http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- A galaxy located billions of light-years away is commanding the attention of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. Thanks to a series of flares that began September 15, the galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky -- more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer. http://www.physorg.com/news179593672.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:40:01 EST news179593672 (PhysOrg.com) -- A thin rain of charged particles continually bombards our atmosphere from outer space. The mysterious particles were first detected 100 years ago but until 10 years ago when a new type of telescope began to come online physicists weren't sure where the "cosmic rays" came from or how they were generated. They suspected the particles were accelerated by supernova shockwaves, but suspicions aren't proof. http://www.physorg.com/news179427195.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:30:01 EST news179427195 New information about lightning-emitted X-rays, gamma rays and high-energy electrons during thunderstorms is prompting scientists to raise concerns about the potential for airline passengers and crews to be exposed to harmful levels of radiation. http://www.physorg.com/news179426300.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:39:14 EST news179426300 (PhysOrg.com) -- An extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily long-lasting supernova named SN 2007bi, snagged in a search by a robotic telescope, turns out to be the first example of the kind of stars that first populated the Universe. The superbright supernova occurred in a nearby dwarf galaxy, a kind of galaxy that's common but has been little studied until now, and the unusual supernova could be the first of many such events soon to be discovered. http://www.physorg.com/news179002328.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:30:02 EST news179002328 Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called "starburst" galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories. http://www.physorg.com/news176396829.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:08:03 EST news176396829 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international collaboration that includes scientists from the University of Delaware's Bartol Research Institute in the Department of Physics and Astronomy has discovered very-high-energy gamma rays in the Cigar Galaxy (M82), a bright galaxy filled with exploding stars 12 million light years from Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news176391501.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:50:01 EST news176391501 (PhysOrg.com) -- The most distant object ever discovered is described in this week's edition of the science journal Nature. Two international teams of astronomers report their observations of a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the Universe was 640 million years old, or less than 5 percent of its present age. http://www.physorg.com/news175969717.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:30:09 EST news175969717 Racing across the universe for the last 7.3 billion years, two gamma-ray photons arrived at NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope within nine-tenths of a second of one another. The dead-heat finish may stoke the fires of debate among physicists over Einstein's special theory of relativity because one of the photons possessed a million times more energy than the other. http://www.physorg.com/news175965994.html Physics Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:27:56 EST news175965994 During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. It captured more than one thousand discrete sources of gamma rays -- the highest-energy form of light. Capping these achievements was a measurement that provided rare experimental evidence about the very structure of space and time, unified as space-time in Einstein's theories. http://www.physorg.com/news175961092.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:06:24 EST news175961092 (PhysOrg.com) -- Quite a few distant galaxies turn out to be cosmic delivery rooms. Large numbers of massive stars are born in the hearts of these starburst galaxies, and later explode as supernovae. In the remnants they leave behind, particles are accelerated to very high energies. Astrophysicists have now used the H.E.S.S. telescopes to make detailed measurements of the gamma rays from the NGC 253 galaxy. As predicted, these high-energy rays originate from the region of maximum supernova activity close to the centre. (Science Express, September 2009) http://www.physorg.com/news173695636.html Space & Earth Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:47:47 EST news173695636 (PhysOrg.com) -- Gamma-rays are the most energetic known form of electromagnetic radiation, with each gamma ray being at least one hundred thousand times more energetic than an optical light photon. The most potent gamma rays, the so-called VHE (very high energy) gamma rays, pack energies a billion times this, or even more. Astronomers think that VHE gamma rays are produced in the environment of the winds or jets of the compact, ultra-dense remnant ashes of massive stars left behind from supernova explosions. http://www.physorg.com/news173104115.html Space & Earth Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:29:49 EST news173104115 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the Large Area Telescope launched aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in June 2008, the LAT team has been analyzing data, searching for answers to some of the most pressing questions in astrophysics. Now everyone else can join in. http://www.physorg.com/news170618937.html Space & Earth Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:30:01 EST news170618937 (PhysOrg.com) -- Back in 2006, PAMELA (a Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) was launched with the purpose of detecting cosmic radiation and looking for clues pointing to dark matter. And now it's possible that PAMELA might have already spotted dark matter. http://www.physorg.com/news170436249.html Physics Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:24:43 EST news170436249 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Milky Way, like many other galaxies, is thought to be embedded in massive, lumpy amounts of dark matter that release gamma rays and other emissions. Although at first these emissions seem too faint to detect, recent observations have shown that they may be stronger than previously thought. In a new study, scientists have developed a model that predicts that gamma rays from hundreds of dark matter clumps should be detectable by the Fermi satellite that was launched in June 2008. http://www.physorg.com/news169121408.html Physics Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:10:36 EST news169121408 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is making some exciting discoveries about cosmic rays and the Large Area Telescope aboard Fermi is the tool in this investigation. Scientists in the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL's) Space Science Division were instrumental in the design and development of the Large Area Telescope (LAT). http://www.physorg.com/news167998494.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:40:02 EST news167998494 Back in June 1991, just before the launch of NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, astronomers knew of gamma rays from exactly one galaxy beyond our own. To their surprise and delight, the satellite captured similar emissions from dozens of other galaxies. Now its successor, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is filling in the picture with new finds of its own. http://www.physorg.com/news166807061.html Space & Earth Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:18:40 EST news166807061 A team of astrophysicists has solved a mystery that led some scientists to speculate that the distribution of certain gamma rays in our Milky Way galaxy was evidence of a form of undetectable "dark matter" believed to make up much of the mass of the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news166356300.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:05:40 EST news166356300 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using a worldwide combination of diverse telescopes, astronomers have discovered that a giant galaxy's bursts of very high energy gamma rays are coming from a region very close to the supermassive black hole at its core. The discovery provides important new information about the mysterious workings of the powerful "engines" in the centers of innumerable galaxies throughout the Universe. http://www.physorg.com/news165763462.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:24:43 EST news165763462 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new class of pulsars detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is solving the mystery of previously unidentified gamma-ray sources and helping scientists understand the mechanisms behind pulsar emissions. http://www.physorg.com/news165763241.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:21:48 EST news165763241 Astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed a new technique to determine the ages of millisecond pulsars, the fastest-spinning stars in the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news163781369.html Space & Earth Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:50:13 EST news163781369 Since its launch in 2004, NASA's Swift has detected more than 430 gamma-ray bursts. Roughly half of them are "dark" bursts that emit little or no visible light. Dense knots of dust in otherwise normal galaxies dim the light of a dark gamma-ray burst (center). The dust absorbs most or all of a burst's visible light but not higher-energy X-rays and gamma rays. Credit NASA/Swift/Aurore Simonnet Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's biggest explosions, capable of producing so much light that ground-based telescopes easily detect it billions of light-years away. Yet, for more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the nature of so-called dark bursts, which produce gamma rays and X-rays but little or no visible light. They make up roughly half of the bursts detected by NASA's Swift satellite since its 2004 launch. http://www.physorg.com/news163682108.html Space & Earth Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:15:27 EST news163682108 (PhysOrg.com) -- Something in our galactic neighborhood seems to be producing large numbers of high-energy electrons, according to new data gathered by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The electrons could be coming from nearby pulsars -or they could be a longed-for signal of dark matter, the elusive, invisible material thought to make up nearly a quarter of the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news160764898.html Physics Tue, 05 May 2009 17:56:20 EST news160764898 The gamma-ray sky comes alive in a movie made from data acquired by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope during its first three months of operations. Gamma rays from sources near and far turn the sky into a hypnotic froth. The sun arcs serenely across the northern sky as active galaxies called blazars flare up and fade out. http://www.physorg.com/news159812078.html Space & Earth Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:15:44 EST news159812078 (PhysOrg.com) -- Together with the MAGIC-I telescope, MAGIC-2 allows stereoscopic observations using these two largest gamma-ray telescopes. Astronomers can explore sources of very-high energy gamma rays. The astrophysical study of particle acceleration processes in celestial objects could lead to fundamental insights into the dynamics of the so-called non-thermal Universe. http://www.physorg.com/news159026790.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:07:16 EST news159026790 A montage of comet images made using NASA`s Swift spacecraft illustrates just how different three comets can be. The images, including a never-released image of Comet 8P/Tuttle, were shown today during a live, 24-hour video webcast called `Around the World in 80 Telescopes.` Organized by the European Southern Observatory headquartered in Garching, Germany, the webcast is part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy project, a worldwide celebration of astronomy running through April 5. http://www.physorg.com/news158250873.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:35:06 EST news158250873 (PhysOrg.com) -- Integral has captured one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts ever seen. A meticulous analysis of the data has allowed astronomers to investigate the initial phases of this giant stellar explosion, which led to the ejection of matter at velocities close to the speed of light. In particular, the astronomers believe that the explosion lifted a piece of the central engine's magnetic field into space. http://www.physorg.com/news157976603.html Space & Earth Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:24:02 EST news157976603 An international team of astrophysicists using telescopes on the ground and in space have uncovered surprising changes in radiation emitted by an active galaxy. The picture that emerges from these first-ever simultaneous observations with optical, X-ray and new-generation gamma-ray telescopes is much more complex than scientists expected and challenges current theories of how the radiation is generated. http://www.physorg.com/news156613697.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:49:17 EST news156613697 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new map combining nearly three months of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is giving astronomers an unprecedented look at the high-energy cosmos. To Fermi's eyes, the universe is ablaze with gamma rays from sources ranging from within the solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away. http://www.physorg.com/news155994698.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:52:37 EST news155994698 (PhysOrg.com) -- Recent research by scientists in Italy and France shows that that single molecules have the ability to store information via their magnetic state. Their work is a first step toward a new generation of ultra-compact data storage technologies based on individual molecules. http://www.physorg.com/news155820171.html Physics Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:23:28 EST news155820171 An international team of astrophysicists, involving several research groups in Spain, has discovered a source of very high energy gamma rays in the region of the distant galaxies 3C 66A and 3C 66B. This new gamma emission, observed from the MAGIC telescope in La Palma (Canary Islands) is not consistent with what scientists expected to find, and has resulted in them suggesting three hypotheses to explain their origin. http://www.physorg.com/news155567370.html Space & Earth Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:10:14 EST news155567370