Wandering star disrupts stellar nursery: Event provides new evidence that traveling stars can form binary systems
From a zoomed out, distant view, star-forming cloud L483 appears normal. But when a Northwestern University-led team of astrophysicists zoomed in closer and closer, things became weirder and weirder. As the researchers peered closer into the cloud, they noticed that its magnetic field was curiously twisted. And then — as they examined a newborn star […]
Comets’ heads can be green, but never their tails. After 90 years, we finally know why: The team solved this mystery with the help of a vacuum chamber, a lot of lasers, and one powerful cosmic reaction.
Every so often, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud throw galactic snowballs made up of ice, dust and rocks our way: 4.6-billion-year-old leftovers from the formation of the solar system. These snowballs — or as we know them, comets — go through a colourful metamorphosis as they cross the sky, with many comets’ heads turning […]