29 JANUARY 2021
Ever since the discovery of a chemical called phosphine on Venus was announced in September last year, the scientific community has been in a tizzy. Scientists have published papers back and forth, trying to debunk or bolster the claim.
With two new papers landing this week, some are claiming the nails are being hammered into the phosphine coffin. We suspect, however, that the detection will continue to be scrutinised and discussed for some time to come.
So what s the actual deal? Read on for a brief primer.
Phosphine on Venus? Why does it matter?
The discovery itself is pretty fascinating. Using two different instruments at different times - the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in 2017 and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in 2019 - a team led by astrobiologist Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK detected the spectral signature of a chemical called phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere, at 20 parts per billion. The findings
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IMAGE: On the left is a simulated image in which intracluster light is visible as a diffuse haze between discrete peaks of brightness the galaxies. In observations, as seen in. view more
Credit: Left image: Jesse Golden-Marx; simulation by The IllustrisTNG. Right image: Dark Energy Survey and Yuanyuan Zhang
A combination of observational data and sophisticated computer simulations have yielded advances in a field of astrophysics that has languished for half a century. The Dark Energy Survey, which is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, has published a burst of new results on what s called intracluster light, or ICL, a faint type of light found inside galaxy clusters.
DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
A combination of observational data and sophisticated computer simulations have yielded advances in a field of astrophysics that has languished for half a century. The Dark Energy Survey, which is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, has published a burst of new results on what s called intracluster light, or ICL, a faint type of light found inside galaxy clusters.
The first burst of new, precision ICL measurements appeared in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal in April 2019. Another appeared more recently in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In a surprise finding of the latter, DES physicists discovered new evidence that ICL might provide a new way to measure a mysterious substance called dark matter.
Radiogalaxies géantes : De récentes découvertes enrichissent notre compréhension de l univers 20minutes.fr - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from 20minutes.fr Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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MGTC J095959.63+024608.6 and MGTC J100016.84+015133 were found with the powerful MeerKAT telescope (I. Heywood, Oxford/Rhodes/SARAO)
Astronomers have discovered two cosmic beasts in a small patch of sky. Dwarfing the Milky way, the two new radio galaxies are thought to be among the largest single objects in the universe.
Whereas normal radio galaxies are fairly common, only a few hundred of these have radio jets exceeding 700 kilo-parsecs in size, or around 22 times the size of the Milky Way. The latest research shows the discoveries – named MGTC J095959.63+024608.6 and MGTC J100016.84+015133.0 – are more than 2 Mega-parsecs across: about 6.5 million light-years or about 62 times the size of the Milky Way. These “truly enormous systems” are dubbed “giant radio galaxies,” say authors.