Science

Tags:

In a first, astronomers watch a black hole’s corona disappear, then reappear

A colliding star may have triggered the drastic transformation.

MIT-Extreme-Black-Holes-01_0.jpg
This diagram shows how a shifting feature, called a corona, can create a flare of X-rays around a black hole. The corona (feature represented in purplish colors) gathers inward (left), becoming brighter, before shooting away from the black hole (middle and right). Astronomers don't know why the coronas shift, but they have learned that this process leads to a brightening of X-ray light that can be observed by telescopes.

Tags:

Charm Quarks Offer Clues to Confinement

Tracking particles containing charm quarks offers insight into how quarks combine

TowersInstalledAtLSM-628x643_1_0.png
A collision of gold nuclei recorded by the Berkeley Lab-built Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT), a component of the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The white points show “hits” recorded by particles emerging from the collision as they strike sensors in three layers of the HFT. Scientists use the hits to reconstruct charged particle tracks (red and green lines) to measure the relative abundance of certain kinds of particles emerging from the collision – in this case, charmed lambda particles.

Tags:

Keeping Watch

naoj-flare_0.png
Keeping Watch

Tags:

Objects in the night

Objects_in_the_night_pillars_0.jpg
Objects in the night

Tags:

Scientists Successfully Demonstrate a New Experiment in the Search for Theorized ‘Neutrinoless’ Process

Berkeley Lab researchers are part of an international team that reports a high-sensitivity measurement by underground CUPID-Mo experiment

TowersInstalledAtLSM-628x643_0.png
The CUPID-Mo detector is installed in the Edelweiss cryostat at Modane Underground Laboratory (LSM) in France.

Tags:

Two Bizarre Brown Dwarfs Found With Citizen Scientists' Help

Data from NASA's NEOWISE mission, managed by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, fuels the search for these not-quite-planets-but-not-quite-stars.

image1-16_0.jpg
This artist's concept shows a brown dwarf, a ball of gas not massive enough to power itself the way stars do. Despite their name, brown dwarfs would appear magenta or orange-red to the human eye if seen close up.

Tags:

NASA's AIRS Monitors Tropical Storm Fay as It Deluges the East Coast

From its vantage point aboard the Aqua satellite, the instrument maps how much moisture the storm's clouds contain.

PIA23783-16_0.jpg
NASA's AIRS instrument captured this image of Tropical Storm Fay around 2 p.m. local time on July 10, 2020, as the storm swept through New England.

Tags:

Giant A-68 iceberg three years on

A-68A_in_open_waters_pillars_0.jpg
A-68A in open waters.

Tags:

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Spies Newly Discovered Comet NEOWISE

wispr_inner_neowise_20200705t020949e-crop_0_0.jpg
An unprocessed image from the WISPR instrument on board NASA’s Parker Solar Probe shows comet NEOWISE on July 5, 2020, shortly after its closest approach to the Sun. The Sun is out of frame to the left. The faint grid pattern near the center of the image is an artifact of the way the image is created. The small black structure near the lower left of the image is caused by a grain of dust resting on the imager’s lens.

Tags:

Conditions Ripe for Active Amazon Fire, Atlantic Hurrican Seasons

br_0.jpg
On August 11, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured these images of several fires burning in the states of Rondônia, Amazonas, Pará, and Mato Grosso. This year’s drought combined with the recent uptick in deforestation make these states particularly vulnerable this fire season to fires that can grow out of control and spread.