News by Subject Space & Planetary

What does a gestating baby planet look like? New research in Nature by a team including Carnegie's Jaehan Bae investigated the effects of three planets in the process of forming around a young star, revealing the source of their atmospheres.

At the center of a galaxy called NGC 1068, a supermassive black hole hides within a thick doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. When astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study this cloud in more detail, they made an unexpected discovery that could explain why supermassive black holes grew so rapidly in the early Universe.

Astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, have discovered that powerful winds driven by supermassive black holes in the centers of dwarf galaxies have a significant impact on the evolution of these galaxies by suppressing star formation.

Gas blown out of the Milky Way disk from exploding stars falls back onto the galaxy to form new generations of stars. In an effort to account for this recycling process, astronomers were surprised to find a surplus of incoming gas.

A team of astronomers led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, has discovered that several of the small -- or 'dwarf' -- galaxies orbiting the Milky Way were likely stolen from the Large Magellanic Cloud, including several ultrafaint dwarfs, but also relatively bright and well-known satellite galaxies, such as Carina and Fornax.

Out at the boundary of our solar system, pressure runs high. This pressure, the force plasma, magnetic fields and particles like ions, cosmic rays and electrons exert on one another when they flow and collide, was recently measured by scientists in totality for the first time -- and it was found to be greater than expected.