With the death of Vera Rubin, we retrace the steps on her most important discovery. From watching the speed of stars and gas orbiting a galaxy she found a mysterious quirk in the results, and followed it to find inescapable evidence that led to the discovery of invisible and mysterious matter, 5 times more massive than all other matter in the Universe.
This month’s undergraduate research post features a student who created N-body simulations of star clusters. Read on to find out what she learned about the clusters’ evolution!
Herschel provides an updated look at the debris disk in the popular planetary system, Tau Ceti.
Planet-planet scattering can either be a good thing or a bad thing for the planetesimals caught in the crossfire. Like many things in life, the key is moderation. The authors of this paper try to figure out how many exoplanet systems with eccentric planets are likely to still have their debris disks after experiencing a planet-planet scattering event.
Vega’s system of debris disks can be explained by a series of planets that constantly transport material inwards towards the star.
New dynamical simulations show that close-in planets on eccentric orbits can arise from planet-planet scattering — but only if the scattering occurs on larger orbits and is followed by inward migration.