Recent Posts Tagged With 'astrophysics'

• Redshift

  Posted on Saturday December 6th, 2008 at 23:00 in galaxies, astrophysics

  There are some recent very interesting research results about very distant early galaxies that I want to discuss. Understanding these results depends on knowing a few basic concepts that one learns in any modern introduction to astronomy. I expect th...

• The first stars

  Posted on Monday September 8th, 2008 at 04:01 in star formation, astrophysics

  Once upon a time when the universe was very young, before there were even galaxies that could be "far, far away", the first stars were born.The story of how this probably happened, which astrophysicists have been trying to figure out for decades, is ...

• Evidence for dark energy accumulates

  Posted on Monday August 18th, 2008 at 00:22 in cosmology, dark energy, astrophysics

  Dark energy (in its most plausible form as a "cosmological constant") has been a hypothetical possibility almost since Einstein's publication of his general theory of relativity in 1916. (Check here for our previous discussions of dark energy.)Howeve...

• More evidence for the GZK cosmic ray cut-off

  Posted on Tuesday July 29th, 2008 at 02:21 in astrophysics, cosmic rays

  Last December we had a rather detailed discussion of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). The occasion for this was an important announcement of cosmic ray observations from the Pierre Auger Observatory. Science magazine ranked this result as the t...

• GLAST and gamma-ray astronomy

  Posted on Sunday June 1st, 2008 at 03:51 in astronomy, black holes, dark matter, supernovae, astrophysics, cosmic rays, gamma-ray bursts, gamma-ray astronomy

  According to the present schedule, the GLAST gamma-ray telescope mission will be launched next week, on June 5, around noon EDT. If you're reading this before then, you can expect to find quite a bit of news coverage around that date. It's actually k...

• Ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

  Posted on Tuesday December 11th, 2007 at 01:27 in supernovae, astrophysics, cosmic rays

  I'm just trying to catch up on interesting science news of the past few weeks, and what happens? I pick a topic that seems to have had significant new developments and is also straightforward enough for a relatively brief post. But instead of somethi...

• Readings: Cosmology and astrophysics, 4 November 2007

  Posted on Sunday November 4th, 2007 at 23:42 in cosmology, readings, dark matter, dark energy, astrophysics, open questions

  #editor {color: #00b000}The text following each item is quoted material, except for editorial comments, which are in color.FSU physicist shining a light on mysterious 'dark matter'"Recent scientific breakthroughs have shown that most of the matter in...

• Beyond Einstein redux

  Posted on Sunday September 16th, 2007 at 04:19 in cosmology, dark energy, astrophysics, beyond einstein

  You may recall a rather detailed discussion last November of NASA's Beyond Einstein program back here. In a nutshell, NASA was looking at a number of very interesting space missions related to astrophysics and cosmology. But because of the foolish em...