Search Publications
All-sky dynamical response of the Galactic halo to the Large Magellanic Cloud
Conroy, Charlie; Johnson, Benjamin D.; Naidu, Rohan P. +4 more
Gravitational interactions between the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the stellar and dark matter halo of the Milky Way are expected to give rise to disequilibrium phenomena in the outer Milky Way1-7. A local wake is predicted to trail the orbit of the LMC, and a large-scale overdensity is predicted to exist across a large area of the…
A highly magnetized and rapidly rotating white dwarf as small as the Moon
Kulkarni, S. R.; Duev, Dmitry A.; Burdge, Kevin B. +15 more
White dwarfs represent the last stage of evolution of stars with mass less than about eight times that of the Sun and, like other stars, are often found in binaries1,2. If the orbital period of the binary is short enough, energy losses from gravitational-wave radiation can shrink the orbit until the two white dwarfs come into contact an…
r-Process elements from magnetorotational hypernovae
Schmidt, B. P.; Da Costa, G. S.; Marino, A. F. +11 more
Neutron-star mergers were recently confirmed as sites of rapid-neutron-capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis1-3. However, in Galactic chemical evolution models, neutron-star mergers alone cannot reproduce the observed element abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor stars, which indicates the existence of other sites of r-process nucleo…
Large metallicity variations in the Galactic interstellar medium
Jenkins, Edward B.; Petitjean, Patrick; Fox, Andrew J. +5 more
The interstellar medium (ISM) comprises gases at different temperatures and densities, including ionized, atomic and molecular species, and dust particles1. The neutral ISM is dominated by neutral hydrogen2 and has ionization fractions of up to eight per cent3. The concentration of chemical elements heavier than he…
Past, present and future stars that can see Earth as a transiting exoplanet
Kaltenegger, L.; Faherty, J. K.
In the search for life in the cosmos, transiting exoplanets are currently our best targets. With thousands already detected, our search is entering a new era of discovery with upcoming large telescopes that will look for signs of `life' in the atmospheres of transiting worlds. Previous work has explored the zone from which Earth would be visible w…