 | |
| |
|
|
| |
| Gamma rays, galactic clusters, Pluto's "lava" | Jan 07, 2016 10:38 PM PST | url |
| | |
Added 1 new A* page:I made the mistake of looking at Twitter today—a mistake because NASA just tweeted a bunch of really interesting new articles that I now have to take time to tell you about!
- NASA's Fermi Space Telescope Sharpens its High-energy Vision - By reprocessing data from all gamma ray readings taken by the Fermi telescope since 2008, using updated know-how, NASA has been able to put together a much more precise map of the gamma ray sources coming to us from space. It's a pretty cool picture, and they highlight some sources (not A*, though!); there's also a video illustration of how they think most of these gamma rays, coming from supernova remnants, active supermassive black holes in other galaxies, and so forth, are created: a very high-energy electron, moving near light speed, collides with a low-energy photon; this slows the electron slightly, with some of that lost energy transferring to the photon, boosting it into the gamma range.
- NASA's Great Observatories Weigh Massive Young Galaxy Cluster - Using a combination of readings from various powerful telescopes, NASA has determined that a very large galactic cluster, 10 billion light years away—which means the light from it took so long to reach us that we're seeing it when it and the universe were still young—has the mass of about 500 trillion Suns—which is a lot! Studying this early massive structure will help scientists refine their ideas of how the universe has evolved.
- 'X' Marks a Curious Corner on Pluto's Icy Plains - Nifty high-res photos of relatively flat plains on Pluto show that they're actually active! Their surface is broken up into polygonal shapes some 10 to 25 miles across; scientists think these are huge chunks of solid, frozen nitrogen: warmed very slightly beneath the icy surface—miles down, in some cases—by Pluto's faint interior heat, a warmed nitrogen chunk rises, slowly lurching to the surface, where it will eventually cool and sink, a cycle NASA likens to a giant lava lamp.
|
·····
|
|
|
