News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Astrophysicists have come a step closer to understanding the origin of a faint glow of gamma rays covering the night sky. They found that this light is brighter in regions that contain a lot of matter and dimmer where matter is sparser -- a correlation that could help them narrow down the properties of exotic astrophysical objects and invisible dark matter.

Nine Galactic sources are the highest-energy gamma -ray sources ever detected, which could suggest the presence of Galactic accelerators.

When it comes to the biggest and brightest explosions seen in the universe, University of Warwick astronomers have found that it takes two stars to make a gamma-ray burst.

Scientists have discovered the oldest solid material on Earth: 7-billion-year-old stardust trapped inside a meteorite. (For comparison, the sun is 4.6 billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5.) This stardust provides evidence for a 'baby boom' of new stars that formed 7 billion years ago, contrary to thinking that star formation happens at a steady, constant rate.

A balloon-borne scientific instrument designed to study the origin of cosmic rays is taking its second turn high above the continent of Antarctica three and a half weeks after its launch.

A group of scientists, among them several from GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and from Technical University of Darmstadt, succeeded to experimentally determine characteristics of nuclear processes in matter ten million times denser and 25 times hotter than the center of our sun. A result of the measurement is that intermediate-mass stars are very likely to explode, and not, as assumed until now, collapse. The findings are now published in the scientific magazine Physical Review Letters.