New light on dark matter: space station magnet attracts praise

By Kevin Orrman-Rossiter, University of Melbourne

Nobel prizewinner Samuel Ting, early this morning (AEDT), announced the first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) search for dark matter. The findings, published in Physical Review Letters…

24 April 2012

9vpmjr5j-1335158346 — Knowing where cosmic rays don’t come from brings scientists another step closer to determining their origin. NSF/J. Yang

An extragalactic mystery: where do high-energy cosmic rays come from?

By David Jones, The Conversation

It’s been the defining question of high-energy astrophysics for the past century: where do cosmic rays come from? New findings from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole have brought us closer…

4 November 2011

6032588644_eb9f6841ef-1320295539 — If the signs are right, fundamental equations of cosmology may need altering. waljoris

Is life on Earth due to a quirk in the laws of physics?

By John K. Webb

A radical discovery by my colleagues and I – reported this week in Physical Review Letters – could help explain why it was possible for life (at least as we know it) to develop on Earth, but not in other…

6 June 2011

2140054841_e3294776bd_b — What tasty treats await astronomers in the next few decades? Lea/Flickr

An eye to the future of astronomy … a cosmic pick ‘n’ mix

By Bryan Gaensler

Predicting the future is a mug’s game. When I reflect back on what we thought we knew at the start of my research career in the mid-1990s, I sound like a wizened octogenarian, recalling a simpler time…

25 May 2011

2255781557_d7148597a7_b — The universe teems with energy and matter we don’t understand. stuant63/Flickr

Adventures in the dark side of cosmology

By Geraint Lewis

In questioning the fundamental nature of the universe, cosmology regularly grabs the public’s attention. But in an era in which we are observing deeper and more widely than ever before, our knowledge…

15 April 2011

File_dark_matter_map_in_abell_1689_based_on_a_hubble_space_telescope_image_ — Scientists believe dark matter makes up 23% of the universe. NASA

New chatter on dark matter

By Jeremy Mould, Swinburne University of Technology

Dark matter has worked its way back into the news in the last few days with the completion of a detection experiment in a tunnel deep under the Italian Alps. Researchers from Columbia University used…

7 April 2011

See_explanation._clicking_on_the_picture_will_download_the_highest_resolution_version_available — Viewed from afar, the Milky Way might appear similar to the galaxy known as NGC 7331. R. Jay GaBany/NASA

Explainer: a beginner’s guide to the galaxy

By Michael J. I. Brown, Monash University

Where are we within our galaxy? How did our galaxy form? How did it evolve over the aeons? Astronomers have been asking these questions for the past century, and have recently begun discerning the answers…