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Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Saturday 31 January 2015

A NEAR-COLLISION STRETCHED THIS GALAXY LIKE A "TAFFY PULL"

Hubble image of NGC 7714 Two galaxies drifted too close together between 100 and 200 million years ago, and began to drag at and disrupt one another’s structure and shape 

At first glance,it looks like a giant rollercoaster loop.
However, this incredible image actually shows a ‘river’ of Sun-like stars that has been pulled deep into space by the gravitational tug of a bypassing galaxy
The golden loop is made of sun-like stars that have been pulled deep into space, far from the galaxy’s centre.
Experts say the galaxy, called NGC 7714, has witnessed some violent and dramatic events in its recent past.
Tell-tale signs of this brutality can be seen in NGC 7714’s strangely shaped arms, and in the smoky golden haze that stretches out from the galactic centre, they say.
The culprit is a smaller companion named NGC 7715, which lies just out of the frame of this image.
As a result, a ring and two long tails of stars have emerged from NGC 7714, creating a bridge between the two galaxies. This bridge acts as a pipeline, funnelling material from NGC 7715 towards its larger companion and feeding bursts of star formation. Most of the star-forming activity is concentrated at the bright galactic centre, although the whole galaxy is sparking new stars.
The galaxy is located approximately 100 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Pisces.
Astronomer believe that our Galaxy will also collide with its companion galaxy Andromeda after 4 billion years . Here is the Simulation of Galactic collision
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Source : Dailymail , io9

Sunday 18 January 2015

Researchers: Solar system may have Planet X , Planet Y

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The presence of two additional planets might explain the unexpected orbital features of some trans-Neptunian objects.

Scientists have postulated the existence of possibly two undiscovered planets beyond the orbit of Neptune to explain discrepancies in the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO). The objects have orbits that take them beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Theory predicts that they be randomly distributed and that their orbits must have a semi-major axis with a value around 150 AU; an orbital inclination of nearly zero degrees; and an angle of perihelion, the point in the object’s orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, of zero to 180 degrees.

However, a dozen ETNO do not fit these orbital criteria. These objects have semi-major axis values of 150 to 525 AU, orbital inclinations of around 20 degrees, and angles of perihelion far from 180 degrees.

According to a statement, a new study by astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and University of Cambridge have calculated that these orbital discrepancies could be explained by the existence of at least two additional planets beyond the orbits of Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto. Their study suggests that the gravitational pulls of those two planets must be disturbing the orbits of some smaller ETNO.

However, there are two difficulties with the hypothesis. One is that current models of the formation of our solar system do not allow for additional planets beyond Neptune. Secondly, the team’s sample size is very small, only 13 objects. However, additional results are in the pipeline, which will expand the sample.

“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of UCM and lead author on the study.

The new findings have been published in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Source : thespacereporter