ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Jules Verne could not even dream of this: A research team has pushed the boundaries of high-pressure and high-temperature research into cosmic dimensions. For the first time, they have succeeded in generating and simultaneously analyzing materials under compression pressures of more than one terapascal (1,000 gigapascals). Such extremely high pressures prevail, for example, at the center of the planet Uranus; they are more than three times higher than the pressure at the center of the Earth.

After running simulations on the world's most powerful supercomputer, an international team of researchers has developed a theory for the nuclear structure and origin of carbon-12, the stuff of life. The theory favors the production of carbon-12 in the cosmos.

In our sun's neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy is a relatively bright star, and in it, astronomers have been able to identify the widest range of elements in a star beyond our solar system yet.