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Category: space – Page 59

Astronomers capture breathtaking first look at a planet being born

WISPIT2b, a gas giant forming around a young Sun-like star, has been directly imaged for the first time inside a spectacular multiringed disk. Still glowing and actively accreting gas, the planet offers a unique opportunity to study planetary birth and evolution.

An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet.

Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter.

Explaining a quantum oddity with five atoms

Matter gets weird at the quantum scale, and among the oddities is the Efimov effect, a state in which the attractive forces between three or more atoms bind them together, even as they are excited to higher energy levels, while that same force is insufficient to bind two atoms.

At Purdue University, researchers have completed the immense quantum calculation required to represent the Efimov effect in five , adding to our fragmented picture of the most fundamental nature of matter.

The calculation, which applies across a broad range of physical problems—from a group of atoms being studied in a laser trap to the gases in a neutron star—contributes to our foundational understanding of matter and may lead to more efficient methods for confining atoms for study.

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