News (Page 28)

How Does the Cosmic Web Drive Galaxy Evolution? Galaxies experience a long strange trip through the cosmic web as they grow and evolve. It turns out that the neighborhoods they spend time in on the journey change their evolution, and that affects their star formation activity and alters their gas content. Astronomer Gregory Rudnick of the University of Kansas has a grant to follow that galactic growth trail and figure out just how the trip alters the evolution of a galaxy. These giant stellar cities are spread throughout the Universe, said Rudnick, explaining that they tend to cluster together into large conglomerations. Hundreds of thousandsRead More →

A Black Hole Has Cleared Out Its Neighbourhood We can’t see them directly, but we know they’re there. Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) likely dwell at the center of every large galaxy. Their overwhelming gravity draws material toward them, where it collects in an accretion disk, waiting its turn to cross the event horizon into oblivion. But in one galaxy, the SMBH has choked on its meal and spit it out, sending material away at high speeds and clearing out the entire neighbourhood. We’ve known there’s something at the heart of large galaxies since the early 1960s when astronomers discovered an unexplained radio source at theRead More →

Dust Ruins Another Way of Measuring Distance in the Universe Astronomers have many ways to measure the distance to galaxies billions of light years away, but most of them rely upon standard candles. These are astrophysical processes that have a brightness we can calibrate, such as Cepheid variable stars or Type Ia supernovae. Of course, all of these standard candles have some inherent variability, so astronomers also look for where our assumptions about them can lead us astray. As a case in point, a recent study in The Astrophysical Journal shows how galactic dust can bias distance observations. The study compares two slightly different waysRead More →

Astronomers See 18 Examples of Stars Getting Torn Apart by Black Holes Black holes have always held a special fascination for me ever since I was a geeky kid looking up at the stars. Their intense forces are the stuff of science fiction and can tear a star to pieces. This process is violent and can send bursts of electromagnetic radiation across the Cosmos. A paper recently published announces the discovery of 18 new tidal events just like this, doubling the number of identified shredded stars.  Black holes are the remains of massive stars that have reached the end of their lives. During the mainRead More →

NASA Continues Testing its New Lunar Spacesuits NASA’s Artemis mission objective is among other things, to get human beings back to the Moon. Much of the attention of late has been focussed on the rocket technology to get the astronauts there but as we progress from Artemis I to Artemis II – which aims to take a crew around the Moon and back before Artemis III lands them on the lunar surface – attention is shifting on the spacesuits the crew will wear. The new suits, built by Axiom Space are designed to provide the mobility and protection required on the surface and now, NASARead More →

Some Young Planets Are Flattened Smarties, not Spheres. One of contemporary astronomy’s most pressing questions concerns planet formation. We can see more deeply than ever into very young solar systems where planets are taking shape in the disks around young stars. But our view is still clouded by all the gas and dust in these young systems. The picture of planet formation just got cloudier with the discovery that some young planets are shaped like flattened candies rather than spheres. There are two main theories for planet formation, and they both start with stars. Stars are born in giant molecular clouds of hydrogen. Due toRead More →

Space Force Chooses its First “Guardian” to go to Space Although the U.S. Space Force is tasked with military operations in regards to space, they’ve never actually sent one of their own into orbit. This week, the agency announced that Col. Nick Hague will launch to the International Space Station in August 2024 to pilot the Crew-9 mission, as part of SpaceX’s ninth crew rotation to the ISS for NASA. He’ll join two NASA astronauts and a cosmonaut on the trip to space and then work as a flight engineer, spending six months on the station doing research and operations activities. “The core of ourRead More →

Astronomers Measure the Mass of the Milky Way by Calculating How Hard it is to Escape If you want to determine your mass, it’s pretty easy. Just step on a scale and look at the number it gives you. That number tells you the gravitational pull of Earth upon you, so if you feel the number is too high, take comfort that Earth just finds you more attractive than others. The same scale could also be used to measure the mass of Earth. If you place a kilogram mass on the scale, the weight it gives is also the weight of Earth in the gravitationalRead More →

NASA’s Juno Probe Makes Another Close Flyby of Io The Juno spacecraft has revealed some fascinating things about Jupiter since it began exploring the system on July 4th, 2016. Not only is it the first robotic mission to study Jupiter up close while orbiting it since the Galileo spacecraft, which studied the gas giant and its satellites from 1995 to 2003. Juno is also the first robotic explorer to look below Jupiter’s dense clouds to investigate the planet’s magnetic field, composition, and structure. The data this has produced is helping scientists address questions about how Jupiter formed and the origins of the Solar System. SinceRead More →