Gamma-ray burst may have caused mass extinction 440 million years ago

October 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astrophysicists have used the H.E.S.S. telescopes to detect gamma rays emitting from the heart of the NGC 253 galaxy.

October 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, a team of scientists has found out that at least some forms of microscopic marine life like algae survived the mass extinction event caused by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago that probably killed off the dinosaurs and much of the world's living organisms. The research was done using the help of a model created by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers and their collaborators.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new University of Washington research indicates it is highly unlikely that comets have caused any of Earth's mass extinctions or have been responsible for more than one minor extinction event. The work also shows that many long-period comets that end up in Earth-crossing orbits likely originate from a region astronomers have long believed could not produce observable comets.

July 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found the core of an active galaxy, where a feeding supermassive black hole drives oppositely directed particle jets, as revealed by gamma rays. Gamma rays from the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy PMN J0948+0022 show that its central black hole drives a fast-moving particle beam.

July 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of astrophysicists has solved a mystery that led some scientists to speculate that the distribution of certain gamma rays in our Milky Way galaxy was evidence of a form of undetectable "dark matter" believed to make up much of the mass of the universe. In two separate scientific papers, the astrophysicists show that this distribution of gamma rays can be explained by the way "antimatter positrons" from the radioactive decay of elements, created by massive star explosions in the galaxy, propagate through the galaxy.

July 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Using a worldwide combination of diverse telescopes, astronomers have discovered that a giant galaxy's bursts of very high energy gamma rays are coming from a region very close to the supermassive black hole at its core. The discovery provides important new information about the mysterious workings of the powerful "engines" in the centers of innumerable galaxies throughout the Universe.

July 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have used NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to discover 16 pulsars. A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes.

May 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the University of Leeds in the UK have uncovered a previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago. The eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometers of lava, covering an area 5 times the size of Wales, and wiping out marine life around the world.

April 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - New scientific evidence suggests that dinosaur bones from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin, USA, date from after the mass extinction event, and that dinos may have survived in a remote area of what is now New Mexico and Colorado for up to half a million years, in a scenario resembling that of the fictional 'Lost World'. This controversial new research, is based on detailed chemical investigations of the dinosaur bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found.

April 28th, 2009 Astronomers see oldest object in universe yetWASHINGTON — Astronomers have spotted a burst of energy from a dying star, setting a record for the oldest and most distant object seen by Earth yet. The 10-second blast was from when the universe was only 630 million years old.

April 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An asteroid hit which caused the vast Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago, might not have actually wiped out the dinosaurs, along with 65 percent of all species, according to a new study. The crater, discovered in 1978 in northern Yucatan in Mexico, measuring about 180 kilometres in diameter, recorded a massive extra-terrestrial impact.

April 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, scientists have challenged the theory that a meteor impact 65 million years back killed off the dinosaurs in a mass extinction event. The crater, caused by the meteor, was discovered in 1978 in northern Yucutan and measured about 180 kilometers (112 miles) in diameter, proof of a massive extra-terrestrial impact.

March 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international team of astrophysicists, using telescopes on the ground and in space, has uncovered surprising changes in radiation emitted by an active galaxy classified as a Blazar. The picture that emerges from these first-ever simultaneous observations with optical, X-ray and new-generation gamma-ray telescopes is much more complex than scientists expected and challenges current theories of how the radiation is generated.

March 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have developed a new map combining nearly three months of data from NASA's Fermi Telescope to obtain the best-ever view of gamma rays in space. To Fermi's eyes, the universe is ablaze with gamma rays from sources ranging from within the solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away.

February 21st, 2009 WASHINGTON - The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever recorded. 'We were waiting for this one,' said Peter Michelson, the principal investigator on Fermi's Large Area Telescope at Stanford University.