8 MARCH 2021
More and more, it seems that the existence and persistence of life on Earth is the result of sheer luck. According to a new analysis of the history of the Milky Way, the best time and place for the emergence of life isn t here, or now, but over 6 billion years ago on the galaxy s outskirts.
That specific location in space and time would have afforded a habitable world the best protection against the gamma-ray bursts and supernovae that blasted space with deadly radiation.
As of about 4 billion years ago, the central regions of the galaxy (which include the Solar System) became safer than the outskirts - safe enough for life to emerge, if not quite as safe as the outskirts had been.
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Researcher helps find largest supernova remnant by looking in right place
An international team of researchers, using powerful new X-ray telescope eROSITA to conduct the first all-sky X-ray survey in 25 years, have detected the largest supernova remnant ever discovered with X-rays, dubbed Hoinga.
An artist’s impression of a supernova, or exploding star. Picture credit: ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0
Astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) worked with Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) to form a collaboration with the international team, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the National Institute for Astrophysics.
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Reclusive Neutron Star Thought Found among Debris of Famous Supernova
Astronomers now have evidence from two X-ray telescopes (Chandra and NuSTAR) for a key component of a famous supernova remnant.
Supernova 1987A was discovered on Earth on February 24, 1987, making it the first such event witnessed during the telescopic age.
For decades, scientists have searched for a neutron star in SN 1987A, i.e. a dense collapsed core that should have been left behind by the explosion.
This latest study shows that a pulsar wind nebula created by such a neutron star may be present.
Credit: NASA s Chandra X-ray Observatory
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The Milky Way primordial history and its fossil findings
Just as archaeologists dig hoping to find traces of the past, an international group of astrophysicists managed to get into the thick cloud of dust around the centre of the Milky Way (also known as the bulge) discovering primordial clumps of gas and stars never found so far. They named this new class of stellar system Bulge Fossil Fragments . A research team led by Francesco Ferraro (Department of Physics and Astronomy Augusto Righi at the University of Bologna and member of the National Institute for Astrophysics - INAF) carried out a study published in Nature Astronomy.