Heavens

AMHERST, Mass. - Astronomers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that they have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the Universe, objects so bright that established descriptors such as "ultra-" and "hyper-luminous" used to describe previously brightest known galaxies don't even come close. Lead author and undergraduate Kevin Harrington says, "We've taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous' among ourselves, because there is no scientific term to apply."

Tropical Cyclone Emeraude was pummeled by northeasterly wind shear that weakened the storm into a depression by March 22, 2016 before the Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of the depression at 0800 UTC (4 a.m. EDT), that looked more like a swirl of clouds with an isolated burst of thunderstorms southwest of the center.

NASA's planet hunter, the Kepler space telescope, has captured the brilliant flash of an exploding star's shock wave--what astronomers call the "shock breakout" of a supernova--for the first time in visible light wavelengths.

The fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths have been discovered near a supermassive black hole by a research team that includes a Penn State University astronomer. "This new ultrafast wind surprised us when it appeared at ultraviolet wavelengths, indicating it is racing away from the ravenous black hole at unprecedented speeds -- almost like a bat of out Hell," said William Nielsen (Niel) Brandt, the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and a professor of physics at Penn State, a member of the research team.

A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope just got a little closer to launch with the completion of cryogenic testing on its science cameras and spectrographs and the installation of the final flight mirrors.

The results of new research at the University of Illinois indicate that it is possible for producers to reduce feed costs if yellow dent corn, a staple of swine diets in the United States, is ground to a finer particle size. The smaller particle size allows pigs to derive more energy from the corn, which means producers can reduce the amount of fat added to diets (reducing their costs) without affecting the growth performance or carcass characteristics of pigs.

An international team of astrophysicists led by Peter Garnavich, professor of astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame, has caught two supernovae in the act of exploding.

Using the Kepler Space Telescope, the team spent three years observing 50 trillion stars for the chance to watch as supersonic shockwaves reached their surfaces after explosions deep in the core. For the first time, a "shock breakout" in an exploding supergiant star was discovered at visible wavelengths.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers at MIT and other institutions have found a new phenomenon in the behavior of a kind of quasiparticles called plasmons as they move along tiny ribbons of two-dimensional materials such as graphene and TMDs (transition metal dichalcogenides), which have a hexagonal structure resembling chicken wire. The team found that these plasmons can be separated into two different streams moving in opposite directions at the edges of the ribbons, like traffic on a two-lane highway, without the need for strong magnetic fields or other exotic conditions.

In 1880, the picturesque Swedish island of Stora Karlsö became a nature preserve and hunting park. To help fund the venture, owners of the island began organizing tours in the 1920s. Stora Karlsö remains a popular tourist destination, attracting about 10,000 visitors each year. And that means that the colony of seabirds living on the island has had its picture taken over and over again, for almost 100 years.

Pasadena, CA-- The lightest few elements in the periodic table formed minutes after the Big Bang. Heavier chemical elements are created by stars, either from nuclear fusion in their interiors or in catastrophic explosions. However, scientists have disagreed for nearly 60 years about how the heaviest elements, such as gold and lead, are manufactured. New observations of a tiny galaxy discovered last year show that these heavy elements are likely left over from rare collisions between two neutron stars. The work is published by Nature.

In quantum theory, interactions among particles create fascinating correlations known as entanglement that cannot be explained by any means known to the classical world. Entanglement is a consequence of the probabilistic rules of quantum mechanics and seems to permit a peculiar instantaneous connection between particles over long distances that defies the laws of our macroscopic world - a phenomenon that Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance."

Researchers have been mapping the centre of our galaxy in very-high-energy gamma rays using these telescopes - the most sensitive of their kind - for over 10 years. The results were published in the journal Nature on 16 March 2016.

For a long time, it was thought that the sole role of the immune system was to distinguish between friend and foe and to fend off pathogens. In fact, it is more like a microbial management system that is also involved in accommodating beneficial microorganisms in the plant when required. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne in collaboration with an international consortium of other laboratories discovered this relationship between the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, and the fungus Colletotrichum tofieldiae.

TORONTO, March 21, 2016 - New research led by astrophysicists at York University has revealed the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole.

"We're talking wind speeds of 20 per cent the speed of light, which is more than 200 million kilometres an hour. That's equivalent to a category 77 hurricane," says Jesse Rogerson, who led the research as part of his PhD thesis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York U. "And we have reason to believe that there are quasar winds that are even faster."