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) -- 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) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the discovery of the youngest brown dwarf ever observed -- a finding that, if confirmed, may solve an astronomical mystery about how these cosmic misfits are formed. http://www.physorg.com/news178221292.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:55:42 EST news178221292 (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 (PhysOrg.com) -- Before our planets found their way to the stable orbits they circle in today, they wiggled and jostled about like unsettled children. Now, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a young star with evidence for the same kind of orbital hyperactivity. Young planets circling the star are thought to be disturbing smaller comet-like bodies, causing them to collide and kick up a huge halo of dust. http://www.physorg.com/news176576185.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:56:58 EST news176576185 The most distant galaxy cluster yet has been discovered by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical and infrared telescopes. The cluster is located about 10.2 billion light years away, and is observed as it was when the Universe was only about a quarter of its present age. http://www.physorg.com/news175436330.html Space & Earth Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:19:55 EST news175436330 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most stars form in clusters. Recent studies of nearby star forming regions find that about three-quarters of their young stars are located in groups with ten or more members. The formation of stars in clusters is thus a central feature of the study of how stars are made. The presence of the cluster highlights the possible roles of many other physical phenomena in the birth, for example, the effects of the massive amounts of gas always found in young clusters, or the possibly disruptive interactions between embryonic stars in the crowded womb. It has even been suggested that massive stars form from the coalescence of smaller, neighboring stars. http://www.physorg.com/news174588930.html Space & Earth Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:57:39 EST news174588930 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous ring around Saturn -- by far the largest of the giant planet's many rings. http://www.physorg.com/news174111597.html Space & Earth Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:21:07 EST news174111597 (PhysOrg.com) -- Of the roughly 350 known exoplanets (i.e., extrasolar planets), the one orbiting the star HD149026 is unique. http://www.physorg.com/news173697614.html Space & Earth Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:20:01 EST news173697614 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have witnessed odd behavior around a young star. Something, perhaps another star or a planet, appears to be pushing a clump of planet-forming material around. The observations, made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, offer a rare look into the early stages of planet formation. http://www.physorg.com/news172943482.html Space & Earth Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:52:09 EST news172943482 IC348 is a glowing nebula of young stars, hot gas, and cold dust seen in the direction of the constellation of Perseus. It is the nearest rich cluster of young stars to earth, being only about one thousand light-years away. Its proximity has made it an important laboratory for astronomers probing the early stages of stellar evolution and star formation. At an estimated age of only two to three million years, it is also a somewhat young cluster; IC348 did not shine in the night sky of the first hominids. For comparison, our sun is about 4.5 billion years old. http://www.physorg.com/news170083835.html Space & Earth Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:32:28 EST news170083835 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study from two of NASA's Great Observatories provides fresh insight into how some stars are born, along with a beautiful new image of a stellar nursery in our Galaxy. The research shows that radiation from massive stars may trigger the formation of many more stars than previously thought. http://www.physorg.com/news169310097.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:36:56 EST news169310097 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star. http://www.physorg.com/news169135424.html Space & Earth Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:40:02 EST news169135424 (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 NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has put its infrared eyes back on the sky to observe the cold and dusty universe. http://www.physorg.com/news168019346.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:03:25 EST news168019346 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark -- a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center. http://www.physorg.com/news167583105.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:40:01 EST news167583105 Ten years ago, on July 23, 1999, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia and deployed into orbit. Chandra has doubled its original five-year mission, ushering in an unprecedented decade of discovery for the high-energy universe. http://www.physorg.com/news167563042.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:17:57 EST news167563042 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have long wondered how tiny silicate crystals, which need sizzling high temperatures to form, have found their way into frozen comets, born in the deep freeze of the solar system's outer edges. The crystals would have begun as non-crystallized silicate particles, part of the mix of gas and dust from which the solar system developed. http://www.physorg.com/news161452743.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 May 2009 17:03:47 EST news161452743 The primary mission of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is about to end after more than five and a half years of probing the cosmos with its keen infrared eye. Within about a week of May 12, the telescope is expected to run out of the liquid helium needed to chill some of its instruments to operating temperatures. http://www.physorg.com/news160835772.html Space & Earth Wed, 06 May 2009 13:36:46 EST news160835772 NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is about to use its last drop of the coolant that has chilled it for the past five-and-a-half years. On about May 12, give or take a week or so, the observatory is predicted to run out of the liquid helium that has run through its veins, keeping its infrared detectors at frosty operating temperatures of just a few degrees above the coldest temperature possible, called absolute zero. http://www.physorg.com/news160762028.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 May 2009 17:07:31 EST news160762028 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered streams of young stars flowing from their natal cocoons in distant galaxies. These distant rivers of stars provide an answer to one of astronomy's most fundamental puzzles: how do young stars that form clustered together in dense clouds of dust and gas disperse to form the large, smooth distribution seen in the disks of spiral galaxies like the Milky Way? http://www.physorg.com/news160410037.html Space & Earth Fri, 01 May 2009 15:20:59 EST news160410037 An extremely deep Chandra X-ray Observatory image of a region near the center of our Galaxy has resolved a long-standing mystery about an X-ray glow along the plane of the Galaxy. The glow in the region covered by the Chandra image was discovered to be caused by hundreds of point-like X-ray sources, implying that the glow along the plane of the Galaxy is due to millions of such sources. http://www.physorg.com/news160231864.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:51:39 EST news160231864 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer Mission marks its sixth anniversary studying galaxies beyond our Milky Way through its sensitive ultraviolet telescope, the only such far-ultraviolet detector in space. http://www.physorg.com/news160161119.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:12:47 EST news160161119 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers from the Instituto Astrofisica Canarias (IAC) have found an interesting shadow cast by a forming star system. Team member Dr Basmah Riaz, an ER fellow for the Marie Curie CONSTELLATION network, will present the results of their work on Thursday 23rd April in a poster at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference at the University of Hertfordshire. http://www.physorg.com/news159719058.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:25:26 EST news159719058 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii, the IRAM Millimetre-wave Telescope in Spain, and the Spitzer Space Telescope in orbit above the Earth, have completed the most wide-ranging census ever produced of dynamical star formation in and around the well-known Great Nebula of Orion. http://www.physorg.com/news159460527.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:35:59 EST news159460527 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA`s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found that at least 1 in 100 white dwarf stars show evidence of orbiting asteroids and rocky planets, suggesting these objects once hosted Solar Systems similar to our own. http://www.physorg.com/news159460384.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:33:37 EST news159460384 (PhysOrg.com) -- Life on Earth is thought to have arisen from a hot soup of chemicals. Does this same soup exist on planets around other stars? A new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming, or "prebiotic," chemicals. http://www.physorg.com/news158341061.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:38:41 EST news158341061 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers have found evidence suggesting that stars rich in carbon complex molecules may form at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. http://www.physorg.com/news156100255.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:11:27 EST news156100255 Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet. The observations enabled astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to generate realistic images of the planet by feeding the data into computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news152371245.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:21:19 EST news152371245 (PhysOrg.com) -- A Cornell-led team of astronomers has observed dust forming around a dying star in a nearby galaxy, giving a glimpse into the early universe and enlivening a debate about the origins of all cosmic dust. http://www.physorg.com/news151251695.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:21:35 EST news151251695 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two new efforts have taken a famous supernova remnant from the static to the dynamic. A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time never seen before in this type of object. A separate team will also release a dramatic three-dimensional visualization of the same remnant. http://www.physorg.com/news150460821.html Space & Earth Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:40:21 EST news150460821