Astrophysical Journal

Betelgeuse is normally one of the brightest, most recognizable stars of the winter sky, marking the left shoulder of the constellation Orion. But lately, it has been behaving strangely: an unprecedentedly large drop in its brightness has been observed in early 2020 (Figure 1), which has prompted speculation that Betelgeuse may be about to explode.

How hot is the Universe today? How hot was it before? A new study by an international team of researchers, including members of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), suggests that the mean temperature of gas in large structures of the Universe has increased about 3 times in the last 8 billion years, to reach about two million Kelvin today.

Planetary scientists using ALMA revealed the secrets of the atmosphere of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas.

Researchers have discovered gigantic clouds of gaseous carbon more than a radius of 30,000 light-years around young galaxies using ALMA.

Theoreticians in two different fields defied the common knowledge that planets orbit stars like the Sun. They proposed the possibility of thousands of planets around a supermassive black hole.

Two peacock-shaped gaseous clouds were revealed in the Large Magellanic Cloud by observations with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

Researchers have detected a radio signal from abundant interstellar dust in MACS0416_Y1, a galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Standard models can’t explain this much dust in a galaxy this young, forcing us to rethink the history of star formation.

Researchers spotted the formation sites of planets around a young star resembling our Sun. Two rings of dust around the star, at distances comparable to the asteroid belt and the orbit of Neptune in our Solar System, suggest that we are witnessing the formation of a planetary system similar to ours.

A team of experts in nuclear fusion and astronomy has computed high-accuracy atomic data for analyzing light from a kilonova, a birth place of heavy elements. They found that their new data set could predict kilonovae brightness with much better accuracy than before. This aids our understanding of the cosmic origins of heavy elements.

Astronomers have detected a stealthy black hole from its effects on an interstellar gas cloud. This intermediate mass black hole is one of over 100 million quiet black holes expected to be lurking in our Galaxy. These results provide a new method to search for other hidden black holes and help us understand the growth and evolution of black holes.

Astronomers have unveiled the origins of two different gas streams from a baby star. Using ALMA, they found that the slow outflow and the high speed jet from a protostar have misaligned axes and that the former started to be ejected earlier than the latter. These indicate that streams were launched from different parts of disk around the protostar.

Based on computer simulations and new observations from ALMA, researchers have found that the rings of gas surrounding active supermassive black holes are not simple donut shapes. Instead, gas expelled from the center interacts with infalling gas to create a dynamic circulation pattern, similar to a water fountain in a city park.

Researchers have found white dwarf stars with masses close to the maximum stable mass are likely to produce large amounts of manganese, iron, and nickel after it orbits another star and explodes.

Thermodynamics provides insight into the internal energy of a system and the energy interaction with its surroundings. This relies on the local thermal equilibrium of a system.

Dwarf galaxies and star-containing halos in a large spiral galaxy 25 million light-years away from Earth have been identified using a Japanese telescope in Hawaii.

An international team of researchers led by Kavli IPMU's Alexey Tolstov and Ken'ichi Nomoto have discovered a way to use UV light from superluminous supernovae to uncover its explosion mechanism, and used it to identify Gaia16apd as a shock-interacting supernova, reports a new study.

Astronomers have gotten their first look at exactly where most of today’s stars were born. To do so, they used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to look at distant galaxies seen as they were some 10 billion years ago.

A mysterious flash of X-rays has been discovered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in the deepest X-ray image ever obtained. This source likely comes from some sort of destructive event, but may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before.

Astronomers have discovered a 'hot molecular core,' a cocoon of molecules surrounding a newborn massive star, for the first time outside our Galaxy.

An international collaboration led by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) have discovered that the color of supernovae during a specific phase could be an indicator for detecting the most distant and oldest supernovae in the Universe - more than 13 billion years old.

Kavli IPMU of The University of Tokyo, Japan, and Instituto de Astrofisica de La Plata, Argentina, scientists have found highly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron stars called magnetars could explain the energy source behind two extremely unusual stellar explosions.

For the first time, an international team of researchers has found that the connection between a galaxy cluster and surrounding dark matter is not characterized solely by the mass of clusters, but also by their formation history.

A novel ‘magic’ number of neutrons corresponding to a particular substructure of atomic nuclei is reported in Nature this week. New insights into the structures of atomic nuclei can help us to understand astrophysical processes, such as the creation of atomic nuclei in stars.

A research group of University of Tsukuba, RIKEN, and Tokyo Institute of Technology announced that the ACM Gordon Bell Prize (*1) was awarded to that group.

Latest news from Nature 18 April 2012

Latest news from Nature 26 January 2012

Newly available data on rare, neutron-rich isotopes reveal shortcomings of models describing the synthesis of elements

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