detail | Common News Update

Sep12023 by adminNo Comments

James Webb: Telescope reveals new detail in famous supernova

Science

NASA/ESA/CSA/M.Matsuura et alBy Jonathan AmosScience correspondentIt's like a celestial pearl necklace. This is an image of a supernova - an exploded star - taken by the new super space telescope James Webb (JWST).SN1987A, as it's known, is one of the most famous and studied objects in the southern hemisphere sky.When the star went boom in 1987, it was the nearest, brightest supernova to be seen from Earth in almost 400 years. And now the $ 10bn (£8bn) Webb observatory is showing us details never revealed before.SN1987A is sited a mere 170,000 light-years from us in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy.Astronomers are fascinated with the object because it provides an intricate view of what happens when big stars end their days.Dying star images s...

Feb112021 by adminNo Comments

Families of detainees detail a vision for justice in Syria

World

BEIRUT -- Late one night in 2015, a friend of Yasmen Almashan tagged a photo to her Facebook account. The notification ended a tormented wait for a sign from her brother, detained three years earlier by Syrian troops.The photo of Okba, Almashan’s older brother, was among thousands of graphic images of the emaciated and bloodied corpses of detainees in the prisons of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The photos were smuggled out by a sympathetic forensic photographer codenamed Caesar.The photo brought some relief, Almashan said. Okba’s bruised eyes, stubble, and relatively unchanged weight indicated he died soon after his detention, so the torture didn’t last long.It also meant the wait for his return was over. “The wait was full of hope, anticipation, and it kept us in our place, costing us m...

Sep182020 by adminNo Comments

Astronomers observe stellar winds from aging stars in unprecedented detail

Science

Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Astronomers have captured high resolution images of stellar winds emanating from a diversity of aging stars. The observations, detailed Thursday in the journal Science, suggest the dramatic shapes of planetary nebulae are formed by interactions between stellar winds and nearby planets and stars. Advertisement As dying stars swell and cool, they expel particles and shed mass, producing stellar winds. As the red giants continue to age and evolve, they heat up again, casting off layers of ejected stellar material. Stellar radiation causes these sloughed layers to glow, creating what astronomers call planetary nebulae. Scientists have long struggled to explain the wide variety of shapes and colors that characterize planetary nebulae. "The sun, which will ultimately become a...

Jun82020 by adminNo Comments

Genomic researchers detail the peopling of the Caribbean

Science

June 5 (UPI) -- Until now, the peopling of the Caribbean -- one of the last parts of the Americas to be settled by humans -- has remained poorly understood. Thanks to new analysis of the genomes of 93 ancient Caribbean islanders, researchers are gaining new insights into Caribbean's earliest settlers. Advertisement Research into the peopling of the Caribbean has been held back by the region's hot, humid weather. "In tropical climates DNA deteriorates faster, making it more difficult to reconstruct the sequences to a degree that allows us to answer the questions we have," Kathrin Nägele, doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, told UPI in an email. Scientists have also struggled to find funding for excavation work on the islands. "Fu...

Jan302020 by adminNo Comments

Sun’s surface seen in remarkable new detail

Science

Media playback is unsupported on your device Behold the Sun's convulsing surface at a level of detail never seen before!The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope on Hawaii has released pictures that show features as small as 30km across.This is remarkable when set against the scale of our star, which has a diameter of about 1.4 million km and is 149 million km from Earth.The cell-like structures are roughly the size of the US state of Texas. They are convecting masses of hot, excited gas, or plasma.The bright centres are where this solar material is rising; the surrounding dark lanes are where plasma is cooling and sinking. Cheops telescope launches to study far-off worlds Solar Orbiter ready to take on audacious mission DKIST is a brand new facili...