Heavens

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development. It is the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.

In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble found five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the brightest galaxies at that epoch and very young -- existing just 600 million years after the big bang.

The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night. Most stars, likely including our sun, grew up in cosmic turmoil — as illustrated in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Astronomers have gained an important clue about a ubiquitous cosmic process by pinpointing the exact moment when gigantic "bullets" of fast-moving material were launched from the region surrounding a black hole. They made this breakthrough by using the ultra-sharp radio "vision" of the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), along with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite, to study an outburst from a system including a black hole and its companion star in 2009.

An Emory University study published in the January issue of Health Affairs assesses real-world lifestyle interventions to help delay or prevent the costly chronic disease that affects nearly 26 million Americans.

An extremely hot, massive young galaxy cluster — the largest ever seen in the distant Universe — has been studied by an international team using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama Desert in Chile along with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The new results are being announced on 10 January 2012 at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development, making it the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early Universe.

A UC Davis graduate student who is leading a study of the collision of galaxy clusters 5 billion light years away will discuss the team's findings today, Jan. 10, in a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

"A galaxy cluster is like a little universe, because it has the same matter composition as the whole universe," said William Dawson, a Ph.D. candidate in physics. "By studying this little universe, we can learn more about our own."

A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder has used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of construction -- the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.

In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble spied five small galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the brightest galaxies at that epoch and very young, living just 600 million years after the universe's birth in the Big Bang. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

A new study by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy illustrates a disconnect between government funding of biomedical research by young investigators and a novel standard by which to judge it: the Nobel Prize.

The study found the average age of biomedical researchers getting their first grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 was 42. Over the past 30 years, the average age of Nobel winners when they performed their groundbreaking research was 41.

These days, we hear a lot about the disorder of autism, but researchers at the University of Utah have created a program that helps kids with autism focus on building their skills and utilizing an aptitude for visual-spatial thinking, computers and other electronic media.

One of the program participants is 12-year-old Christopher Charles, who was diagnosed with what's now known as high-functioning autism when he was 18 months old. His parents started him in therapies early on, but hadn't found something that seemed to hold Christopher's interest or accommodate his behaviors.

BATAVIA, Illinois, and BERKELEY, California –Two teams of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, building maps of dark matter using new methods that, in turn, will remove key hurdles for understanding dark energy with ground-based telescopes.

Developments by hydrogen researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) are paving the way for the successful development of portable power systems with capacities that far exceed the best batteries available today. SRNL's advances in the use of alane, a lightweight material for storing hydrogen, may be the key that unlocks the development of portable fuel cell systems that meet the needs for both military and commercial portable power applications.

For the first time, astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale ever observed. The results, presented by Dr Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, are being presented today to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. Their findings reveal a Universe comprised of an intricate cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies spanning more than one billion light years.

The James Webb Space Telescope marked a year of significant progress in 2011 as it continues to come together as NASA's next generation space telescope. The year brought forth a pathfinder backplane to support the large primary mirror structure, mirror cryotesting, creation of mirror support structures, several successful sunshield layer tests and the creation of an assembly station within NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's cleanroom. Achievements were also made in the areas of flight and communications software and the propulsion system.

University of British Columbia and University of Edinburgh astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale ever observed, according to results released today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

The findings, presented by Dr Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of UBC, reveal a Universe comprised of an intricate cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies that spans more than one billion light years.