Science

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Solar Energy Tracker Powers Down After 17 Years

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The Sun is Earth’s primary power source. Energy from the Sun, called solar irradiance, drives Earth’s climate, temperature, weather, atmospheric chemistry, ocean cycles, energy balance and more.

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Iron is everywhere in Earth's vicinity, suggest two decades of cluster data.

Using over 18 years of data from ESA's Cluster mission, scientists have mapped the heavy metals in the space surrounding Earth, finding an unexpected distribution and prevalence of iron and shedding light on the composition of our cosmic environment.

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Iron in the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere.

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The Strange Orbits of ‘Tatooine’ Planetary Disks

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found striking orbital geometries in protoplanetary disks around binary stars. While disks orbiting the most compact binary star systems share very nearly the same plane, disks encircling wide binaries have orbital planes that are severely tilted. These systems can teach us about planet formation in complex environments.

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Two examples of aligned and misaligned protoplanetary disks around binary stars (circumbinary disks), observed with ALMA. Binary star orbits are added for clarity. Left: in star system HD 98800 B, the disk is misaligned with inner binary stars. The stars are orbiting each other (in this view, towards and away from us) in 315 days. Right: in star system AK Sco, the disk is in line with the orbit of its binary stars. The stars are orbiting each other in 13.6 days.

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Chandra Data Tests "Theory of Everything"

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X-ray Images of Perseus Cluster
Astronomers used Chandra to look for extraordinarily low-mass "axion-like" particles in the Perseus galaxy cluster. A Chandra observation lasting over five days of the central supermassive black hole in the center of the cluster showed no evidence for certain axion-like particles, which some theorists think can explain dark matter. The lack of a detection in these Chandra observations helps rule out some versions of string theory, a set of models intended to tie together all known forces, interactions, and particles.

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Quasar Tsunamis Rip Across Galaxies

BLISTERING RADIATION FROM ACTIVE BLACK HOLE SNOWPLOWS IMMENSE AMOUNTS OF MECHANICAL ENERGY THROUGH SPACE

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QUASAR OUTFLOWS ILLUSTRATION

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Black Hole Team Discovers Path to Razor-Sharp Black Hole Images

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Black Hole Team Discovers Path to Razor-Sharp Black Hole Images

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GRACE, GRACE-FO Satellite Data Track Ice Loss at the Poles

Greenland and Antarctica are melting - but how quickly and which areas are most affected? Nearly 20 years of satellite data provide key insights into these questions.

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Greenland's Steenstrup Glacier, with the midmorning sun glinting off the Denmark Strait in the background. The image was taken during a NASA IceBridge airborne survey of the region in 2016.

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A Star-Bursting Galaxy Born from the Collision of Dwarfs

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This 2.5 x 2.5 arcminute image shows VCC 848, a compact dwarf galaxy that scientists think formed from the merger of two smaller galaxies.

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A New Theory of Magnetar Formation for Neutron Stars

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Figure 1: 3D snapshots of the magnetic field lines in the convective zone inside a newborn neutron star. Inward (outward) flows are represented by the blue (red) surfaces. Left: strong field dynamo discovered for fast rotation periods of a few milliseconds, where the dipole component reaches 1015 G. Right: for slower rotation, the magnetic field is up to ten times weaker.

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Continued Gravitational-Wave Discoveries from Public Data

International team led by Max Planck researchers finds promising new candidates for gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers in public LIGO/Virgo data

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Numerical-relativity simulation of the first binary black-hole merger observed by the Advanced LIGO detector on September 14, 2015.