How Did Tatooine Form?
Dust traps may be the key to forming Kepler-16b and other circumbinary planets.
Atmospheric circulation on hot exoplanets: What about magnets?
Astronomers love to ignore magnetic fields. But they may strongly affect the pattern of atmospheric circulation in hot Jupiters.
The Problem of Exascale Computing
Computational physicists are already looking to the next milestone on the horizon: exascale computing, or supercomputers whose performance peaks in the exaflop range. But we need to get a lot better at parallelization before we can successfully compute at the exascale level.
The black hole and the 50-course meal
The authors of today’s paper investigate the feeding habits of the elusive quiescent supermassive black hole, finding that in addition to swallowing some stars whole and constantly snacking on the winds of other stars, some black holes may also dine on giant stars slowly disrupted over tens to hundreds of orbits.
Seeing Black Holes with a Gas Cloud
The gas cloud G2 is rapidly approaching the galactic center. Can tidal disruption events with stellar remnants help constrain its orbit?
Recap of the IAU Planet Formation Symposium
Highlights from the International Astronomical Union Symposium on “Exploring the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems”.