news 2018

A small star has been observed forming out of the dust surrounding a larger star, in a similar way to how planets are born. Astronomers were observing the formation of a massive young star, called MM 1a, when they discovered an unexpected object nearby. MM 1a is surrounded by rotating disc of gas and dust.

Researchers from the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations have announced gravitational wave observations of four new binary black holes and released their first catalogue of gravitational wave events. Since the detectors first started operation in September 2015 , the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations, which include researchers from the University of Birmingham, have completed two observation runs.

Here's a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial. From new insights into star formation, to an annual blast injury conference, here is some quick-read news from across the College. Extreme starburst galaxies Current theories predict a maximum amount of stars that a galaxy can produce each year.

Gravitational waves have been detected after the largest collision of black holes ever observed. The collision took place roughly five billion years ago and produced gravitational waves that were observed on Earth by extremely sensitive detectors on 29 July 2017. The gravitational waves - tiny ripples in space-time that are produced by violent cosmic events - showed that the black holes weighed more than 50 and 34 times the mass of our Sun and collided to produce a single object over 80 times the mass of our star.

A new toy model proposes a way to unify dark energy and dark matter in our Universe. Normal matter is the basic building block of humans, plants, and the solar system, but yet only comprises 5% of all the matter in the Universe. The other 95% is typically invisible, other than when its presence is inferred via gravitational effects.

University of Glasgow physicists are closing out 2018 with the publication of a wealth of new gravitational wave data collected during the first two observing runs of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. video In a new paper just published online, scientists from the LIGO and Virgo research collaborations present data from a total of 10 stellar-mass binary black hole mergers and one merger of neutron stars.

The 300-million-mile journey that culminated in NASA's InSight landing on Mars this week represents a major scientific coup for all involved, including mission participants from the University of Bristol. The £635m lander, which came to rest on Mars on Monday, will study the makeup and dimensions of the Red Planet's core.

A mission to Mars which carries instruments co-designed by Oxford scientists, has successfully landed and will soon begin the first study of the heart of the planet. The NASA InSight mission landed shortly after 19:50 GMT on Monday, 26 November. InSight will study the inside of Mars to learn how planets, moons and meteorites with rocky surfaces, including the Earth and its Moon, formed.

The windows in are houses are quite literally allowing us to glimpse into the chaotic past of the Universe as new research has revealed that silica - the main component of glass - was originally formed inside the heart of exploding stars. In a new study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , an international team of scientists has detected silica in the remnants of two distant supernova billions of light years away from Earth.

New research has revealed that non-equilibrium quantum systems do obey universal laws, a discovery that can bring us closer to revealing the secrets of the Big Bang. Researchers from the University of Nottingham joined teams at the Technical University of Vienna and the University Heidenberg to undertake It shows that when quantum particles whirl around they obey universal laws, meaning what is true for one quantum system is also true for others.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration have reported the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors.

A NASA spacecraft has analysed magnetic explosions on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, watching the process that creates auroras. The new study, including researchers from Imperial College London, showed that these events, though small, were fast enough to hurl particles towards the Earth's upper atmosphere.

A close study of auroras has revealed new ways of understanding the physics of explosive energy releases in space, according to new UCL-led research. Auroras are an incredible light show caused by electrically charged particles in near-Earth space spiralling down Earth's magnetic field and colliding with gases in the atmosphere, causing them to glow.

A giant crater left over from the catastrophic impact of a meteorite crashing into Earth has been uncovered deep below the ice sheets in Greenland. The 31 km-wide crater, which is bigger than Paris, has been discovered by an international team of scientists who believe it to have been caused by a meteorite impact on Earth between 3 million and 12,000 years ago.

The Gaia satellite has spotted an enormous 'ghost' galaxy lurking on the outskirts of the Milky Way. When we looked closer, it turned out we found something new Vasily Belokurov An international team of astronomers, including from the University of Cambridge, discovered the massive object when trawling through data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite.

A galaxy a third the size of our own, but extremely faint, has been observed orbiting around the Milky Way. An international team, including an astronomer from Imperial College London, discovered the massive galaxy when trawling through data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. Despite its size, the galaxy has very few stars, challenging conventional theories of galaxy formation.

Galaxy evolution can be chaotic and messy, but it seems that streams of cold gas spraying out from the region around supermassive black holes may act to calm the storm. This is according to an international team of scientists who have provided the first clear and compelling evidence of this process in action.

How a comet's dust tail forms bands stretching millions of kilometres across the sky has been observed for the first time by UCL scientists. The study, published today in Icarus, reveals the charged nature of the dust particles and the important role of the Sun in forming the characteristic patterns.

A scientist involved in creating the ultra-sensitive detectors needed to glimpse gravitational waves for the very first time has been awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize. Dr Katherine Dooley, from Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy, has picked up the £100,000 prize for scientific work 'that has had a significant international impact'.

Researchers have identified a young star with four Jupiter and Saturn-sized planets in orbit around it, the first time that so many massive planets have been detected in such a young system. The system has also set a new record for the most extreme range of orbits yet observed: the outermost planet is more than a thousand times further from the star than the innermost one, which raises interesting questions about how such a system might have formed.