Pluto Press Conference

Summary: It has been hard to miss the news of New Horizons flying past Pluto and getting beautiful images and data to send back to Earth. It has been harder to keep up with the constant flood of data that is pouring out. NASA has thankfully given a press conference and has published the highlights online.

Personally I am most overjoyed that they have nicknamed the dark spot on the top of Charon Mordor but I also love hearing about the giant ice cliffs. I will point you straight toward the mission site though to get all of the highlights.

If you have access to BBC, their program Sky at Night will be doing a big recap of all the news and what it means on the night of the 20th.


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Pluto through the years Credit: NASA

New particle seen at CERN

Summary: Nearly lost amid all the Pluto excitement, scientists at CERN have possibly discovered a new particle called the pentaquark. This new particle has been theorized to exist since the 60s and many have claimed to discover it before so they are being cautious. However, if this is indeed what is seems to be, then we have a new form of matter.

The pentaquark is a particle composed of four quarks and one antiquark.

Scientists found the particle by studying the way that the particle Lambda b decayed into three other particles. Some of the intermediary stages only made sense if the pentaquark did exist. Although still cautious about declaring this to be the pentaquark, the technology available to researchers at CERN allows them to view the problem in five dimensions rather than just one.

If this is indeed the particle they think it is, it will provide us with new ways of imagining quarks to be arranged and matter to be composed. Matter may be more complex than we thought.


BBC News

Quintuplet Stars

Summary: Our solar system features one star. There are many examples of binary star systems and even two binary stars coupled together. But astronomers have now found an incredibly rare new system. Two couples binary stars with one lonely companion star to make up a total of five stars.

Of the binaries, one is a detached pair and the other is coupled, meaning that the two stars share an outer atmosphere. Although there are no observations to prove it, it is possible that there are planets orbiting these stars. What a spectacular sky show they would have.


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