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https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

Fermi finds possible dark matter ties in Andromeda galaxy
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-fermi-dark-ties-andromeda-galaxy.html

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found a signal at the center of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy that could indicate the presence
of the mysterious stuff known as dark matter. The gamma-ray signal is similar to one seen by Fermi at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Surprisingly, the latest Fermi data shows the gamma rays in Andromeda—also known as M31—are confined to the galaxy's center instead of spread
throughout. To explain this unusual distribution, scientists are proposing that the emission may come from several undetermined sources. One
of them could be dark matter, an unknown substance that makes up most of the universe.

"We expect dark matter to accumulate in the innermost regions of the Milky Way and other galaxies, which is why finding such a compact signal
is very exciting," said lead scientist Pierrick Martin, an astrophysicist at the National Center for Scientific Research and the Research
Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, France. "M31 will be a key to understanding what this means for both Andromeda and
the Milky Way."

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/10-years-strong-with-nasas-themis-mission

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A Holographic Model Solves a Great Cosmological Mystery
http://nautil.us/blog/new-evidence-for-the-strange-idea-that-the-universe-is-a-hologram

Experiments call origin of Earth's iron into question
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-earth-iron.html

New research from The University of Texas at Austin reveals that the Earth's unique iron composition isn't linked to the formation
of the planet's core, calling into question a prevailing theory about the events that shaped our planet during its earliest years.

The research, published in Nature Communications on Feb. 20, opens the door for other competing theories about why the Earth,
relative to other planets, has higher levels of heavy iron isotopes. Among them: light iron isotopes may have been vaporized into
space by a large impact with another planet that formed the moon; the slow churning of the mantle as it makes and recycles the Earth's
crust may preferentially incorporate heavy iron into rock; or, the composition of the raw material that formed the planet in its earliest
days may have been enriched with heavy iron.

An isotope is a variety of atom that has a different weight from other atoms of the same element because it has a different numbers of neutrons.

New data about two distant asteroids give a clue to the possible 'Planet Nine'
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-distant-asteroids-clue-planet.html

The dynamical properties of these asteroids, observed spectroscopiccally for the first time using the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS,
suggest a possible common origin and give a clue to the existence of a planet beyond Pluto, the so-called 'Planet Nine.'

Prediction: More gas-giants will be found orbiting Sun-like stars | Carnegie Institution for Science
https://carnegiescience.edu/node/2147

New planetary formation models from Carnegie’s Alan Boss indicate that there may be an undiscovered population of gas giant planets
orbiting around Sun-like stars at distances similar to those of Jupiter and Saturn. His work is published by The Astrophysical Journal.

The population of exoplanets discovered by ongoing planet-hunting projects continues to increase. These discoveries can improve models
that predict where to look for more of them.

The planets predicted by Boss in this study could hold the key to solving a longstanding debate about the formation of our Solar System’s
giant planets out of the disk of gas and dust that surrounded the Sun in its youth.

New insights on the nature of the star V501 Aurigae revealed
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-insights-nature-star-v501-aurigae.html

Astronomers have presented the results of new photometric and spectroscopic observations of the star V501 Aurigae
(V501 Aur for short), providing new insights into the nature of this object. The findings show that V501 Aur,
previously considered to be T-Tauri star, is most probably a field binary. The study was published Feb. 15
in a paper available on arXiv.org.

In the latest study, a team of astronomers led by Martin Vaňko of the Astronomical Institute of Slovak Academy
of Sciences in Tatranská Lomnica, Slovakia, has found that V501 Aur is a single-lined spectroscopic binary star.

When the Lights Went Out in the Universe
http://www.space.com/35763-dark-energy-lights-out-on-the-universe.html

About 5 billion years ago, everything changed. The expansion of the universe, which had been gradually decelerating for billions of years,
reversed course and entered into a period of unbridled acceleration. (It was sort of like a car that switches from decelerating to accelerating,
but is still moving forward the whole time.) The unhurried, deliberate process of structure formation — the gradual buildup of ever-larger
assemblies of matter from galaxies to groups to clusters — froze and began to undo itself.

Five billion years ago, a mysterious force overtook the universe. Hidden in the shadows, it lay dormant, buried underneath fields of matter
and radiation. But once it uncovered itself, it worked quickly, bending the entire cosmos to its will.

Dating the Milky Way's Discsu201707 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/su201707

When a star like our sun gets to be very old, after another seven billion years or so, it will no longer be able to sustain burning its nuclear fuel.
With only about half of its mass remaining, it will shrink to a fraction of its radius and become a white dwarf star. White dwarfs are common, the most
famous one being the companion to the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. As remnants of some of the oldest stars in the galaxy, white dwarfs offer
an independent means of dating the lifetimes of different galactic populations.

A globular cluster is a roughly spherical ensemble of stars (as many as several million) that are gravitationally bound together and typically located
in the outer regions of galaxies. The white dwarf stars in the Milly Way's globular clusters reveal an age spread of between eleven and thirteen billion
years. By contrast, the thick disk of the galaxy is thought to be older than ten billion years but that figure is not very well constrained. White dwarfs
in the disc can be used to refine those age estimates and, since they are closer and brighter to us than those in globular clusters, they can provide
more detailed information. However, they are not located in well-defined regions like clusters and so they are also harder to spot.

Hubble Tracks Nearby Type 1a Supernova Candidate
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/...rminey/files/2017/02/recurrent-nova-image-2-1200x773.jpg?width=960