The El Gordo (in Spanish, “the fat one”), one of the most massive galaxy clusters observed, is an active merger of two large subclusters. Unraveling its dynamics provides insights into $latex \Lambda$CDM.
Only the combined effort of observational and theoretical methods can really bring us to a more thorough understanding of the Universe throughout all spatial scales. The authors of today’s paper use and adapt the moving-mesh fluid mechanics code AREPO to function with protoplanetary disks and test its imprint on the potential of planets to open up gaps in the surrounding gas.
Chondrules are among the oldest components of the solar system and give insight in the solar system’s earliest phase. But how are they formed? In shocks? That seems to be at least difficult.
Simulations show that the Oort cloud contains eight billion asteroids (in addition to hundreds of billions of comets). Do these asteroids pose a threat to Earth?
Those of us who love astrobiology get really worked up about the lack of Earth-sized exoplanets found at Earth-like distances from their stars. All we want, we who hope for lots of extraterrestrial life, is a bunch of Earth-like planets doing Earth-like things so we can feel better about the odds for lots of Earth-like life 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!