For today’s astrobite, we will be discussing some of the highest-resolution simulations of isolated galaxies performed to date. Not only are these simulations high resolution, but they also include prescriptions to model several physical effects that previous galaxy evolution simulations have mostly ignored.
The authors present results that show a feature in the final reconstructed image of this transition disk in both K band and L band (2 bands in the near-infrared). The L band source is somewhat elongated and appears to include two separate regions. The K band image falls between these two L band regions and is more like a point source. The authors interpret this as a protoplanet in the process of forming with an extended heated region around it.
The collapsar model of gamma ray burst production posits that a black hole forms at the center of the star and sucks in the rest of the star’s mass, but that the inner regions have sufficient angular momentum to form an accretion disk which then radiates some fraction of its power in the form of a relativistic jet of matter beaming out of the star. But what if it were the outer, not the inner, layers of the star that had most of the angular momentum? The answer is a very different sort of gamma-ray transient.
You have likely experienced analysis paralysis, though just as likely you have not heard it called by that name. It can be as simple as trying to buy laundry detergent at the supermarket or as complex as trying to publish a key piece of research. And it all stems from the basic fact that the human brain is bad at graph traversal.