Dust-swaddled galaxies light up the Universe

September 3rd, 2009 LONDON - A new research has shown that the vast Andromeda galaxy appears to have expanded by cannibalizing on stars from other galaxies. According to a report by BBC News, when an international team of scientists mapped Andromeda, they discovered stars that they said were "remnants of dwarf galaxies".

August 18th, 2009 LONDON - A new research by scientists has claimed that dark energy - the mysterious substance thought to make up three-quarters of the universe - may not actually exist. The concept of dark energy was created by cosmologists to fit Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity into reality after modern space telescopes discovered that the Universe was not behaving as it should.

August 10th, 2009 LONDON - Computer simulations indicate that a "naked" black hole may yet emerge in our universe, after spinning away its event horizon, which would lead to the breakdown of the laws of physics. In 1969, physicist Roger Penrose postulated that every singularity, or black hole, must be shrouded by an event horizon from which nothing, including light, can escape.

July 20th, 2009 LONDON - In a new research, scientists have attributed the clinginess of Martian dust to electrons jumping back and forth between dust grains as they collide in the wind. he research became necessary as many probes sent to the Red Planet, like the Mars rover Spirit, get stuck in Martian soil.

July 6th, 2009 LONDON - A new research has determined that cosmic 'whips', which are topological defects in space-time larger than the observable universe, can be detected with the help of gravitational waves. Many theories predict the existence of cosmic strings.

July 6th, 2009 LONDON - Astronomers have come by the first solid evidence of a new class of medium sized black holes, with more than 500 times the sun's mass, in a distant galaxy. This new source, identified as HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), lies towards the edge of the galaxy ESO 243-49.

June 15th, 2009 LONDON - A team of astronomers has claimed to have seen hints of the first planet to be spotted outside the Milky Way galaxy, in the Andromeda galaxy. According to a report by BBC News, the team, which has made the finding, is made up of researchers from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy and collaborators in Switzerland, Spain, and Russia.

June 10th, 2009 LONDON - Astronomers have detected evidence of a new clutch of tiny, dense galaxies, dubbed 'cosmic cannonballs', which thrived in the early Universe, and are nowhere to be seen today. According to a report in New Scientist, the ultra-dense galaxies, which were already full of old stars when the universe was less than 3 billion years old, were first reported in 2008.

May 30th, 2009 LONDON - Cosmologists have come up with a model postulating the existence of a 'chameleon' particle, which would change its mass depending on its environment, and might be used to explain the accelerating expansion of the Universe. According to a report in Nature News, a new research has claimed to have spotted signs of this elusive particle, whose existence was first postulated in 2003 to explain the accelerating expansion of the Universe, which has been attributed to some unknown 'dark energy'.

May 19th, 2009 LONDON - In a move that is reminiscent of scientists rejecting the view held by many people in the medieval times that the Earth is flat, a team of researchers has dismissed the notion that the Universe is completely flat. According to a report in New Scientist, when it comes to the universe, "flatness" refers to the fate of light beams traveling large distances parallel to each other.

May 2nd, 2009 LONDON - A British space mission, which would include two deep space telescopes, dubbed Herschel and Planck, will probe the ancient history of the cosmos going right back to the dawn of time at the Big Bang - and possibly before. According to a report in the Telegraph, the European Space Agency probes would be fired into space on an Arianne 5 rocket on May 14.

April 28th, 2009 LONDON - Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the universe, which is a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth. According to a report in New Scientist, it detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, around the end of the cosmic "dark ages", when the first stars and galaxies were lighting up space.

April 7th, 2009 LONDON - In a new research, scientists have determined that some of the biggest galaxies in the early universe seem to have grown quicker than thought possible and may have bulked up on streams of gas flowing along filaments of dark matter. Monster galaxies have long been thought to take a long time to form, growing slowly by gobbling up smaller galaxies like a giant amoeba absorbing food.

February 13th, 2009 LONDON - Stars in ultra compact dwarf (UCD) galaxies, discovered recently, may have been packed a million times more densely than in the solar neighbourhood, according to calculations made by a team of astronomers. UCDs, discovered in 1999, are still enormous by our standards, about 60 light years across, yet they are less than 1,000th the size of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

February 6th, 2009 LONDON - Star-forming regions in infant galaxies are small yet hyperactive, producing stars at astonishingly high rates, according to the latest evidence unearthed by astronomers. Galaxies, including the Milky Way, consist of hundreds of billions of stars.