole.
- Astronomy
Reflecting on the Kuiper belt
A new study suggests that at least some members of the Kuiper belt, the reservoir of comets and other frozen objects that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, reflect more sunlight and are considerably smaller than previously calculated.
- Astronomy
Magnetars: A missing link
A rare group of ultradense stars may be magnetars, objects with the strongest magnetic fields known in the universe.
- Astronomy
Spacecraft sounds out the sun’s hidden half
By detecting sound waves that have traveled through the sun, two physicists have for the first time found a way to view disturbances on the sun's hidden half, providing a glimpse of stormy weather patterns a week to 10 days before they come into view.
- Astronomy
Birth of a Tiny Galaxy: In the universe, dwarfs may pop up last
Using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe a tiny galaxy still in the process of being born, astronomers are getting a rare glimpse of how larger galaxies formed early in the history of the universe.
- Astronomy
Super fireworks
A blast wave from supernova 1987A, the brightest stellar explosion witnessed from Earth since 1604, has begun lighting up a ring of gas surrounding the explosion.
- Astronomy
No signal from Mars Polar Lander
A radio signal that NASA hoped came from the vanished Mars Polar Lander has a terrestrial origin, scientists from the space agency and Stanford University have concluded.
