GIANT PLANETS IN PROTOPLANETARY DISKS WITH SPIRAL ARMS?

There are many theories about the formation of the planets but the direct observational evidences are quite a few. Recently, the ground-based telescopes photographed two large spiral arms around two young stars. The mechanisms that have generated these structures are not very clear.

Recent studies based on computer simulations suggest that such structures may indicate the presence of giant planets "invisible" (too faint to be seen with existing tools). A comparison between simulations and direct observations may be able to obtain not only the position of the planet but also its mass.
The method proposed in addition to opening a new avenue for detecting extrasolar planets also offers a new look at the mechanisms that act in the early stages of planet formation.

To know more:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03596
http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03599
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.01178
http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.3412
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/40/full/

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Fermi Bubbles

Image: A giant gamma-ray structure was discovered in 2010 by processing Fermi all-sky data at energies from 1 to 10 billion electron volts, shown here. The dumbbell-shaped feature (center) emerges from the galactic center and extends 50 degrees north and south from the plane of the Milky Way, spanning the sky from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus. Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/D. Finkbeiner et al. At a time when our earliest human ancestors mastered walking upright the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour.

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Spiral Galaxy NGC 253. Credit: ESO Astronomers found a rich molecular reservoir in the heart of an active star-forming galaxy with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Among eight clouds identified at the center of the galaxy NGC 253, one exhibits very complex chemical composition, while in the other clouds many signals are missing. This chemical richness and diversity shed light on the nature of the baby boom galaxy. Ryo Ando, a graduate student of the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues observed the galaxy NGC 253 and for the first time, they resolved the locations of star formation in this galaxy down to the scale of a molecular cloud, which is a star formation site with a size of about 30 light-years. As a result, they identified eight massive, dusty clouds aligned along the center of the galaxy. “With its unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, ALMA showed us the detailed structure of the clouds,” said Ando, the lead author of the research paper...

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