Mysterious rare five-hour space explosion explained

The X-ray image from the Swift X-ray Telescope of the gamma-ray burst GRB 130925. 

The white object in the center is the gamma-ray burst. 

The large diffuse region to the right is a cluster of galaxies. 

The other objects are X-ray-emitting celestial objects, most likely supermassive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies. 

The full image is approximately the size of the full moon. 

Credit: Phil Evans/ University of Leicester

Next week in St. Petersburg, Russia, scientists on an international team that includes Penn State University astronomers will present a paper that provides a simple explanation for mysterious ultra-long gamma-ray bursts, a very rare form of the most powerful explosions in the universe.

"The recent discovery of ultra-long gamma-ray bursts raised questions about whether some new physics is required to explain them, but our work suggests a much simpler explanation," said David Burrows, a Penn State professor of astronomy and astrophysics.

"Our analysis reveals that these rare gamma-ray bursts, which can last for hours, can be explained as standard explosions occurring in a region with a low density of matter that is located behind a cloud of dust when viewed from Earth."

Dick Willingale, an astronomer at the University of Leicester and a co-author of the study, said, "Not only is this result significant scientifically, but it shows the importance of international collaborations to build observatories, and of sharing information between those observatories."

Burrows is the lead scientist for the X-Ray Telescope on board the Swift satellite, one of two space observatories that the scientists used to collect data from the gamma-ray burst named GRB 130925A, which they observed last year while the energy from its explosion streamed toward Earth for more than five hours.

Swift is a NASA-led collaboration with Penn State in the United States, the University of Leicester and University College-London in the United Kingdom, and the Italian space agency and Brera Observatory in Italy.

The scientists also observed the ultra-long gamma-ray burst with the US/Russian satellite Konus-Wind.

"We could not have reached our conclusions without the Swift and Konus teams working together," Willingale said.

Burrows said it is not surprising that some gamma-ray bursts occur in a low-density region, nor is it surprising when one occurs behind a dust cloud.

"Our analysis of the observations from the two observatories shows that these two conditions existing simultaneously can explain our observations of the ultra-long gamma-ray burst GRB 130925A," Burrows said.

"One reason that these results are satisfying is that scientists generally prefer to find the simplest explanations for mysterious phenomena," he said.

Fascinating rhythm: Light pulses illuminate a rare black hole in Messier 82

This image of the galaxy Messier 82 is a composite of data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. 

The intermediate-mass black hole M82 X-1 is the brightest object in the inset, at approximately 2 o'clock near the galaxy's center. 

Credit: NASA/H. Feng et al.

The universe has so many black holes that it's impossible to count them all. There may be 100 million of these intriguing astral objects in our galaxy alone.

Nearly all black holes fall into one of two classes: big, and colossal. Astronomers know that black holes ranging from about 10 times to 100 times the mass of our sun are the remnants of dying stars, and that supermassive black holes, more than a million times the mass of the sun, inhabit the centers of most galaxies.

But scattered across the universe like oases in a desert are a few apparent black holes of a more mysterious type.

Ranging from a hundred times to a few hundred thousand times the sun's mass, these intermediate-mass black holes are so hard to measure that even their existence is sometimes disputed.

Little is known about how they form. And some astronomers question whether they behave like other black holes.

Now a team of astronomers has accurately measured, and thus confirmed the existence of, a black hole about 400 times the mass of our sun in a galaxy 12 million light years from Earth.

The finding, by University of Maryland astronomy graduate student Dheeraj Pasham and two colleagues, was published online August 17 in the journal Nature.

Co-author Richard Mushotzky, a UMD astronomy professor, says the black hole in question is a just-right-sized version of this class of astral objects.

"Objects in this range are the least expected of all black holes," says Mushotzky.

"Astronomers have been asking, do these objects exist or do they not exist? What are their properties? Until now we have not had the data to answer these questions."

"While the intermediate-mass black hole that the team studied is not the first one measured, it is the first one so precisely measured, Mushotzky says, "establishing it as a compelling example of this class of black holes."

Rossi satellite telescope

Between 2004 and 2010 NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite telescope observed M82 X-1 about 800 times, recording individual x-ray particles emitted by the object.

Pasham mapped the intensity and wavelength of x-rays in each sequence, then stitched the sequences together and analyzed the result.

Among the material circling the suspected black hole, he spotted two repeating flares of light. The flares showed a rhythmic pattern of light pulses, one occurring 5.1 times per second and the other 3.3 times per second – or a ratio of 3:2.

The two light oscillations were like two dust motes stuck in the grooves of a vinyl record spinning on a turntable, says Mushotzky.

Pasham used the oscillations to estimate that M82 X-1 is 428 times the mass of the sun, give or take 105 solar masses.

He does not propose an explanation for how this class of black holes formed. "We needed to confirm their existence observationally first," he says. "Now the theorists can get to work."

Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER)

Though the Rossi telescope is no longer operational, NASA plans to launch a new X-ray telescope, the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), in about two years.

Pasham, who will begin a post-doctoral research position at NASA Goddard in late August, has identified six potential intermediate-mass black holes that NICER might explore.

More information: "A 400 solar mass black hole in the M82 galaxy," Dheeraj R. Pasham, Tod E. Strohmayer, Richard F. Mushotzky, was published online Aug. 17, 2014 in Nature. dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13710

NASA NuSTAR: Rare blurring of Black Hole X-Ray light

An artist’s impression of a supermassive black hole and its surroundings. 

The regions around supermassive black holes shine brightly in X-rays. 

Some of this radiation comes from a surrounding disk, and most comes from the corona, pictured here as the white light at the base of a jet. 

This is one possible configuration for the Mrk 335 corona, as its actual shape is unclear. 

Credit: NASA-JPL / Caltech

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has captured an extreme and rare event in the regions immediately surrounding a supermassive black hole.

A compact source of X-rays that sits near the black hole, called the corona, has moved closer to the black hole over a period of just days.

"The corona recently collapsed in toward the black hole, with the result that the black hole's intense gravity pulled all the light down onto its surrounding disk, where material is spiraling inward," said Michael Parker of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, United Kingdom, lead author of a new paper on the findings appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

As the corona shifted closer to the black hole, the gravity of the black hole exerted a stronger tug on the X-rays emitted by it.

The result was an extreme blurring and stretching of the X-ray light. Such events had been observed previously, but never to this degree and in such detail.

Supermassive black holes are thought to reside in the centers of all galaxies. Some are more massive and rotate faster than others.

The black hole in this new study, referred to as Markarian 335, or Mrk 335, is about 324 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the Pegasus constellation.

It is one of the most extreme of the systems for which the mass and spin rate have ever been measured. The black hole squeezes about 10 million times the mass of our Sun into a region only 30 times the diameter of the Sun, and it spins so rapidly that space and time are dragged around with it.

This plot of data captured by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), shows X-ray light streaming from regions near a supermassive black hole known as Markarian 335. 

Credit: NASA

Even though some light falls into a supermassive black hole never to be seen again, other high-energy light emanates from both the corona and the surrounding accretion disk of superheated material.

Though astronomers are uncertain of the shape and temperature of coronas, they know that they contain particles that move close to the speed of light.

NASA's Swift satellite has monitored Mrk 335 for years, and recently noted a dramatic change in its X-ray brightness.

In what is called a target-of-opportunity observation, NuSTAR was redirected to take a look at high-energy X-rays from this source in the range of 3 to 79 kiloelectron volts.

This particular energy range offers astronomers a detailed look at what is happening near the event horizon, the region around a black hole from which light can no longer escape gravity's grasp.

Follow-up observations indicate that the corona is still in this close configuration, months after it moved.

Researchers don't know whether and when the corona will shift back. What's more, the NuSTAR observations reveal that the grip of the black hole's gravity pulled the corona's light onto the inner portion of its superheated disk, better illuminating it.

Almost as if somebody had shone a flashlight for the astronomers, the shifting corona lit up the precise region they wanted to study.

The new data could ultimately help determine more about the mysterious nature of black hole coronas. In addition, the observations have provided better measurements of Mrk 335's furious relativistic spin rate.

Relativistic speeds are those approaching the speed of light, as described by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

"We still don't understand exactly how the corona is produced or why it changes its shape, but we see it lighting up material around the black hole, enabling us to study the regions so close in that effects described by Einstein's theory of general relativity become prominent," said NuSTAR Principal Investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.

"NuSTAR's unprecedented capability for observing this and similar events allows us to study the most extreme light-bending effects of general relativity."

More information: "Black hole spin and size of the X-ray-emitting region(s) in the Seyfert 1.5 galaxy ESO 362-G18," B. Agís-González, G. Miniutti, E. Kara, A. C. Fabian, M. Sanfrutos, G. Risaliti, S. Bianchi, N. L. Strotjohann, R. D. Saxton and M. L. Parker, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Oxford University Press, in press: mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/443/4/2862

Undergraduates discover rare eclipsing double asteroid

In this artist's rendering, the newly-identified binary asteroid 3905 Doppler approaches an eclipse as the larger asteroid begins to pass in front of the smaller one, as seen from a vantage point on Earth. 

Credit: Loretta Kuo

Students in a University of Maryland undergraduate astronomy class have made a rare discovery that wowed professional astronomers: a previously unstudied asteroid is actually a pair of asteroids that orbit and regularly eclipse one another.

Fewer than 100 asteroids of this type have been identified in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, said Melissa Hayes-Gehrke, who teaches the hands-on class for non-astronomy majors in which eight students made the find in the fall semester 2013.

Melissa Hayes-Gehrke

The students' discovery that 3905 Doppler is an eclipsing binary asteroid will be presented in a poster session Jan. 7 at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbour, Maryland and published in April in the Minor Planet Bulletin.

Drake Deming

"This is a fantastic discovery," said University of Maryland Astronomy Prof. Drake Deming, who was not involved with the class.

"A binary asteroid with such an unusual lightcurve is pretty rare. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to learn about the physical properties and orbital evolution of these objects."

Terence Basile

"Actually contributing to the scientific community and seeing established scientists getting legitimately excited about our findings is a very good feeling," said Terence Basile, a junior from Beltsville, MD majoring in cell biology.

One of hundreds of thousands of pieces of cosmic debris in our solar system's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, 3905 Doppler was discovered in 1984, but over the coming decades it attracted scant attention.

In September 2013 Hayes-Gehrke's students picked it and two other asteroids from an astronomy journal's list of asteroids worth observing because they were well positioned in the autumn sky and were scientific enigmas.

Student teams studying 3905 Doppler met over four nights in October 2013. Each four-person team observed and photographed the asteroid, using a privately owned telescope in Nerpio, Spain, which they accessed and controlled over the internet.

Their main task was to photograph changes in the intensity of each asteroid's reflected light and turn those images into a lightcurve.

A lightcurve is a graph of a celestial object's brightness over time. Variations in brightness are often due to the object's shape, with spherical objects like planets yielding lightcurves that do not vary, and asymmetrical objects like asteroids producing peaks and valleys as the amount of reflected light varies.

By measuring the time between maximum light intensities, planetologists can tell how fast an asteroid is rotating. Most asteroids complete a rotation in a few hours to a day.

More Information: Rare eclipsing double asteroid

ESO Astronomers discover extremely rare triple quasar

An infrared image of the triple quasar system QQQ J1519+0627, made using the 3.5-m aperture telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory. 

The three quasars are labelled A, B and C.

Image Credit: Emanuele Paolo Farina

For only the second time in history, a team of scientists including Michele Fumagalli from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the United States have discovered an extremely rare triple quasar system.

Their work is published in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Quasars are extremely bright and powerful sources of energy that sit in the centre of a galaxy, surrounding a black hole.

In systems with multiple quasars, the bodies are held together by gravity and are believed to be the product of galaxies colliding.

It is very difficult to observe triplet quasar systems, because of observational limits that prevent researchers from differentiating multiple nearby bodies from one another at astronomical distances. Moreover, such phenomena are presumed to be very rare.

The team led by Emanuele Farina of the University of Insubria in Como, Italy, combined observations from the New Technology Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at La Silla, Chile and from the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain with advanced modelling.

This enabled them to find the triplet quasar, called QQQ J1519+0627. The light from the three quasars has travelled 9 billion light years to reach us, which means the light was emitted when the universe was only a third of its current age.

Advanced analysis confirmed that what the team found was indeed three distinct sources of quasar energy and that the phenomenon is extremely rare.

Two members of the triplet are closer to each other than the third. This means that the system could have been formed by interaction between the two adjacent quasars, but was probably not triggered by interaction with the more-distant third quasar.

Furthermore, no evidence was seen of any ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (galaxies with very strong emission in infrared light), which is where quasars are commonly found.

As a result, the team proposes that this triplet quasar system is part of some larger structure that is still undergoing formation.

"Honing our observational and modelling skills and finding this rare phenomenon will help us understand how cosmic structures assemble in our universe and the basic processes by which massive galaxies form," Fumagalli said.

"Further study will help us figure out exactly how these quasars came to be and how rare their formation is," Farina added.

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

Large, Fast and Rare Meteorite hits the Earth

Geology professor Qing-zhu Yin holds a fragment of the Sutter Mill meteorite that exploded over the Sierra foothills this past spring. (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis photo).

A meteorite that exploded as a fireball over California's Sierra foothills this past spring was among the fastest, rarest meteorites known to have hit the Earth, and it traveled a highly eccentric orbital route to get here.

An international team of scientists presents these and other findings in a study published Friday, Dec. 21, in the journal Science.

The 70-member team included nine researchers from UC Davis, along with scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA and other institutions.

The researchers found that the meteorite that fell over Northern California on April 22 was the rarest type known to have hit the Earth - a carbonaceous chondrite. It is composed of cosmic dust and presolar materials that helped form the planets of the solar system.

The scientists learned that the meteorite formed about 4.5 billion years ago was knocked off its parent body, which may have been an asteroid or a Jupiter-family comet, roughly 50,000 years ago.

Once it left the comet, it began its journey to Earth and exploded over Sutter's Mill, the gold discovery site that sparked the California Gold Rush.

As it flew toward Earth, it traveled an eccentric course through the solar system, flying from an orbit close to Jupiter toward the sun, passing by Mercury and Venus, and then flying out to hit Earth.

The high-speed, minivan-sized meteorite entered the atmosphere at about 64,000 miles per hour.

The study said it was the fastest, "most energetic" reported meteorite that's fallen since 2008, when an asteroid fell over Sudan.

"If this were a much bigger object and had landed in a more populated area, then this could have been a disaster," said co-author and UC Davis geology professor Qing-zhu Yin. "But, in this case, it is a happy."

Before entering Earth's atmosphere, the meteorite is estimated to have weighed roughly 100,000 pounds but most of that mass burned away when the meteorite exploded. Scientists and private collectors have recovered about 2 pounds remaining.

ESA's ESO VLT: Observations Identifies Rare "Green Bean" Galaxy

A new galaxy class has been identified using observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Gemini South telescope, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).

Nicknamed "green bean galaxies" because of their unusual appearance, these galaxies glow in the intense light emitted from the surroundings of monster black holes and are amongst the rarest objects in the Universe.

Read the full Research Paper Here

Many galaxies have a giant black hole at their centre that causes the gas around it to glow. However, in the case of green bean galaxies, the entire galaxy is glowing, not just the centre.

These new observations reveal the largest and brightest glowing regions ever found, thought to be powered by central black holes that were formerly very active but are now switching off.

Astronomer Mischa Schirmer of the Gemini Observatory had looked at many images of the distant Universe, searching for clusters of galaxies, but when he came across one object in an image from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope he was stunned -- it looked like a galaxy, but it was bright green.

It was unlike any galaxy he had ever seen before, something totally unexpected. He quickly applied to use ESO's Very Large Telescope to find out what was creating the unusual green glow.

"ESO granted me special observing time at very short notice and just a few days after I submitted my proposal, this bizarre object was observed using the VLT," says Schirmer.

"Ten minutes after the data were taken in Chile, I had them on my computer in Germany. I soon refocused my research activities entirely as it became apparent that I had come across something really new."

The new object, J2240, lies in the constellation of Aquarius (The Water Bearer) and its light has taken about 3.7 billion years to reach Earth.

After the discovery, Schirmer's team searched through a list of nearly a billion other galaxies and found 16 more with similar properties, which were confirmed by observations made at the Gemini South telescope.

General Background

In many galaxies the material around the supermassive black hole at the centre gives off intense radiation and ionises the surrounding gas so that it glows strongly.

These glowing regions in typical active galaxies are usually small, up to 10% of the diameter of the galaxy. However, the team's observations showed that in the case of J2240, and other green beans spotted since, it is truly huge, spanning the entire object.

J2240 displays one of the biggest and brightest such regions ever found. Ionised oxygen glows bright green, which explains the strange colour that originally caught Schirmer's attention.

"These glowing regions are fantastic probes to try to understand the physics of galaxies -- it's like sticking a medical thermometer into a galaxy far, far away," says Schirmer.

"Usually, these regions are neither very large nor very bright, and can only be seen well in nearby galaxies.

However, in these newly discovered galaxies they are so huge and bright that they can be observed in great detail, despite their large distances."

Rare Image: The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey

Researchers working in Northern Myanmar have captured the first photographs of the recently discovered Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.

"These images are the first record of the animal in its natural habitat," said Ngwe Lwin, the Burmese national who first recognised the monkey as a possible new species.

"It is great to finally have photographs because they show us something about how and where it actually lives."

"The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey was described scientifically in 2010 from a dead specimen collected from a local hunter," said Frank Momberg of FFI, who organised the initial expeditions that led to the monkey's discovery. "As yet, no scientist has seen a live individual," he added.

Picture: FFI/BANCA/PRCF/REX FEATURES

Moon Packed with Precious Titanium

This lunar mosaic shows the boundary between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis. The relative blue color of the Tranquillitatis mare is due to higher abundances of the titanium-bearing mineral ilmenite.

CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

A new map of the moon has uncovered a trove of areas rich in precious titanium ore, with some lunar rocks harboring 10 times as much of the stuff as rocks here on Earth do.

The map, which combined observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, revealed the valuable titanium deposits. These findings could shed light on some of the mysteries of the lunar interior, and could also lay the groundwork for future mining on the moon, researchers said.

"Looking up at the moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey — at least to the human eye," Mark Robinson, of Arizona State University, said in a statement. "The maria appear reddish in some places and blue in others.

Although subtle, these colour variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil.

Map of Moon Reveals Titanium Treasure Troves

A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in Titanium ores. Not only is Titanium a valuable mineral, it is key to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the Moon's interior.

Mark Robinson and Brett Denevi presented the results from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission at last week's joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

"Looking up at the Moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey - at least to the human eye. But with the right instruments, the Moon can appear colourful," said Robinson, of Arizona State University.

"The maria appear reddish in some places and blue in others. Although subtle, these colour variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil."

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC) is imaging the surface in seven different wavelengths at a resolution of between 100 and 400 metres per pixel. Specific minerals reflect or absorb strongly certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, so the wavelengths detected by LROC WAC help scientists better understand the chemical composition of the lunar surface.

Robinson and his team previously developed a technique using Hubble Space Telescope images to map titanium abundances around a small area centred on the Apollo 17 landing site.

Samples around the site spanned a broad range of titanium levels. By comparing the Apollo data from the ground with the Hubble images, the team found that the titanium levels corresponded to the ratio of ultraviolet to visible light reflected by the lunar soils.

"Our challenge was to find out whether the technique would work across broad areas, or whether there was something special about the Apollo 17 area," said Robinson.

Robinson's team constructed a mosaic from around 4000 LRO WAC images collected over one month. Using the technique they had developed with the Hubble imagery, they used the WAC ratio of the brightness in the ultraviolet to visible light to deduce titanium abundance, backed up by surface samples gathered by Apollo and Luna missions.

The highest titanium abundances on Earth are around xx percent. The new map shows that in the mare titanium abundances range from about one percent to a little more than ten percent.

In the highlands, everywhere TiO2 is less than one percent. The new titanium values match those measured in the ground samples to about one percent.

"We still don't really understand why we find much higher abundances of titanium on the Moon compared to similar types of rocks on Earth. What the lunar titanium-richness does tell us is that the interior of the Moon had less oxygen when it was formed, knowledge that geochemists value for understanding the evolution of the Moon," said Robinson.

Lunar titanium is mostly found in the mineral ilmenite, a compound containing iron, titanium and oxygen. Future miners living and working on the Moon could break down ilmenite to liberate these elements. In addition, Apollo data shows that titanium-rich minerals are more efficient at retaining particles from the solar wind, such as helium and hydrogen. These gases would also provide a vital resource for future human inhabitants of lunar colonies.

LHC at Cern observe the decays of a rare particle

Shortly after experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland began yielding scientific data last fall, a group of scientists led by a Syracuse University physicist became the first to observe the decays of a rare particle that was present right after the Big Bang.

By studying this particle, scientists hope to solve the mystery of why the universe evolved with more matter than antimatter.

Led by Sheldon Stone, a physicist in SU's College of Arts and Sciences, the scientists observed the decay of a special type of B meson, which are created when protons traveling at nearly the speed of light smash into each other.

The work is part of two studies published in the March 28 issue of Physics Letters B. Stone leads SU's high-energy physics group, which is part of a larger group of scientists (the LHCb collaboration) that run an experiment at CERN. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds Stone's research group.

"It is impressive to see such a forefront physics result produced so soon after data-taking commenced at the LHC," said Moishe Pripstein, program director for the NSF's Elementary Particle Physics program.

"These results are a tribute both to the ingenuity of the international collaboration of scientists and the discovery potential of the LHC."

Scientists are eager to study these special B mesons because of their potential for yielding information about the relationship between matter and antimatter moments after the Big Bang, as well as yet-to-be described forces that resulted in the rise of matter over antimatter.

"We know when the universe formed from the Big Bang, it had just as much matter as antimatter," Stone says. "But we live in a world predominantly made of matter, therefore, there had to be differences in the decaying of both matter and antimatter in order to end up with a surplus of matter."

All matter is composed of atoms, which are composed of protons (positive charge), electrons (negative charge) and neutrons (neutral). The protons and neutrons are composed, in turn, of even smaller particles called quarks. Antimatter is composed of antiprotons, positrons (the opposite of electrons), antineutrons, and thus anti-quarks.

While antimatter generally refers to sub-atomic particles, it can also include larger elements, such as hydrogen or helium. It is generally believed that the same rules of physics should apply to both matter and antimatter and that both should occur in equal amounts in the universe.

That they don't play by the same rules or occur in equal amounts are among the greatest unsolved problems in physics today.

B mesons are a rare and special subgroup of mesons composed of a quark and anti-quark. While B mesons were common after the Big Bang, they are not believed to occur in nature today and can only be created and observed under experimental conditions in the LHC or other high-energy colliders.

Because these particles don't play by the same rules of physics as most other matter, scientists believe B mesons may have played an important role in the rise of matter over antimatter. The particles may also provide clues about the nature of the forces that led to this lack of symmetry in the universe.

Neodymium iron-boron rare-earth magnet

Ferrofluids are colloidal mixtures - where one substance is microscopically dispersed evenly throughout a carrier fluid - containing magnetic nanoparticles.

When placed in a magnetic field, the suspended particles cause the entire fluid to become strongly magnetised.

In this image a small drop of ferrofluid is placed within a magnetic field created by a neodymium iron-boron rare-earth magnet. The peaks and troughs result as the magnet tries to pull the liquid along its field lines.

Ferrofluids are being used in experimental cancer treatments called magnetic hyperthermia, and are the basis for a new breed of shape-shifting telescope lenses.

Rare Sundaland Leopard Facing extinction

Azlan said the Sundaland species is the biggest predator on Borneo, a resource-rich island split between Malaysia and Indonesia where wildlife habitats are under pressure from logging and plantations.

The Sundaland clouded leopard, a newly identified and little understood species of big cat in Borneo, has been filmed for the first time.

The leopard, a healthy-looking animal a metre long (3 feet) and weighing about 40 kilos (90 pounds) was caught on video at night at the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Malaysian Borneo's Sabah state.

"What surprised us was that while clouded leopards are very elusive cats, this one was not scared at all," said Azlan Mohamed, a field scientist with University Sabah Malaysia.

"Despite our powerful spot lights and the roar of our vehicle's engine, it walked around our vehicle calmly," he told AFP.

"It is rare to see the big cat in the wild. These cats are usually shy of humans, it was by chance we caught it on video."

The Sundaland clouded leopard was classified as a new species through genetic studies several years ago and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature designated it as endangered in 2008.

Previously all clouded leopards living across the Southeast Asian mainland were thought to be the same species.

Azlan said the Sundaland species is the biggest predator on Borneo, a resource-rich island split between Malaysia and Indonesia where wildlife habitats are under pressure from logging and plantations.