Exposición: Cielo, Mar y Tierra en CanariasDel 6 al 11 de noviembre, en el Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos de Tenerife, en La Laguna, y coincidiendo con la Semana Euroepa de la Ciencia y la Tecnología 2000

Advertised on

SECUENCIAS DEL GRUPO LOCAL DE GALAXIAS DISPONIBLES EN BETACAM (Tel: 922605206 y 922605371)

La Vía Láctea se formó en su mayor parte en un proceso rápido, que duró entre 500 y 1.000 millones de años, un cinco por ciento de su edad total. Estos datos contradicen lo que sostenían algunos resultados científicos publicados en los últimos años, que establecían períodos de hasta 4.000 ó 5.000 millones de años.

Investigadores del grupo de Poblaciones Estelares del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) y del grupo de Cúmulos Estelares de la Universidad de Padua (Italia) han llegado a esta conclusión, que ayuda a esclarecer el debate sostenido en los últimos veinte años entre quienes opinaban que la Vía Láctea se formó lentamente y los defensores de un esquema de formación rápida. El estudio, que ha analizado las edades de 52 cúmulos globulares de nuestra galaxia (los objetos estelares más viejos conocidos), aporta además nuevos datos sobre las características del Universo primitivo.

Las observaciones se han realizado con el telescopio "Jacobus Kapteyn" (JKT), del Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, del IAC, y el "Dutch" de La Silla, en Chile. En el estudio han participado Alfred Rosenberg (astrofísico del IAC y autor de la tesis que recoge los resultados), Ivo Saviane (Universidad de Padua), Giampaolo Piotto (investigador principal del grupo de Cúmulos Estelares de Padua) y Antonio Aparicio (investigador principal del grupo de PoblacionesEstelares del IAC).

News type
Press release

It may interest you

  • Illustration of the UNDARK project
    Press release
    The IAC aims to illuminate the dark side of the universe with the UNDARK project
    UNDARK is a pioneering project led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) bringing together outstanding international institutions in the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, and particle physics. Funded for three years via the 'Widening' programme of the European Union, its objective is to tackle one of the major puzzles of contemporary physics: the dark universe. The major part of the Cosmos is composed by the so-called “dark universe”. Barely 18% of the total matter in the universe is made up of the elements in atoms with which we are familiar, while the remaining 82%, termed
    Advertised on
  • Observation of 2024 NP2 obtained with the TST telescope
    Press release
    The Solar System Group at the IAC discovers a new asteroid near the Earth
    The discovery of 2024 NP2 took place during the night of July 4th in images taken during the commissioning of the TST, a new telescope recently installed at the Teide Observatory. On July 4th the first regular observations were made in the commissioning of the Transient Survey Telescope (TST), an astronomical installation produced by a public-private collaboration between the IAC and the Canary company Light Bridges , at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife). The TST is a robotic telescope with a wide field. With a 1 metre telescope and a camera using an sCMOS detector at its prime focus, it can
    Advertised on
  • Simulation illustrating the distribution of dark matter particles expected in a low-mass galaxy if the dark matter did not collide (in orange, concentrated towards the center) versus the observed dark matter (in blue, far more dispersed) / Gabriel Pérez (IAC)
    Press release
    Researchers from the IAC have discovered that dark matter experiences forces beyond gravity
    The existence of dark matter is likely one of the most perplexing problems facing the scientific community, and unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern physics. In simple terms, we do not know what dark matter is made of, despite accounting for 85% of all the matter in the Universe. A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias concludes that dark matter does not behave as described by the dominant paradigm, which states that dark matter particles only interact with each other and with ordinary matter through gravity. The IAC study reveals that dark
    Advertised on