Highlights from AAS Nova: 19 July - 1 August 2020

AAS Nova provides brief highlights of recently published articles from the AAS journals, i.e., The Astronomical Journal (AJ), The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), ApJ Letters, ApJ Supplements, The Planetary Science Journal, and Research Notes of the AAS. The website's intent is to gain broader exposure for AAS authors and to provide astronomy researchers and enthusiasts with summaries of recent, interesting research across a wide range of astronomical fields.

The following are the AAS Nova highlights from the past two weeks; follow the links to read more, or visit the AAS Nova webpage for more posts.

31 July 2020
Hints of Young Solar Systems
How did our solar system’s planets first form within the swirling disk of gas and dust that surrounded the newborn Sun? New observations from ALMA provide clues.

29 July 2020
Searching for Patterns from Feeding Supermassive Black Holes
Scientists have gone on the hunt for feeding supermassive black holes that show periodic patterns in their varying high-energy light.

28 July 2020
Salt and Hot Water around Massive Protostars
Astrobites reports on the discovery of table salt and super-heated water in two massive protostellar disks, hinting at a new type of “hot-disk” chemistry.

27 July 2020
An Infant Pulsar Defies Categorization
Pulsars have historically been classified into different categories — but the distinction between them may be blurrier than we thought.

24 July 2020
There’s Metal in the Air
What metals can be found in the atmospheres of ultra-hot Jupiters?

22 July 2020
The Contradiction of a Low-Mass Massive Black Hole
A new discovery sheds some light on the gray area that lies between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes.

21 July 2020
The Fault in Our (Unaligned) Stars
If dark matter didn’t exist, the visible matter in the universe should be able to explain all gravitational phenomena. But can it? Astrobites reports.

20 July 2020
Featured Image: Smashing Spheres of Ice
New laboratory experiments explode hollow ice spheres to learn about catastrophic collisions in the early solar system.