May 2017 (Page 3)

Astronomy Cast Ep. 447: Animals in Space Pt. 3: Dogs, Monkeys and More For the final episode in our 3-part episode about animals in space, we look at the largest animals to go to orbit. And I’ll just warn you now, this is going to be a really sad episode. Visit the Astronomy Cast Page to subscribe to the audio podcast! We usually record Astronomy Cast as a live Google+ Hangout on Air every Friday at 1:30 pm Pacific / 4:30 pm Eastern. You can watch here on Universe Today or from the Astronomy Cast Google+ page. The post Astronomy Cast Ep. 447: Animals inRead More →

Digital Society Boosted by Stunning SpaceX Launch Delivering Inmarsat Mobile Broadband Satellite to Orbit – Photo/Video Gallery SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying commercial Inmarsat 5 F4 broadband satellite blasts off to geostationary orbit at twilight at 7:20 p.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A on 15 May 2017 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – The worlds emerging ‘Digital Society’ gained a big boost following SpaceX’s stunningly beautiful twilight launch of a Falcon 9 that successfully delivered the huge 6.7 ton mobile Inmarsat-5 F4 broadband satellite to orbit for London-based Inmarsat on Monday, May 15. SpaceX blasted theRead More →

Are There Dark Matter Galaxies? ft. Sarah Pearson from Space with Sarah One of the things I love about astronomy is how it’s rapidly changing and evolving over time. Every day there are new discoveries, and advancements in theories that take us incrementally forward in our understanding of the Universe. One of the best examples of this is dark matter; mysterious and invisible but a significant part of the Universe and accounting for the vast majority of mass out there. It was first theorized almost 100 years ago when astronomers surveyed the total mass of distant galaxy clusters and found that the visible mass weRead More →

The Star That Probably Doesn’t Have an Alien Megastructure (But Maybe it Does) is Dimming Again In September of 2015, scientists announced that the star known as KIC 8462852 (aka. “Tabby’s Star” or “Boyajian’s Star”) was experiencing a strange dip in luminosity. At the time, astronomers indicated that this mysterious behavior could be the result of comets transiting in front of the star, but other (perhaps more hopeful) individuals claimed that it could also be the result of an alien megastructure. This led to a flurry of studies and articles that sought to offer entirely natural explanations for what has been observed. Even SETI weighedRead More →

This is Important! Students Are Figuring Out How to Make Beer on the Moon When human being colonize other Solar bodies, how will they see to their basic needs? Already, research has been performed to determine where colonists would be able to procure water, how they might grow their own food, and where and how they might live. But what about the finer things in life, the things that make all the hard labor and sacrifice worth it? In case it’s not clear yet, I’m talking about beer! If and when Lunar or Martian colonies become a reality, will the colonists be able to brewRead More →

Space Station-Based Experiment Might Have Found Evidence of Dark Matter Destroying Itself Since it was first proposed in the 1960s to account for all the “missing mass” in the Universe, scientists have been trying to find evidence of dark matter. This mysterious, invisible mass theoretically accounts for 26.8% of the baryonic matter (aka. visible matter) out there. And yet, despite almost fifty years of ongoing research and exploration, scientists have not found any direct evidence of this missing mass. However, according to two new research papers that were recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters, we may have gotten our first glimpse of darkRead More →

The Circinus Constellation Welcome back to Constellation Friday! Today, in honor of the late and great Tammy Plotner, we will be dealing with the compass – the Circinus constellation! In the 2nd century CE, Greek-Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus (aka. Ptolemy) compiled a list of all the then-known 48 constellations. This treatise, known as the Almagest, would used by medieval European and Islamic scholars for over a thousand years to come, effectively becoming astrological and astronomical canon until the early Modern Age. Over time, the number of recognized constellations has grown as astronomers and explorers became aware of other stars visible from other location around theRead More →

It’s Been Three Years Since We’ve Had a Supernova This Close A supernova is one of the most impressive astronomical events anyone can possibly witness. Characterized by a massive explosion that takes place during the final stages of a massive star’s life (after billions of years of evolution), this sort of event is understandably quite rare. In fact, within the Milky Way Galaxy, a supernova event is likely to happen just once a century. But within the Fireworks Galaxy (aka. the spiral galaxy NGC 6946), which is located 22 million light years from Earth and has half as many stars as our galaxy, supernovae areRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – May 19, 2017: Eric Fisher of Labfundr Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Eric Fisher is the head of Labfundr, a Canadian crowdsourcing platform for science research and outreach. Eric is an entrepreneur, recovering biochemist, and son of a glaciologist. He completed a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. At Dalhousie, Eric investigated how liver cells create and destroy “bad” cholesterol particles. Eric recently founded Labfundr, Canada’s first crowdfunding platform for science, which aims to boost public engagement and investment in research. He stays on his toes by trying to keep up withRead More →

We Will Launch on Reuseable Rocket After Exceptional SpaceX Performance – Inmarsat CEO Tells Universe Today All 9 Merlin 1D first stage engines firing beautifully as SpaceX Falcon 9 arcs over down range successfully carrying Inmarsat 5F4 #I5F4 to geostationary transfer orbit at twilight after liftoff from Launch Complex 39A on 15 May 2017 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Following SpaceX’s “exceptional performance” launching an immensely powerful broadband satellite on their maiden mission for Inmarsat this week on a Falcon 9 rocket, the company CEO told Universe Today that Inmarsat was willing to conduct futureRead More →

Dinosaur Killing Asteroid Hit in Exactly the Wrong Place The asteroid that struck Earth about 66 million years ago and led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs may have hit one of the worst places possible as far as life on Earth was concerned. When it struck, the resulting cataclysm choked the atmosphere with sulphur, which blocked out the Sun. Without the Sun, the food chain collapsed, and it was bye-bye dinosaurs, and bye-bye most of the other life on Earth, too. But, as it turns out, if it had struck a few moments earlier or later, it would not have hit the Yucatan, andRead More →

Carnival of Space #509 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang at his Next Big Future blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #509 And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign upRead More →

Comet V2 Johnson Takes Center Stage Comet V2 Johnson from February 21st, 2017. Image credit and copyright: John Purvis Had your fill of binocular comets? Turns out, 2017 may have saved the best for last. The past few months has seen a steady stream of dirty snowball visitations to the inner solar system, both short term periodic and long term hyperbolic. First, let’s run through the cometary roll call for the first part of the year: There’s 41P Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák, 2P/Encke, 45P Honda-Markov-Padjudašáková, C/2015 ER61 PanSTARRS and finally, the latecomer to the party, C/2017 E4 Lovejoy. Next up is a comet with a much easier to pronounceRead More →

We Might Have a New Way to Push Back Space Radiation Human beings have known for quite some time that our behavior has a significant influence on our planet. In fact, during the 20th century, humanity’s impact on the natural environment and climate has become so profound that some geologists began to refer to the modern era as the “Anthropocene”. In this age, human agency is the most deterministic force on the planet. But according to a comprehensive new study by an Anglo-American team of researchers, human beings might be shaping the near-space environment as well. According to the study, radio communications, EM radiation fromRead More →

Dawn Gets Right in Between the Sun and Ceres and Takes this Video The Dawn probe continues to excite and amaze! Since it achieved orbit around Ceres in March of 2015, it has been sending back an impressive stream of data and images on the protoplanet. In addition to capturing pictures of the mysterious “bright spots” on Ceres’ surface, it has also revealed evidence of cryovolcanism and the possibility of an interior ocean that could even support life. Most recently, the Dawn probe conducted observations of the protoplanet while it was at opposition – directly between the Sun and Ceres surface – on April 29th.Read More →

Could the Closest Extrasolar Planet Be Habitable? Astronomers Plan to Find Out The extra-solar planet known as Proxima b has occupied a special place in the public mind ever since its existence was announced in August of 2016. As the closest exoplanet to our Solar System, its discovery has raised questions about the possibility of exploring it in the not-too-distant future. And even more tantalizing are the questions relating to its potential habitability. Despite numerous studies that have attempted to indicate whether the planet could be suitable for life as we know it, nothing definitive has been produced. Fortunately, a team of astrophysics from theRead More →

New Explanation for Dark Energy? Tiny Fluctuations of Time and Space Since the late 1920s, astronomers have been aware of the fact that the Universe is in a state of expansion. Initially predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, this realization has gone on to inform the most widely-accepted cosmological model – the Big Bang Theory. However, things became somewhat confusing during the 1990s, when improved observations showed that the Universe’s rate of expansion has been accelerating for billions of years. This led to the theory of Dark Energy, a mysterious invisible force that is driving the expansion of the cosmos. Much like Dark MatterRead More →