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Astronomers Find Bounty of Failed Stars

By Guest PostOctober 14, 2011Sciencealeks scholz, astronomical oddballs, brown dwarfs, Chile, dublin institute of advanced studies, eth zurich, failed stars, garching, gas clouds, Germany, giant planets, hawaii, ireland, jupiter, koraljka muzic, mariangela bonavita, motohide tamura, ngc 1333, optical and infrared wavelengths, planets, ray jayawardhana, rho ophiuchi star, sonyc, stars, subaru telescope, substellar objects in nearby young clusters, switzerland, university of toronto, very large telescope, vincent geers, vlt

*One youngster only six times heftier than Jupiter*

TORONTO, ON – A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has discovered over two dozen new free-floating brown dwarfs, including a lightweight youngster only about six times heftier than Jupiter, that reside in two young star clusters. What’s more, one cluster contains a surprising surplus of them, harbouring half as many of these astronomical oddballs as normal stars.

“Our findings suggest once again that objects not much bigger than Jupiter could form the same way as stars do. In other words, nature appears to have more than one trick up its sleeve for producing planetary mass objects,” says Professor Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and leader of the international team that made the discovery. (more…)

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Watch an Atom’s Electrons Moving in Real Time

By Guest PostAugust 7, 20106 commentsScienceabdallah azzeer, atom, attosecond absorption spectroscopy, berkeley lab, electron motion, electrons, eleftherios goulielmakis, garching, graham fleming, krypton atom, laser light, lawrence berkeley national laboratory, max planck institute, mpq, oscillations, quantum optics, robin santra, stephen leone, zhi-heng loh

An international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom’s outer electrons for the first time.

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Astronomers Find Bounty of Failed Stars

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Watch an Atom’s Electrons Moving in Real Time