A new tool to investigate a century old mystery
The current and next generation of large scale spectroscopic surveys could provide new clues in the hunt for the carriers producing mysterious interstellar absorption features.
Lessons from Lithium
Is there a link between lithium abundance, galactic chemical evolution, and exoplanets? Ramirez et al. examine metallicities, lithium abundances, and stellar characteristics of 1381 Sun-like stars to find out.
A hot test of GR
One prediction of General Relativity is that because of the way that gravity affects time, the frequency of electromagnetic radiation (light) emitted at the solar surface should decrease as it escapes the Sun’s gravitational potential well, i.e., the solar spectrum should appear gravitationally redshifted. Surprisingly, according to this recent paper by Takeda and Ueno, that prediction had yet to be definitively verified…until now.
The Study of Climate on Alien Worlds
“Characterizing atmospheres beyond the Solar System is an endeavor no longer confined to the realm of science fiction.”
The first detected signature of dark matter annihilation?
A flurry of recent papers point to detection of a ~130 GeV gamma-ray emission line from near the Galactic center. If real, this could be the first detection of a signature of annihilating dark matter.
How to count stars you can’t see: the stellar IMF in distant galaxies
Van Dokkum & Conroy examane the variation of the stellar initial mass function by observing the integrated light from early-type galaxies.