astrobites
Nick Hand
Closing in on Dark Matter?
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment has found signatures in its data consistent with a dark matter Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. While not confident enough to declare a dark matter discovery, they estimate that there is only a 0.2% chance that these signatures are caused by random chance.
The Curious Case of Andromeda’s Satellites
The authors have identified several satellite galaxies confined to a plane in their orbits around our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. Such a planar structure is perhaps at odds with our current understanding of galaxy formation.
Active Galactic Nuclei: How to Stop Star Formation
The authors investigate the fraction of massive galaxies at z ~ 2 that contains an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), in hopes of understanding the importance of AGN in quenching star formation.
Finding the source of the Universe’s infrared glow
New observations at infrared background find a mysterious background glow on the sky, which is inconsistent with the previously proposed models for its origin. The authors suggest that the infrared glow could be coming from rogue stars that have been expelled from host galaxies out into the dark matter halos that surround galaxies.
Looking for planets around Barnard’s Star
For the first time ever, radial velocity measurements of Barnard’s Star are used to search for planets. The existence of previously claimed system, involving two Jupiter-sized planets, is ruled out. The upper limits on the non-detection also rule out planets with masses above a few Earth masses.
A Cosmic Vanishing Act
The authors report on a young, Sun-like star with a debris disk of dust and larger rocks that has had the dust particles mysteriously vanish from the disk in a span of less than two years.
The Lensing Galaxy Cluster That Shouldn’t Exist
The authors discover a strong lensing arc behind an unusually massive galaxy cluster at high redshift. The existence of such a lensing system at high redshift is found to be inconsistent with the standard cosmological model.
ALMA’s First Results Tackle the Controversial Fomalhaut
The first science results from ALMA include remarkable images of the dust ring encircling the notorious Fomalhaut. Modeling of the ring’s morphology suggests the existence of two planets, each with a mass comparable to the mass of the Earth.
More Than Meets the Eye: Cluster Scaling Relations
The authors of this analysis use the largest, high-resolution cosmological N-body simulation to date, the Millennium-XXL, to investigate sources of scatter in cluster scaling relations. They find that a wide range of biases can affect the most commonly used scaling relations.
Gravitational Lensing of the CMB
The South Pole Telescope collaboration detects the effects of gravitational lensing on the cosmic microwave background and derives improved constraints on several cosmological parameters.
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