pair

The pair plasmas found in deep space can now be generated in the laboratory

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How it works: A proton (far left) from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator at CERN hits carbon nuclei (small gray spheres). This produces a shower of various elementary particles, including a large number of neutral pions (orange sphere). As the unstable neutral pions decay, they emit two high-energy gamma rays (curly yellow arrows). These … Read more

Astronomers discover parallel disks and jets bursting from a pair of young stars

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At left, a mid-infrared image of the rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the focus is on the WL20 star system. At right, WL20 is enlarged to reveal an artist’s impression of this new discovery. Astronomers couldn’t believe their luck when observations at multiple radio and infrared wavelengths by ALMA and … Read more