News

This section includes scientific and technological news from the IAC and its Observatories, as well as press releases on scientific and technological results, astronomical events, educational projects, outreach activities and institutional events.

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  • Artist’s impression of the star GJ 3512, a red dwarf of approximately one tenth of the mass of the Sun, on which the newly discovered exoplanet GJ 3512b, a gas giant of high mass, orbits an unusual planet in this type of planetary systems.
    Research news
    A giant exoplanet orbiting a very-low-mass star challenges planet formation models
    Surveys have shown that super-Earth and Neptune-mass exoplanets are more frequent than gas giants around low-mass stars, as predicted by the core accretion theory of planet formation. We report the discovery of a giant planet around the very-low-mass star GJ 3512, as determined by optical and near-infrared radial-velocity observations. The planet has a minimum mass of 0.46 Jupiter masses, very high for such a small host star, and an eccentric 204-day orbit. Dynamical models show that the high eccentricity is most likely due to planet-planet interactions. We use simulations to demonstrate
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  • Participantes en HC2NP2019
    Press release
    The latest advances in the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and their consequences for problems such as that of dark matter have been presented
    HC2NP2019, the second conference on "Hadronic Contributions to New Physics Searches" organized by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Puerto de la Cruz brought together, for a week, international experts in particle, nuclear, and atomic physics. At the meeting the latest advances in experimental checks on the "Standard Model of Particle Physics" were discussed, among them dark matter, the origin of flavour structures, and the conservation of charge symmetry in the strong interaction. Maxim Pospelov , of the University of Minnesota and the Perimeter Institute, an expert in
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  • Ceremonia de cambio de propiedad del NOT
    Press release
    The Universities of Turku (Finland) and Aarhus (Denmark) are the new owners of the NOT
    The Universities of Turku (UTU) and Aarhus (AU) are the new owners of the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) situated in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM). The two institutions take over from the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Associations (NOTSA), a non-profit organization created in 1984 by the Reseearch Councils of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, with the later incorporation of Iceland, in 1997. On 1 October, a delegation from both universities took part in a simple event at the ORM, which was also attended by representatives of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
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  • Fullerenes discovered in a star formation region in Perseus
    Press release
    Fullerenes discovered in a star formation region in Perseus
    A study carried out by IAC researcher Susana Iglesias-Groth has detected molecules of pure carbon in one of the nearest star formation regions to the Solar System. The results of this work have recently been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Fullerenes are carbon molecules , whose structure contains pentagons and hexagons, which often appear in key molecules for life . They are also the third most stable form of carbon, together diamond and graphite. A study performed by the researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) Susana Iglesias
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  • Visibility of the cold wind as a function of the X-ray luminosity and colour. Hardness intensity diagram of MAXI J1820+070 using 1-day averaged X-ray fluxes from the MAXI instrument (black dots).
    Research news
    Hard-state Accretion Disk Winds from Black Holes
    Accretion disc winds are observed in accreting black holes across the full range of masses. In stellar-mass black holes, X-ray winds have been recently established as a fundamental property of their most radiatively efficient phases, the so-called soft states, impacting on the entire accretion process. However, these hot and powerful winds are scarcely observed during the dimmer hard states, where most of the black holes of the Universe exist and kinetic feedback from jets dominates. The disappearance of the wind is a matter of strong debate and has been suggested to be related to different
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