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…
Prof Freeman’s 1970 paper on dark matter revolutionised astronomy.
Prime Minister's Science Prizes/Bearcage)
Australian astronomer Ken Freeman has won the 2012 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science, more than 40 years after he revolutionised his field with his research on dark matter. Professor Freeman, the Duffield…
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…
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…
Australian astronomers have mapped the cosmic filaments that bind the Milky Way together, which may help reveal how galaxies form.
Michael Boylan-Kolchin, University of California Irvine
Australian astronomers have shed new light on the cosmic filament that binds the Milky Way together, providing new clues on how the galaxy is formed and how it grows. The Milky Way, home to our solar system…
Even the Hubble telescope, which took this picture of Bright Spiral Galaxy M81, is not capable of taking the wide-angle shots needed for all sky astrophysics, so new equipment must be invented.
NASA http://www.nasa.gov
Some astronomical questions can only be answered by looking at the whole sky all at once but the technology to do that doesn’t exist yet. Enter the new ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics…
Artistic view of a close-up of a supermassive black hole. This image shows the material surrounding the black hole, which ultimately will fall in the central region releasing the X-ray radiation detected in this work.
NASA/CXC/A.Hobart
Astrophysicists have discovered black holes that formed up to 12.5 billion years ago – among the oldest examples of the phenomena ever seen. Black holes are objects in the Universe where a large amount…
What tasty treats await astronomers in the next few decades?
Lea/Flickr
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…
The universe teems with energy and matter we don’t understand.
stuant63/Flickr
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 of…
Scientists believe dark matter makes up 23% of the universe.
NASA
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 a…
Viewed from afar, the Milky Way might appear similar to the galaxy known as NGC 7331.
R. Jay GaBany/NASA
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…