Physics and Astronomy

New count doubles the rocks in asteroid belt.

There are twice as many asteroids between Mars and Jupiter as previously believed, according to the latest study. But the probability of a stray one colliding with Earth remains negligible.

Edward Tedesco of US research company TerraSystems Inc.and Francois-Xavier Désert of the Astrophysical Laboratory in Grenoble, France, found that there are between 1.1 million and 1.9 million asteroids swarming round the ’main asteroid belt’1.

An unprecedented source of planetary nebulae, the disk-like relics of elderly, dying stars, has been discovered in the southern part of our Milky Way galaxy.

With about 1000 planetary nebulae found so far and many more still to be discovered, the number of aged stars in their death throes revealed by the new survey is rapidly overtaking the entire population discovered over the entire sky during the last 75 years.

The cosmic graveyard is revealed in deep survey images taken in ‘H-a

Researchers based at the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) in Durham and at Caltech in California, have found striking proof that their computer simulations of the universe can accurately predict how galaxies are clustered, so helping to reveal the distribution of dark matter throughout the universe. Using a computer simulation to follow the formation and evolution of galaxies in a universe filled with dark energy and dark matter, they predicted that the most luminous galaxies should be ass

Jets of particles from newly formed stars are acting like searchlights, piercing the gloom of dark interstellar clouds to pick out clumps of gas that may become future stars. Astronomers at University College London (UCL) and the University of Barcelona have discovered how these interstellar beams mark the clumps with a distinctive chemical signature, which makes them detectable with radio telescopes. These new developments in understanding how and where new stars are created will be discussed by Dr

Neutrinos, the lightest of the known elementary particles, weigh a billionth (one part in a thousand million) of a hydrogen atom at most, and can account for no more than one-fifth of the dark matter in the Universe, according to findings by astronomers in Cambridge, who used data from the Anglo-Australian telescope 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS). The results will be presented by Dr Ofer Lahav of Cambridge University at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Bristol on Wednesday 10 April.

Using a powerful instrument on a telescope in Hawaii, UK astronomers have found ashes from a generation of stars that died over 10 billion years ago. This is the first time that the tell-tale cosmic dust has been detected at such an early stage in the evolution of the universe.

Dr. Kate Isaak of Cambridge University will be announcing these exciting new results at the National Astronomy Meeting in Bristol on 11th April 2002.

Using the SCUBA (Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Arra