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09/30/2005

Tenth Planet Has a Moon

Kathy Svitil

The newly discovered 10th planet, 2003 UB313, is looking more and more like one of the solar system's major players. It has the heft of a real planet (latest estimates put it at about 20 percent larger than Pluto), a catchy code name (Xena, after the TV warrior princess), and a Guinness Book-ish record of its own (at about 97 astronomical units-or 9 billion miles from the sun-it is the solar system's farthest detected object). And, astronomers from the California Institute of Technology and their colleagues have now discovered, it has a moon.

09/27/2005

Survey of Early Universe Uncovers Mature Galaxy Eight Times More Massive Than Milky Way

A massive galaxy seen when the universe was only 800 million years old has been discovered by teams of astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes.

09/12/2005

Most Distant Explosion in Universe Detected; Smashes Previous Record

Robert Tindol

Scientists using the NASA Swift satellite and several ground-based telescopes, including Palomar Observatory's robotic 60-inch telescope, have detected the most distant explosion yet, a gamma-ray burst from the edge of the visible universe.

09/08/2005

Work Continues on the Solar System's Three Recently Discovered Objects

Robert Tindol

When planetary scientists announced on July 29 that they had discovered a new planet larger than Pluto, the news overshadowed the two other objects the group had also found. But all three objects are odd additions to the solar system, and as such could revolutionize our understanding of how our part of the celestial neighborhood evolved.

08/01/2005

Caltech Scientists Create Tiny Photon Clock

Robert Tindol

In a new development that could be useful for future electronic devices, applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have created a tiny disk that vibrates steadily like a tuning fork while it is pumped with light. This is the first micro-mechanical device that has been operated at a steady frequency by the action of photons alone.

07/29/2005

Planetary Scientists Discover Tenth Planet

A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory, California Institute of Technology planetary scientist Mike Brown announced today.

07/27/2005

KamLAND Detector Provides New Way to Study Heat from Radioactive Materials Within Earth

Robert Tindol

Much of the heat within our planet is caused by the radioactive decay of the elements uranium and thorium. Now, an international team of particle physicists using a special detector in Japan has demonstrated a novel method of measuring that radioactive heat.

07/21/2005

Deep Impact: During and After Impact

Astronomers using the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope have been amazed by comet Tempel 1's behavior during and after its collision with the Deep Impact space probe.

06/28/2005

Researchers devise plasma experiment that shows how astrophysical jets are formed

Applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have devised a plasma experiment that shows how huge long, thin jets of material shoot out from exotic astrophysical objects such as young stars, black holes, and galactic nuclei.

05/30/2005

Andromeda Galaxy Three Times Bigger in Diameter Than Previously Thought

Robert Tindol

Scott Chapman, from the California Institute of Technology, and Rodrigo Ibata, from the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg in France, have led a team of astronomers in a project to map out the detailed motions of stars in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy. Their recent observations with the Keck telescopes show that the tenuous sprinkle of stars extending outward from the galaxy are actually part of the main disk itself.

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