Astronomy

Astronomy

Votes cast for and against the WIMP factor

Physicists this week duked it out over a bunch of WIMPs, elementary particles that—if they exist—could solve a decades-old mystery in cosmology and help unify the four fundamental forces of nature.

Astronomy

Close Encounter

In mid-August, asteroid 2002 NY40 came within 524,000 kilometers of Earth. Students from Yale University using a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory captured a sequence of images of the 700-meter asteroid. Strung together into a movie, these images demonstrate the asteroid’s impressive speed, as seen from Earth over a period of two hours. The […]

Astronomy

A chance to point Hubble

Get out your heavenly wish list: Astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope are soliciting suggestions for where to point the orbiting observatory this summer.

Astronomy

A possible signal from Polar Lander

Astronomers may have heard a faint signal from the vanished Mars Polar Lander spacecraft last month but, as of mid-February, have not detected another.

Astronomy

X-Ray Chaos: Violence shows itself in a nearby galaxy

New X-ray observations provide additional evidence that Centaurus A, the nearest radio-wave-emitting galaxy to Earth that has a supermassive black hole, is a maelstrom of violence.

Astronomy

Revved-Up Universe

Astronomers are busy testing the seemingly bizarre notion that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

Astronomy

Solar magnetism: Memories are made of this

Despite all its upheavals, the sun's magnetic field has a built-in memory, allowing it to return to its original position and configuration.

Astronomy

Milky Way gets a new layer

Astronomers propose that 150 billion corpses of sunlike stars may blanket the visible disk of the galaxy.

Astronomy

Visible Matter: Once lost but now found

New observations confirm that most of the visible matter in the universe lies hidden in vast, hard-to-detect gas clouds between galaxies.

Astronomy

Icy Split: Comet fragments into 19 pieces

A comet has split into 19 fragments strung out along a million-kilometer-long chain.

Astronomy

Cosmic Twist: X’s may mark spots where black holes merge

If whacked by a companion black hole, a big, jet-emitting black hole may spew superhot plasma in a new, crosswise direction.

Astronomy

An assault on comets

Over the next few years, a trio of comet missions, one of which was launched recently, promises to provide the closet look yet at the core of these icy relics from the formation of the solar system.