Fear No Supernova

Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion – as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime – another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. However, given the vastness...

Study of Flow Induced By Sine Wave And Saw Tooth Plasma Actuators

How to improve the performance of the plasma actuators is a problem that is of great interest to many scientific researchers in the field of electrohydrodynamics. Professor WANG Lianze and his group from the School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University, set...

Fermi’s Latest Gamma-ray Census Highlights Cosmic Mysteries

Every three hours, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope scans the entire sky and deepens its portrait of the high-energy universe. Every year, the satellite’s scientists reanalyze all of the data it has collected, exploiting updated analysis...

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Reveals Strange Specimen in Starry Sea

A new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer shows what looks like a glowing jellyfish floating at the bottom of a dark, speckled sea. In reality, this critter belongs to the cosmos — it’s a dying star surrounded by fluorescing...

Chandra X-ray Observatory Finds Youngest Black Hole Known to Exist in Our Cosmic Neighborhood

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old black hole provides a unique opportunity to watch this type of object develop from infancy.

Shedding ‘Bent’ Light on Dark Matter

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a giant cosmic magnifying glass to create one of the sharpest and most detailed maps of dark matter in the universe.

Cosmic Lens Used to Probe Dark Energy for First Time

Astronomers have devised a new method for measuring perhaps the greatest puzzle of our universe — dark energy. This mysterious force, discovered in 1998, is pushing our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds.

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Detects High-energy Gamma-rays From Cygnus X-3

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a compact object — either a neutron star...