astrophysics
March 2013
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March 29, 2013gallery: Cosmic open house draws curious crowdKids of all ages flocked to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to learn about the universe and have fun doing it.
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March 27, 2013signal to background: Astronomers give Dark Energy Camera rave reviewsEven before the Dark Energy Survey begins, the Dark Energy Camera is exceeding expectations in the astrophysics community.
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March 21, 2013breaking: Planck reveals new insight into universeThe first cosmology results from the Planck satellite reveal an older universe populated with less dark energy and more matter than expected.
February 2013
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February 18, 2013explain it in 60 seconds: SpectroscopySpectroscopy is a technique that astronomers use to measure and analyze the hundreds of colors contained in the light emitted by stars, galaxies and other celestial objects.
January 2013
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January 28, 2013feature: Illuminating the dark universeThe pursuit of dark matter and dark energy is one of the most exciting—and most challenging—areas of science. Now researchers think they’re beginning to close in.
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January 22, 2013essay: A galaxy with a viewA physicist, a software developer and a writer step outside one night to take in nature’s beauty at a mountaintop observatory in Chile.
December 2012
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December 13, 2012breaking: Ironing out an astrophysics problemUsing an X-ray laser, scientists unravel the longstanding conundrum of why extreme plasmas in space look different than expected.
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December 3, 2012feature: Complex simulations: a driving force for LSSTThe Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the world’s largest sky survey, will rain a monsoon of data onto the astrophysics community. Simulations prepare scientists for the approaching storm.
November 2012
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November 27, 2012breaking: Stellar black widows entrap companion starsOf the hundreds of objects in the universe emitting gamma rays, two look to be "black widows," ancient stars extending their lives by sucking in material from companion stars. Stanford physicist Roger Romani is hot on the trail of these extreme stars.
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November 21, 2012logbook: Cosmic raysEnrico Fermi's notebook of December 1948 contains four pages that represent the genesis of his theory of cosmic rays, particles that can hit the Earth's atmosphere at high speeds. In these pages, he worked out the acceleration of cosmic rays due to a series of collisions with magnetic clouds moving through the universe, a process later named Fermi acceleration.
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November 12, 2012breaking: BOSS collaboration measures expansion of the universe 11 billion years agoThe BOSS collaboration has looked so far back in time that they observed the period before dark energy began to dominate the largest scales of the universe.
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November 7, 2012breaking: Social scientists: Far-flung physicists meet face-to-faceA tidal wave of gamma-ray scientists swept into Monterey, California, for the Fourth International Fermi Symposium, and despite the idyllic photo of a lovely local beach that graced the event poster, they didn’t come for the sun and surf. They came for science—and some face time.
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November 1, 2012breaking: Fermi telescope gazes through fog to count the starsA recent measurement of how many gamma rays make it through a cosmic “fog” of starlight reveals just how many stars there are in the universe.
October 2012
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October 23, 2012explain it in 60 seconds: Gravitational wavesIf you could detect a bowling ball’s gravitational waves, you would know when someone threw the ball—even if you were standing outside the bowling alley.
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October 19, 2012signal to background: Learning to play the dark matter boogieA growing suite of computational instruments is helping scientists determine how fast local concentrations of dark matter move, which in turn could help them cut in on the dance of dark matter particles.
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October 16, 2012feature: Bringing the universe into full focusFrom supernova explosions to writhing tendrils of dark matter, visualizations give new life to models and theories.
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October 5, 2012breaking: Stars dancing around a black hole may test relativityThe Keck Observatory's observations of two stars orbiting the black hole at the center of our galaxy may reveal insight into the curvature of space-time.
September 2012
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September 17, 2012breaking: World’s most powerful digital camera records first imagesThe Dark Energy Camera, a 570-megapixel camera mounted on a telescope in Chile, achieved first light on Sept. 12.
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September 5, 2012feature: The Dark Energy Camera opens its eyesA long-awaited device that will help unravel one of the universe’s most compelling mysteries gets ready to see first light.
August 2012
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August 23, 2012breaking: How to grow a universe – just add a supercomputerResearchers have created the most realistic simulation of cosmic evolution to date.
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