Nov 4 Recap

Today's journal club was hosted by Prof. Michael De Robertis.

1. GRB 090423, redshift about 8.2, is the most distant astronomical object ever detect in the Universe. Read it at Nature News & Views here. Bursted just about 600 Myrs after the big bang, it might shed some light on the cosmic 'dark ages'. Two individual groups studied the mechanisms and progenitors of this burst. Their papers are published in the same issue of Nature at page1254 and page 1258.


2. NASA'S FERMI satellite observed the dark matter annihilation in the galactic center? Read the article at the Sky & Telescope here. Interestingly, at one of our journal club just few weeks ago, Marshall talked the Integral map's results, which do not favor the dark matter as the origin of the galactic positron annihilation. Scroll down to find the link in our Sep30 Recap. A comparable reading about an Italian laboratory claims to have detect the dark matter and a group of scientists hoping to replicate the experiment. Read the story here.

3. Take an image of the black hole? Read how to here.

4. A fascinating paper about how the earth gained its water, and the dynamics of the terrestrial planets. Read the full context here.