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07/13/2007

Dwarf Star Gulps Giant to Form Supernova

Robert Tindol

A team of European and American astronomers has announced the discovery of the best evidence yet for the nature of the star systems that explode as type Ia supernovae. The team obtained a unique set of observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Keck I 10-meter telescope in Hawaii.

07/11/2007

NASA'S Spitzer Finds Water Vapor on Hot, Alien Planet

Robert Tindol

The exoplanet HD 189733b has just been found to have water vapor in its atmosphere. The observation provides the best evidence to date that water exists on worlds outside our own solar system.

07/10/2007

Astronomers Claim to Find the Most Distant Known Galaxies

Jill Perry

Using natural "gravitational lenses," an international team of astronomers claim to have found the first traces of a population of the most distant galaxies yet seen-the light we see from them today left more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was just 500 million years old.

07/05/2007

Caltech Scientists Create Breakthrough Sensor Capable of Detecting Individual Molecules

Robert Tindol

Applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have figured out a way to detect single biological molecules with a microscopic optical device. The method has already proven effective for detecting the signaling proteins called cytokines that indicate the function of the immune system, and it could be used in numerous medical applications, such as the extremely early detection of cancer and other diseases, as well as in basic biological research.

06/14/2007

The Dwarf Planet Known as Eris is More Massive than Pluto, New Data Shows

Robert Tindol

Die-hard Pluto fans still seeking redemption for their demoted planet have cause for despair this week. New data shows that the dwarf planet Eris is 27 percent more massive than Pluto, thereby strengthening the decree last year that there are eight planets in the solar system and a growing list of dwarf planets.

06/05/2007

On-Chip Optics Makes Continuous Visible Light from Low-Power Infrared

John Avery

If you shine a red laser pointer through a glass window you wouldn't expect it to come out blue on the other side, but with a much brighter beam it just might. At high intensities light energy tends to combine and redistribute, so that red light really can produce blue.

05/31/2007

Astronomers Find Their Third Planet With Novel Telescope Network

Robert Tindol

Astronomers using the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) network of small telescopes are announcing today their discovery of a planet twice the mass of Jupiter that passes in front of its star every 31 hours. The planet is in the constellation Hercules and has been named TrES-3 as the third planet found with the TrES network.

05/30/2007

Running Rings Around the Galaxy

Robert Tindol

An astronomer at the California Institute of Technology has discovered three giant stellar streams arcing high over the Milky Way. Remnants of cannibalized galaxies and star clusters, the streams are between 13,000 and 130,000 light-years distant from Earth and extend over much of the northern sky. The new results are being presented by Carl Grillmair at this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii.

05/29/2007

Newly Discovered Olympian Galaxy Will Provide Fresh Insights into Galactic Formation

Kathy Svitil

A newly discovered dwarf galaxy in our local group has been found to have formed in a region of space far from our own and is falling into our system for the first time in its history.

05/23/2007

Caltech and Berkeley Astronomers Identify a New Class of Cosmic Explosions

Robert Tindol

Astronomers are announcing today the discovery of a new class of stellar explosions. The finding is based on observations of a flash seen in the Virgo cluster in a galaxy known as Messier 85.

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