Crab Pulsar's high-energy beam surprises astronomers. 6 October 2011Last updated at 21:29 The Crab Nebula has continued to surprise astronomers with a range of unexpected properties Astronomers have spotted gamma ray emissions coming from the Crab Pulsar at far higher energies than expected. This challenges notions of how these powerful electromagnetic rays - like light, but far more energetic - are formed, researchers suggest in Science.
They found emissions at more than 100 gigaelectronvolts - 100 billion times more energetic than visible light. The Crab Nebula that hosts the pulsar continues to amaze astronomers, despite being one of the most studied objects. The remnant of a supernova that lit up the skies on Earth in 1054, it has been taken in modern times to be a constant source of light - so constant that telescopes were trained on it for calibrations. But earlier this year, the Crab was spotted emitting gamma-ray flares that have confounded astronomers. As those particles move in curved paths, they emit the gamma rays that we can measure. Nasa's Kepler telescope finds planet orbiting two suns. 16 September 2011Last updated at 01:52 An artist's conception of Kepler-16b A planet orbiting two suns - the first confirmed alien world of its kind - has been found by Nasa's Kepler telescope, the US space agency announced.
It may resemble the planet Tatooine from the film Star Wars, but scientists say Luke Skywalker, or anyone at all, is unlikely to be living there. Named Kepler-16b, it is thought to be an uninhabitable cold gas giant, like Saturn. The newly detected body lies some 200 light years from Earth. Though there have been hints in the past that planets circling double stars might exist - "circumbinary planets", as they are known - scientists say this is the first confirmation. It means when the day ends on Kepler-16b, there is a double sunset, they say. 'Stunning' Kepler-16b's two suns are smaller than ours - at 69% and 20% of the mass of our Sun - making the surface temperature an estimated -100 to -70C (-150 to -100F). At Long Last, Moon's Core 'Seen' Apollo astronauts may be garnering another prize from their exploits of more than 3 decades ago. They left seismometers across the face of the moon to probe its interior, but no one had been able to paint a clear picture from the data the sensors collected.
Now, two independent groups have reanalyzed the Apollo data using modern but very different techniques, and both teams say they have detected lunar seismologists' prime target: a core of iron that is still molten 4.5 billion years after the moon's formation. The Apollo seismic experiment was challenging from the start. Moonquakes are sparse and feeble, the moon's impact-shattered crust garbles any seismic signals, and computers of that era couldn't handle the complete data set. Like an earthquake, a moonquake sets off ripples of motion called seismic waves that speed through surrounding rock. Astronomers get closer view of black hole jet.
By Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com While we may never know what it looks like inside a black hole, astronomers recently obtained one of the closest views yet. The sighting allowed scientists to confirm theories about how these giant cosmic sinkholes spew out jets of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light. Ever since the first observations of these powerful jets, which are among the brightest objects seen in the universe, astronomers have wondered what causes the particles to accelerate to such great speeds.
A leading hypothesis suggested the black hole's gigantic mass distorts space and time around it, twisting magnetic field lines into a coil that propels material outward. Now researchers have observed a jet during a period of extreme outburst and found evidence that streams of particles wind a corkscrew path away from the black hole, as the leading hypothesis predicts. These data support the suggestion that twisted magnetic field lines are creating the jet plumes. Sky. Welcome to Cool Cosmos! Design a Planet! Helen Sharman, Made in Sheffield.