All posts tagged: observed

Dramatic changes observed in one of universe’s biggest stars

Dramatic changes observed in one of universe’s biggest stars

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON, Feb 28 : The largest stars in the universe live the life of a rock star – they are born brilliant, live fast and die young. If that is the case, the one named WOH G64 might be considered the stellar equivalent of Jimi Hendrix. WOH G64, which is 28 times the mass of the sun and resides in a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud, is one of a handful of the biggest stars known, just like Hendrix was in rock ‘n’ roll. And observations spanning more than three decades show it is behaving unlike any star seen before. Astronomers have only an incomplete understanding of the life history of the largest stars, and the WOH G64 observations are providing new insight. Researchers observed a change that occurred in 2014 in the star’s color, corresponding to an increase in its surface temperature, as it evolved from red to yellow. The star had been classified as an extreme red supergiant but rapidly became a yellow hypergiant. This transition happened …

Researchers may have observed triplet superconductivity – the holy grail in quantum computing

Researchers may have observed triplet superconductivity – the holy grail in quantum computing

Published by Jenni Sidey

A wafer-thin layer of rust, formed naturally in air, helped researchers spot a behavior many physicists have chased for decades. That oxide, hematite (α-Fe2O3), appeared on the top layer of a stacked film device and “pinned” a magnetic layer in place. With that pinning, the team could flip the device between two magnetic states and watch what happened to superconductivity. What they saw was small in size but big in meaning: the transition temperature shifted the “wrong” way for an ordinary superconductor. Professor Jacob Linder at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), working at the QuSpin research centre, says the results point toward a long-sought state called triplet superconductivity. “We think we may have observed a triplet superconductor,” he said. The work, done with experimental collaborators in Italy, was published in Physical Review Letters and selected as an editor’s recommendation. “One of the major challenges in quantum technology is being able to perform data operations with sufficiently high accuracy,” says Jacob Linder. (CREDIT: Per Henning, NTNU) A superconductor that carries spin Superconductors carry …

JWST confirmed the most distant galaxy ever observed at 13.5 billion light years away

JWST confirmed the most distant galaxy ever observed at 13.5 billion light years away

Published by Jenni Sidey

With James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA has confirmed its sightings of the farthest known galaxy to date, providing an unprecedented look back into the early universe about 280 million years after the Big Bang. The discovery of MoM-z14 was accomplished by a joint effort of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Geneva, and many others. The results were published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics and provide additional evidence supporting scientists’ previous beliefs that the early universe’s brightness and activity levels were higher than expected. The team determined MoM-z14’s redshift of 14.44 using JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrography (NIRSpec). Light emitted from MoM-z14 has been travelling for nearly 13.5 billion years to reach Earth due to cosmic expansion. Therefore, MoM-z14 represents the closest object observed back to what is known as the cosmic dawn, when the universe began to form. “Using JWST has enabled us to see much farther back into the ancient past than we are capable of doing here on Earth, and yet what we see does not correspond to anything …