32,581 research outputs found
A pair of gigantic bipolar dust jets close to the solar system
We report the discovery of two adjacent jet candidates with a length of about
9 degrees each -- 10 times longer than the largest known jets -- detected by us
on 60 and 100 micron IRAS maps, but not observed at any other wavelength. They
are extremely collimated (length-to-width ratios 20--50), curved, knotty, and
end in prominent bubbles. Their dust temperatures are 25 K and 30 K,
respectively. Both harbour faint stars, one having a high proper motion (0.23
arcsec/yr) and being very red, suggesting a distance of about 60 pc. At this
distance, the total mass of both jet candidates is about about 1 solar mass. We
suspect that these gigantic (9 pc length respectively) jets are of fossil type
and have a common origin, due to the decay of a system of evolved stars. They
are the first examples of jets radiating in the far IR and might, because of
their closeness, be of interest for further studies of the acceleration and
collimation processes of astrophysical jets.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures in reduced quality, accepted by Astronomy &
Astrophysics (Letter) february 10, 2004. See
http://astro.uibk.ac.at/dustjets/ for the full resolution and color version
of the image
Life, Death and Preferential Attachment
Scientific communities are characterized by strong stratification. The highly
skewed frequency distribution of citations of published scientific papers
suggests a relatively small number of active, cited papers embedded in a sea of
inactive and uncited papers. We propose an analytically soluble model which
allows for the death of nodes. This model provides an excellent description of
the citation distributions for live and dead papers in the SPIRES database.
Further, this model suggests a novel and general mechanism for the generation
of power law distributions in networks whenever the fraction of active nodes is
small.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
On the Existence of Radiation Gauges in Petrov type II spacetimes
The radiation gauges used by Chrzanowski (his IRG/ORG) for metric
reconstruction in the Kerr spacetime seem to be over-specified. Their
specification consists of five conditions: four, which we treat here as valid
gauge conditions, plus an additional condition on the trace of the metric
perturbation. In this work, we utilize a newly developed form of the perturbed
Einstein equations to establish a condition -- on a particular tetrad component
of the stress-energy tensor -- under which the full IRG/ORG can be imposed.
Using gauge freedom, we are able to impose the full IRG for Petrov type II and
type D backgrounds, using a different tetrad for each case. As a specific
example, we work through the process of imposing the IRG in a Schwarzschild
background, using a more traditional approach. Implications for metric
reconstruction using the Teukolsky curvature perturbations in type D spacetimes
are briefly discussed.Comment: 21 pages, uses iop style files. v2: proved a stronger result for type
II backgrounds, added a subsection on remaining gauge freedom in the full IRG
and improved calrity and readability throughout due to insightful referee
comments; published as Class. Quantum Grav. 24 (2007) 2367-238
Coulomb drag as a measure of trigonal warping in doped graphene
I suggest to use the effect of Coulomb drag between two closely positioned
graphite monolayers (graphene sheets) for experimental measurement of the
strength of weak non-linearities of the spectrum in graphene. I consider
trigonal warping as a representative mechanism responsible for the drag effect.
Since graphene is relatively defect-free, I evaluate the drag conductivity in
the ballistic regime and find that it is proportional to the fourth power of
the warping strength.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Simulation of a Hybrid Optical/Radio/Acoustic Extension to IceCube for EeV Neutrino Detection
Astrophysical neutrinos at EeV energies promise to be an interesting
source for astrophysics and particle physics. Detecting the predicted
cosmogenic (``GZK'') neutrinos at 10 - 10 eV would test models of
cosmic ray production at these energies and probe particle physics at 100
TeV center-of-mass energy. While IceCube could detect 1 GZK event per
year, it is necessary to detect 10 or more events per year in order to study
temporal, angular, and spectral distributions. The IceCube observatory may be
able to achieve such event rates with an extension including optical, radio,
and acoustic receivers. We present results from simulating such a hybrid
detector.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the 29th ICRC,
Pune, Indi
The effect of magnetic fields on star cluster formation
We examine the effect of magnetic fields on star cluster formation by
performing simulations following the self-gravitating collapse of a turbulent
molecular cloud to form stars in ideal MHD. The collapse of the cloud is
computed for global mass-to-flux ratios of infinity, 20, 10, 5 and 3, that is
using both weak and strong magnetic fields. Whilst even at very low strengths
the magnetic field is able to significantly influence the star formation
process, for magnetic fields with plasma beta < 1 the results are substantially
different to the hydrodynamic case. In these cases we find large-scale
magnetically-supported voids imprinted in the cloud structure; anisotropic
turbulent motions and column density structure aligned with the magnetic field
lines, both of which have recently been observed in the Taurus molecular cloud.
We also find strongly suppressed accretion in the magnetised runs, leading to
up to a 75% reduction in the amount of mass converted into stars over the
course of the calculations and a more quiescent mode of star formation. There
is also some indication that the relative formation efficiency of brown dwarfs
is lower in the strongly magnetised runs due to the reduction in the importance
of protostellar ejections.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 8 very pretty movies, MNRAS, accepted. Version
with high-res figures + movies available from
http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/dprice/pubs/mcluster/index.htm
Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study : caution about matching and short observational follow-up
This review was funded by Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute Pte Ltd.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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