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. At a very early age, children learn how to classify objects according to their shape. Now, new research suggests studying the shape of the aftermath of supernovas may allow astronomers to do the same. http://www.physorg.com/news180269012.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:44:41 EST news180269012 Understanding the evolution of galaxies is one of the biggest questions confronting astronomers today. Looking at distant astronomical objects gives scientists important clues to the origins of the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies in the local universe. http://www.physorg.com/news179512073.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:28:26 EST news179512073 (PhysOrg.com) -- The world's largest image of our Milky Way galaxy, taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, went on display this week at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. http://www.physorg.com/news179142417.html Space & Earth Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:47:54 EST news179142417 An international team of scientists that includes an astronomer from Princeton University has made the first direct observation of a planet-like object orbiting a star similar to the sun. http://www.physorg.com/news179072298.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:10:02 EST news179072298 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ultraluminous infrared galaxies ((ULIRGs) are galaxies whose luminosity exceeds that of a trillion suns; for comparison, the Milky Way galaxy has a typical (and much more modest) luminosity of only about ten billion suns. ULIRGs were discovered by an all-sky infrared survey satellite in the 1980's, and since then the origin(s) of their huge infrared emission has been widely debated. Extreme infrared activity is known to be associated with interacting galaxies, and optical imaging indeed shows that many ULIRGs are in collision, but this fact does not answer the question of what physical mechanism powers the luminosity. Might the same process be underway at a low level in our galaxy? http://www.physorg.com/news178544948.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:55:01 EST news178544948 (PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system. http://www.physorg.com/news177927581.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:20:02 EST news177927581 (PhysOrg.com) -- A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA on Nov. 10. This event will commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609. http://www.physorg.com/news177092798.html Space & Earth Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:50:02 EST news177092798 The most probable place to find intelligent life in the galaxy is around stars very similar to our sun, a new study has found. http://www.physorg.com/news176661214.html Space & Earth Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:50:01 EST news176661214 (PhysOrg.com) -- The spectacular new camera installed on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 in May has delivered the most detailed view of star birth in the graceful, curving arms of the nearby spiral galaxy M83. http://www.physorg.com/news176638796.html Space & Earth Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:20:24 EST news176638796 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 Cobbling together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, describes the process of making the panorama in the November issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. http://www.physorg.com/news175948336.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:32:48 EST news175948336 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study seeking to answer the question of why some galaxies are extremely dark compared with others may eventually help to explain the formation of all galaxies, according to researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). http://www.physorg.com/news173715065.html Space & Earth Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:11:40 EST news173715065 (PhysOrg.com) -- A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole. http://www.physorg.com/news172837903.html Space & Earth Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:33:13 EST news172837903 (PhysOrg.com) -- The second of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project has just been released online. It is a new and wonderful 340-million-pixel vista of the central parts of our home galaxy as seen from ESO's Paranal Observatory with an amateur telescope. http://www.physorg.com/news172739274.html Space & Earth Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:08:27 EST news172739274 Less than two months after they inaugurated the world's largest telescope, University of Florida astronomers have used one of the world's most advanced telescopic instruments to gather images of the heavens. http://www.physorg.com/news172248026.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:50:02 EST news172248026 (PhysOrg.com) -- There are so many stars in our galaxy that even if planets with complex life (animals and plants) are rare - say one for every billion stars - there could still be dozens here in the Milky Way. But we are just beginning to learn about worlds beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, so we really don't have a good idea of what the chances are for advanced life. That's where NASA's Kepler mission comes in. http://www.physorg.com/news172242543.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:30:01 EST news172242543 (PhysOrg.com) -- This composite image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster shows 10-million- degree gas observed by Chandra in blue and jets of radio emission observed by the Very Large Array in pink. Optical data from the Canada- France-Hawaii telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey shows galaxies in the cluster. http://www.physorg.com/news172158999.html Space & Earth Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:00:59 EST news172158999 (PhysOrg.com) -- The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project - a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO's observing sites in Chile - has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world. http://www.physorg.com/news172144911.html Space & Earth Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:02:20 EST news172144911 (PhysOrg.com) -- ESO has released a striking new image of a nearby galaxy that many astronomers think closely resembles our own Milky Way. Though the galaxy is seen edge-on, observations of NGC 4945 suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region. These resemblances aside, NGC 4945 has a brighter centre that likely harbours a supermassive black hole, which is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space. http://www.physorg.com/news171105483.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:30:06 EST news171105483 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Hawaii (UH) astronomer Dr. Tomotsugu Goto and colleagues have discovered a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant supermassive black hole ever found. The galaxy, so distant that it is seen as it was 12.8 billion years ago, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbours a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our Sun. The scientists set out their results in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society later this month. http://www.physorg.com/news171105318.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:15:45 EST news171105318 (PhysOrg.com) -- As scientists attempt to learn more about how galaxies evolve, an open question has been whether collisions with our dwarf galactic neighbors will one day tear apart the disk of the Milky Way. http://www.physorg.com/news170938716.html Space & Earth Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:59:03 EST news170938716 The public's "right to starlight" is steadily being eroded by urban illumination that is the bane of astronomers everywhere, the International Astronomical Union said on Friday. http://www.physorg.com/news169537734.html Space & Earth Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:50:01 EST news169537734 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists in Australia and the United States, led by Associate Professor Miroslav Filipović from the University of Western Sydney, have discovered a new class of object which they call `Super Planetary Nebulae.` They report their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. http://www.physorg.com/news169477900.html Space & Earth Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:13:22 EST news169477900 Astronomers recently observed a mysterious flux of particles in the universe, and the hope was born that this may be the first observation of the remnants of "dark matter". But scientists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have shown that there is another explanation of the flux. http://www.physorg.com/news169212050.html Space & Earth Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:50:03 EST news169212050 (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 Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since warming up and starting its second career. The infrared telescope ran out of coolant on May 15, 2009, more than five-and-half-years after launch, and has since warmed to a still-frosty 30 Kelvin (about minus 406 Fahrenheit). http://www.physorg.com/news168698098.html Space & Earth Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:20:01 EST news168698098 (PhysOrg.com) -- A study published this week in the journal Nature offers an explanation for the origin of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The research may settle an outstanding puzzle in understanding galaxy formation. http://www.physorg.com/news168095945.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:20:01 EST news168095945 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers working with data from ESA`s Integral gamma-ray observatory has disproved theories that some form of dark matter explains mysterious radiation in the Milky Way. http://www.physorg.com/news167493073.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:40:01 EST news167493073 We live in a hierarchical Universe where small structures join into larger ones. Earth is a planet in our Solar System, the Solar System resides in the Milky Way Galaxy, and galaxies combine into groups and clusters. Clusters are the largest structures in the Universe, but sadly our knowledge of them is not proportional to their size. Researchers have long known that the gas in the centers of some galaxy clusters is rapidly cooling and condensing, but were puzzled why this condensed gas did not form into stars. Until recently, no model existed that successfully explained how this was possible. http://www.physorg.com/news166793207.html Space & Earth Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:27:35 EST news166793207 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