Universe Today (Page 17)

A Super-Earth (and Possible Earth-Sized) Exoplanet Found in the Habitable Zone Astronomers have found a new Super-Earth orbiting an M-dwarf (red dwarf) star about 137 light-years away. The planet is named TOI-715b, and it’s about 1.55 Earth’s radius and is inside the star’s habitable zone. There’s also another planetary candidate in the system. It’s Earth-sized, and if it’s confirmed, it will be the smallest habitable zone planet TESS has discovered so far. TOI-715 is an average red dwarf. It’s about one-quarter the mass and about one-quarter the radius of our Sun. TOI-715b is close to the star, and its tight orbit takes only 19 daysRead More →

How Dangerous are Kilonovae? When we look up at the sky on a particularly dark night, there is a sense of timelessness. We might see the flash of a meteor, and occasionally a comet is visible to the naked eye, but the cold and distant stars are unchanging. Or so it seems. There can also be a sense of calm, that despite all the uncertainty of the world, the stars will always watch over us. So it’s hard to imagine that light years away there could be a lurking event that poses an existential threat to humanity. That threat is extremely tiny, but not zero,Read More →

An Astronaut Controls a Robotic Dog From Orbit Swedish astronaut Marcus Wandt took control of a series of robots in Germany while on board the International Space Station, zipping around the Earth at 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 mph.) Researchers want to understand how time delays can affect the remote control of robots from an orbiting platform. Future astronauts could control rovers on the Moon’s or Mars’s surface from a spacecraft in orbit. Until now, only wheeled rovers have been part of the tests, but now they have added a dog-like robot called Bert. This robot research session, called ‘Surface Avatar’ follows initial experiments carriedRead More →

Japan Moon Lander Sleeps After Sending Science — Will It Wake Up Again? After a few days of wakefulness, Japan’s SLIM moon lander has gone dormant once more at the start of a 14-day-long lunar night. The upended robot sent back a stream of data and imagery while its solar cells were in position to soak up sunlight, and its handlers hope they can get SLIM to wake up again and resume its work after lunar sunrise in mid-February. The car-sized robot accomplished its primary mission on Jan. 20 (Japan time) when it landed within 100 meters of its target point near Shioli Crater. SLIMRead More →

Asteroid Ryugu Contained Bonus Comet Particles On December 5th, 2020, Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission successfully returned samples it had collected from the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) 162173 Ryugu home. Since asteroids are basically leftover material from the formation of the Solar System, analysis of these samples will provide insight into what conditions were like back then. In particular, scientists are interested in determining how organic molecules were delivered throughout the Solar System shortly after its formation (ca. 4.6 billion years ago), possibly offering clues as to how (and where) life emerged. The samples have already provided a wealth of information, including more than 20 amino acids, vitaminRead More →

Space Junk is Going to be a Problem for Vera Rubin The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is different than other large telescopes, and that difference makes it more vulnerable to space junk. Other telescopes, like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, focus on distant objects. But the VRO’s job is to repeatedly image the entire available night sky for ten years, spotting transients and variable objects. All that space junk can look like transient events, impairing the VRO’s vision and polluting its results. In a new research note awaiting publication, Harvard physicist/astronomer Avi Loeb points out how space junk will affectRead More →

Giant Star Seen 150 Days Before it Exploded as a Supernova Supernovae are relatively rare. It might not seem like it, but that’s because they’re so bright we can see them in other galaxies a great distance away. In fact, in 2022, astronomers spotted a supernova over 10 billion light-years away. Any time astronomers spot a supernova, it’s an opportunity to learn more about these rare, cataclysmic explosions. It’s especially valuable if astronomers can get a good look at the progenitor star before it explodes. We know what types of stars explode as core-collapse supernovae: massive ones. But we don’t know which star will explodeRead More →

Dark Matter Might Help Explain How Supermassive Black Holes Can Merge Although the exact nature of dark matter continues to elude astronomers, we have gained some understanding of its general physical properties. We know how it clusters around galaxies, how it makes up much of the matter in the Universe, and even how it can interact with itself. Now a new study looks at just how fast dark matter can move. The study focuses on an effect known as dynamical friction. The term is a bit of a misnomer since it isn’t the kind of friction you see between two objects sliding against each other.Read More →

The Extremely Large Telescope’s Dome is on the Move Construction of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) reached a milestone, with the structure of the dome completed just enough where engineers were able to rotate the dome’s skeleton for the first time. ESO released a timelapse video this week of the dome’s movement, sped up from the actual snail’s pace of 1 centimeter per second. When the telescope is completed – currently set for sometime in 2028 — the rotation of the dome will allow the telescope to track objects in the night sky over the Chilean Atacama desert. The final operating speed will be atRead More →

Should We Send Humans to Mars? Universe Today has explored the potential for sending humans to Europa, Venus, Titan, and Pluto, all of which possess environmental conditions that are far too harsh for humans to survive. The insight gained from planetary scientists resulted in some informative discussions, and traveling to some of these far-off worlds might be possible, someday. In the final installment of this series, we will explore the potential for sending humans to a destination that has been the focus of scientific exploration and science folklore for more than 100 years: Mars aka the Red Planet. Dr. Jordan Bretzfelder, who is a PostdoctoralRead More →

How Did Life Get Started on Earth? Atmospheric Haze Might Have Been the Key A recent study accepted to The Planetary Science Journal investigates how the organic hazes that existed on Earth between the planet’s initial formation and 500 million years afterwards, also known as Hadean geologic eon, could have contained the necessary building blocks for life, including nucleobases and amino acids. This study holds the potential to not only help scientists better understand the conditions on an early Earth, but also if these same conditions on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, could produce the building blocks of life, as well. Here, Universe Today discusses thisRead More →

Six Planets Found Orbiting an Extremely Young Star The field of exoplanet study continues to grow by leaps and bounds. As of the penning of this article, 5,572 extrasolar planets have been confirmed in 4,150 systems (with another 10,065 candidates awaiting confirmation. Well, buckle up because six more exoplanets have been confirmed around TOI-1136, a Sun-like star located roughly 276 light-years from Earth. This star is less than 700 million years old, making it relatively young compared to our own (4.6 billion years). This system will allow astronomers to observe how systems like our own have evolved with time. The six-planet system was confirmed byRead More →

Betelgeuse. Before, During and After the Great Dimming When a prominent star in the night sky suddenly dims, it generates a lot of interest. That’s what happened with the red supergiant star Betelgeuse between November 2019 and May 2020. Betelgeuse will eventually explode as a supernova. Was the dimming a signal that the explosion was imminent? No, and new research helps explain why. Headline writers couldn’t resist the supernova angle, even though that explanation was never very likely. Eventually, it became clear that ejected dust from the star caused the dimming. New research based on observations before, during, and after the Great Dimming Event (GDE)Read More →

Even Early Galaxies Grew Hand-in-Hand With Their Supermassive Black Holes Within almost every galaxy there is a supermassive black hole. This by itself implies some kind of formative connection between the two. We have also observed how gas and dust within a galaxy can drive the growth of galactic black holes, and how the dynamics of black holes can both drive star formation or hinder it depending on how active a black hole is. But one area where astronomers still have little information is how galaxies and their black holes interacted in the early Universe. Did black holes drive the formation of galaxies, or didRead More →

Astrobiology: Why study it? How to study it? What are the challenges? Universe Today has proudly examined the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, and exoplanets, and what they can teach scientists and the public about finding life beyond Earth. Impact craters both shape these planetary surfaces and hold the power to create or destroy life, and we learned how exoplanets are changing our views of planetary formation and evolution, including how and where we might find life in the cosmos. Here, we will discuss how these disciplines contribute to the field responsible for finding life beyond Earth, known as astrobiology. We will discussRead More →

Webb Directly Images Two Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs In several billion years, our Sun will become a white dwarf. What will happen to Jupiter and Saturn when the Sun transitions to become a stellar remnant? Life could go on, though the giant planets will likely drift further away from the Sun. Stars end their lives in different ways. Some meet their end as supernovae, cataclysmic explosions that destroy any orbiting planets and even sterilize planets light-years away. But only massive stars explode like that. Our Sun is not massive enough to explode as a supernova. Instead, it’ll spend time as a red giant. The redRead More →

The Aftermath of a Recent Galactic Merger NGC 4753 is a prime example of what happens after a galactic merger. It looks like a twisted mess, with dust lanes looping around the massive galactic nucleus. Astronomers long wondered what happened to this galaxy, and with a sharp new image created by the Gemini South telescope, they can finally explain its tortured past. Officially, NGC 4753 is classified as a “peculiar” galaxy due to its odd appearance. But, like other survivors of galactic mergers and acquisitions, it has probably had several “shapes” throughout its history. Most galaxies are classified as spirals, ellipticals, lenticulars, and irregulars. ForRead More →

Feast Your Eyes on 19 Face-On Spiral Galaxies Seen by Webb If you’re fascinated by Nature, these images of spiral galaxies won’t help you escape your fascination. These images show incredible detail in 19 spirals, imaged face-on by the JWST. The galactic arms with their multitudes of stars are lit up in infrared light, as are the dense galactic cores, where supermassive black holes reside. The JWST captured these images as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) programme. PHANGS is a long-running program aimed at understanding how gas and star formation interact with galactic structure and evolution. One ofRead More →

A Magnetohydrodynamic Drive Could Lead to Fuel Stations on Mars Within the next fifteen years, NASA, China, and SpaceX plan to send the first crewed missions to Mars. In all three cases, these missions are meant to culminate in the creation of surface habitats that will allow for many returns and – quite possibly – permanent human settlements. This presents numerous challenges, one of the greatest of which is the need for plenty of breathable air and propellant. Both can be manufactured through electrolysis, where electromagnetic fields are applied to water (H2O) to create oxygen gas (O2) and liquid hydrogen (LH2). While Mars has ampleRead More →

The Seeming Impossibility of Life The number of near misses, false starts, and legitimate disasters that have befallen our species since the day we took our first upright steps all those generations ago is too large to count and could honestly take up this entire book. I’ll give us humans this much, though: we’re survivors, through and through. We are, to put it bluntly, remarkable. There is nothing in this cosmos that even begins to approach anything resembling the complexity of the human brain. There is no other world that we have discovered, within our solar system or without, that can support the dizzying arrayRead More →