Month: February 2013
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Living planets in a stellar graveyard
When our Sun runs out of nuclear fuel, it will shed its outer layers, while what’s left of the core will remain as a white dwarf: an object the size of Earth, but far more massive. During the final stages of the Sun’s life, Earth is likely to perish as a habitable world, but that’s…
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Measuring the spin of a black hole using X-rays
The region near a black hole is one of the most extreme environments in the Universe, but historically it’s been hard to study directly. Using the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR telescopes, astronomers have measured the rotation of gas near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. They found that this…
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Will we ever know the identity of dark matter?
Forgive me if I get excited for a moment, but…today marks my first contribution to BBC Future! The feature I contributed is part of the “Will we ever?” series, in which science writers ask some big questions about what research may or may not be able to answer in the future. My article pondered whether…
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Electron, heal thyself! Making curved electron beams go around barriers
Electron beams, like light, spread out when they pass through an opening. Even highly focused beams such as lasers spread over large distances, a result of the wave character of light. However, by manipulating the wave form near its source, researchers can create something known as an Airy beam, which doesn’t disperse—and in fact follows…
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New exoplanet is smaller and hotter than Mercury
We often focus on the search for Earth-like planets (whatever that means) when we talk about exoplanets: planets orbiting other stars. However, another important goal is to categorize as many planetary systems as possible, determining what kind of planets orbit what sort of stars. That catalog is gradually revealing the way planets form, and how…
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Procrastination and protons
Double X Science chemistry editor Adrienne Roehrich started a new podcast series, discussing stories of the week. Her first cohost was…me! We talked about important women in biochemistry, the size of protons, the science of procrastination, and cosmic rays—all in 15 minutes. You can download the podcast from the Double X site, or subscribe through…
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Weird supernova marks the spot of a violent outburst…and black hole
Any core-collapse supernova—the explosion of a massive star—is by nature powerful, destructive, and rare. The really dramatic supernovas have the extra effect of exploding in a non-spherical way, beaming a lot of their matter and energy along an axis. When Earth is aligned with those beams, we see the supernova as a gamma ray burst…
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How big is a proton?
It’s fundamental and natural to ask this question about an object: “how big is it?” For many things—most everyday objects, people, planets, stars—size is easy to measure. However, other things are more challenging, including the size of a proton: one of the three particles that make up every ordinary bit of matter. The major challenge…
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High-energy cosmic rays are sped on their way by exploding stars
Where do cosmic rays originate? Cosmic rays are mostly high-energy protons from deep space that hit Earth’s upper atmosphere, creating showers of other particles that can be detected at the surface. Some of these protons are so incredibly high energy—meaning they’re moving just a whisker slower than the speed of light—that only exceptional astronomical events…
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Kaboom! A simulation shows how impacts shaped and nearly destroyed Vesta
Vesta is the second-largest asteroid in the Solar System, and recent measurements by the Dawn mission showed that it’s actually a protoplanet: a piece of planet-like material left over from the early days of our Solar System. However, Dawn is significantly non-spherical and very battered. Most notably, it has two huge overlapping craters near its…