Our Sun is a relatively quiet star that only occasionally releases solar flares or blasts of energetic particles that threaten satellites and power grids. You might think that smaller, cooler stars would be even more sedate. However, astronomers have now identified a tiny star with a monstrous temper. It shows evidence of much stronger flares than anything our Sun produces. If similar stars prove to be just as stormy, then potentially habitable planets orbiting them are likely to be much less hospitable than previously thought.
Heavens
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that a dim, cool dwarf star is generating a surprisingly powerful magnetic field, one that rivals the most intense magnetic regions of our own Sun.
Dr Brett Carter of the RMIT SPACE Research Centre and his team from RMIT, Boston College and Dartmouth College, found that these equatorial electrical disruptions threaten power grids in Southeast Asia, India, Africa and South America, where protecting electricity infrastructure from space shocks has not been a priority.
"Massive space weather events have crashed power grids across North America and Europe, but we have found that often with little warning, smaller events strike in equatorial regions more frequently than previously thought,'' Carter said.
Researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland have uncovered a new form of secret light communication used by marine animals.
The findings may have applications in satellite remote sensing, biomedical imaging, cancer detection, and computer data storage.
Dr Yakir Gagnon, Professor Justin Marshall and colleagues previously showed that mantis shrimp (Gonodactylaceus falcatus) can reflect and detect circular polarising light, an ability extremely rare in nature. Until now, no-one has known what they use it for.
New York City's policy of closing very low-performing high schools during the last decade produced notable benefits for the middle schoolers who likely would have enrolled in these schools, according to a new report from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools at NYU. This first-ever study of the impact of school closures in New York City also highlights some important cautions to consider regarding the closure strategy.
An international team of scientists in Australia and the United States has captured the first-ever images of a planet in the making. The accumulation of dust and gas particles onto a new planet - the process by which the planet continues to form and grow - has been directly observed for the first time.
None of the nearly 1,900 planets previously discovered and confirmed outside our Solar System (called exoplanets) are in the process of formation.
There are 450 light-years between Earth and LkCa15, a young star with a transition disk around it, a cosmic whirling dervish, a birthplace for planets.
Despite the disk's considerable distance from Earth and its gaseous, dusty atmosphere, University of Arizona researchers captured the first photo of a planet in the making, a planet residing in a gap in LkCa15's disk.
Of the roughly 2,000 known exoplanets -- planets that orbit a star other than our sun -- only about 10 have been imaged, and that was long after they had formed, not when they were in the making.
Dark matter is called "dark" for a good reason. Although they outnumber particles of regular matter by more than a factor of 10, particles of dark matter are elusive. Their existence is inferred by their gravitational influence in galaxies, but no one has ever directly observed signals from dark matter. Now, by measuring the mass of a nearby dwarf galaxy called Triangulum II, Assistant Professor of Astronomy Evan Kirby may have found the highest concentration of dark matter in any known galaxy.
What happens to your body in space? NASA's Human Research Program has been unfolding answers for over a decade. Space is a dangerous, unfriendly place. Isolated from family and friends, exposed to radiation that could increase your lifetime risk for cancer, a diet high in freeze-dried food, required daily exercise to keep your muscles and bones from deteriorating, a carefully scripted high-tempo work schedule, and confinement with three co-workers picked to travel with you by your boss.
The Andes have been a mountain chain for much longer than previously thought, new research from the University of Bristol, UK suggests.
The Andes were formed by tectonic activity whereby earth is uplifted as one plate (oceanic crust) subducts under another plate (continental crust). To get such a high mountain chain in a subduction zone setting is unusual which adds to the importance of trying to figure out when and how it happened. However, the timing of when the Andean mountain chain uplift occurred has been a topic of some controversy over the past ten years.
As world leaders gather in Paris at the end of the month for the COP 21 climate summit, new research from scientists reveals the destructive impact the warming global ocean can have on society.
A study by a team of U.S. and Australian researchers shows that long-term warming of the Indian and Pacific oceans played an important role in increasing the risk of the kind of devastating floods that struck Australia in 2010/2011. The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
For the first time, low cost production of a completely rare-earth free FeNi magnet with simple industrial technologyHard magnetic phase formed in natural meteorite achieved in significantly reduced time (from billions of years to maximum ten days)Issues related to rare-earth supply in production of high quality magnets potentially resolved, paving the way for industrial superiority in the production of future magnets
Just counting the number of galaxies in a patch of sky provides a way to test astronomers' theories of galaxy formation and evolution. However, such a simple task becomes increasingly hard as astronomers attempt to count the more distant and fainter galaxies. It is further complicated by the fact that the brightest and easiest galaxies to observe -- the most massive galaxies in the Universe -- are rarer the further astronomers peer into the Universe's past, whilst the more numerous less bright galaxies are even more difficult to find.
The most Earth-like planet could have been made uninhabitable by vast quantities of radiation, new research led by the University of Warwick research has found.
The atmosphere of the planet, Kepler-438b, is thought to have been stripped away as a result of radiation emitted from a superflaring Red Dwarf star, Kepler-438.
Regularly occurring every few hundred days, the superflares are approximately ten times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun and equivalent to the same energy as 100 billion megatons of TNT.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida State University high-performance computing researcher has predicted a physical effect that would help physicists and astronomers provide fresh evidence of the correctness of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Bin Chen, who works at the university's Research Computing Center, describes the yet-to-be-observed effect in the paper "Probing the Gravitational Faraday Rotation Using Quasar X-ray Microlensing," published today in the journal Scientific Reports.