QUANTUM PHYSICS - FEATURED CONTENT

Antimatter & AntiProton Decelerator

Antihydrogen Experiment Apparatus

The Large Hadron Collider

High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider

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ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTS

Hubble makes precise measure of extrasolar world's true mass

An international team of astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to help make a precise measurement of the mass of a planet outside our solar system. The Hubble results show that the planet is 1.89 to 2.4 times as massive as Jupiter, our solar system's largest orbiting body.....

Hubble extrasolar planet search field in Sagittarius

This is an image of one-half of the Hubble Space Telescope field of view in the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). The field contains approximately 150,000 stars, down to 30th magnitude.....

The Pitch-Black Exoplanet WASP-12B

This image shows the exoplanet WASP-12b - an alien world as black as fresh asphalt, orbiting a star like our Sun. Scientists were able to measure its albedo: the amount of light the planet reflects......

European astronomers observe first evaporating planet

This image shows an overview of the transiting planet HD 209458b. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, for the first time, astronomers have observed the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet evaporating off into space (shown in blue in this illustration).....

FEATURED SCIENCE-CAST

THE SOUNDS OF THE INTERSTELLAR SPACE

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MXPlank Picture Of The Day From The Space

Seeing things sideways

This image from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) shows NGC 1448, a spiral galaxy located about 50 million light-years from Earth in the little-known constellation of Horologium (The Pendulum Clock). We tend to think of spiral galaxies as massive and roughly circular celestial bodies, so this glittering oval does not immediately appear to fit the visual bill. What’s going on?

Imagine a spiral galaxy as a circular frisbee spinning gently in space. When we see it face on, our observations reveal a spectacular amount of detail and structure — a great example from Hubble is the telescope’s view of Messier 51, otherwise known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. However, the NGC 1448 frisbee is very nearly edge-on with respect to Earth, giving it an appearance that is more oval than circular. The spiral arms, which curve out from NGC 1448’s dense core, can just about be seen.

Although spiral galaxies might appear static with their picturesque shapes frozen in space, this is very far from the truth. The stars in these dramatic spiral configurations are constantly moving and spinning around the galaxy’s core, with those on the inside whirling around faster than those sitting further out. This makes the formation and continued existence of a spiral galaxy’s arms something of a cosmic puzzle, because the arms wrapped around the spinning core should become wound tighter and tighter as time goes on — but this is not what we see. This is known as the winding problem.