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Harvard astronomers claim that the Milky Way's warped shape is due to an unbalanced halo of dark matter. This claim supports theories of a previous galactic collision and provides insights into the nature of dark matter. Credit: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar; Magellanic Clouds: Robert Gendler/ESO

Dark matter and galactic collisions: Harvard astronomers explain the mysterious curvature of the Milky Way

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The cause of this is a distorted dark matter halo
In this photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope, you see dark knots of gas and dust called "Bok globules" - compressed pockets in larger molecular clouds. Such islands of matter in the early universe may have contained water vapor as we see in our galaxy today, although they contained much less oxygen. Photo: Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team

Surprising discovery: the ancient gas clouds, from which the stars and galaxies in the universe were formed, contained a significant amount of water

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Gary Patton, Senior Vice President at IBM and IEEE Fellow at the ChuoEx 2014 conference

A study in Nature with the participation of an Israeli researcher reveals the first detailed simulation of the universe* required three months of running on two supercomputers

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In the yellow circle you see a normal form of polarization (E-mode) and in the blue circle you see the form of polarization and the size of the polarization that must have created only gravitational waves during inflation. You can see the same special polarization in the background radiation in the top image as well. The black lines mark the direction and polarization of the radiation. Once the team measured this polarization shape they were able to confirm both the gravitational waves and the inflation phase. In the bottom picture you see a drawing starting on the left side where the big bang happened and immediately after it the inflation (the yellow part). After the end of inflation the universe expands much more slowly (the black part) until the present day. Today we measure the cosmic background radiation that came out when the universe was 380,000 years old and pass it through polarizers to measure the polarization of the radiation (the blue part). Image: Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

First direct evidence of the existence of gravitational waves that caused the universe to swell immediately after the big bang

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This artist illustration, prepared for the Harvard Smithsonian Center depicting two neutron stars at the moment of collision New findings confirm that neutron star collisions cause short bursts of gamma rays in which the rare metals including gold are produced. All the gold on Earth is believed to have come from such neutron star collisions. Image Credit: Dana Berry, SkyWorks Digital, Inc.

The gold on Earth was created in neutron star collisions

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Artist's impression of a type Iax supernova - where the white dwarf is not completely destroyed and is therefore very weak. Image: Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

A new type of supernova has been discovered

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A proposal to search for artificial lights in planets orbiting other suns. Figure: CfA

City lights may reveal an intelligent civilization

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This artist's rendering shows "hot Jupiter" and its two hypothetical moons with a star similar to our Sun in the background. The planet constantly emits auroras that are prevented by the impact of material from the sun. David A. Aguilar (CfA(

The aurora borealis of extrasolar planets: an out-of-this-world sight

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Supernova SN1979C is a likely candidate for the youngest black hole ever observed. Photo: NASA

The Chandra Space Telescope has discovered an extremely young and relatively nearby black hole

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