June 2017 (Page 4)

Construction Tips from a Type 2 Engineer: Collaboration with Isaac Arthur By popular request, Isaac Arthur and I have teamed up again to bring you a vision of the future of human space exploration. This time, we bring you practical construction tips from a pair of Type 2 Civilization engineers. To make this collaboration even better, we’ve teamed up with two artists, Kevin Gill and Sergio Botero. They’re going to help create some special art, just for this episode, to help show what some of these megaprojects might look like. I’d also like to congratulate Gannon Huiting for suggesting the topic for this collaboration. WeRead More →

Astronomers Measure the Mass of a White Dwarf, and Prove Einstein was Right… Again It’s been over a century since Einstein firs proposed his Theory of General Relativity, his groundbreaking proposal for how gravity worked on large scales throughout the cosmos. And yet, after all that time, experiments are still being conducted that show that Einstein’s field equations were right on the money. And in some cases, old experiments are finding new uses, helping astronomers to unlock other astronomical mysteries. Case in point: using the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA astronomers have repeated a century-old test of General Relativity to determine the mass of a whiteRead More →

At the Largest Scales, Our Milky Way Galaxy is in the Middle of Nowhere Ever since Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and saw moons in orbit around that planet, we began to realize we don’t occupy a central, important place in the Universe. In 2013, a study showed that we may be further out in the boondocks than we imagined. Now, a new study confirms it: we live in a void in the filamental structure of the Universe, a void that is bigger than we thought. In 2013, a study by University of Wisconsin–Madison astronomer Amy Barger and her student Ryan Keenan showed thatRead More →

We’re One Step Closer to Knowing Why There’s More Matter Than Antimatter in the Universe The Standard Model of particle physics has been the predominant means of explaining what the basic building blocks of matter are and how they interact for decades. First proposed in the 1970s, the model claims that for every particle created, there is an anti-particle. As such, an enduring mystery posed by this model is why the Universe can exist if it is theoretically made up of equal parts of matter and antimatter. This seeming disparity, known as the charge-parity (CP) violation, has been the subject of experiments for many years.Read More →

Amazing Video: Watch SpaceX’s Dragon in Flight, as Seen From the Ground Always on the lookout for interesting events in the skies, astrophotographer Thierry Legault has captured an incredible video of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule traveling through space just 20 minutes after it launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 3, 2017. “You can see the Dragon, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, and solar panel covers,” Legault told Universe Today via email, “plus a nice surprise I discovered during processing: several fast ejections of material, certainly thrusters firing!” Legault captured at least 6 ejections of material during the passage over his location inRead More →

Even Calm Red Dwarf Stars Blast Their Planets with Mini-Flares, Destroying their Habitability Thanks to some rather profound discoveries, red dwarf stars (aka. M-type stars) have been a popular target for exoplanet hunters lately. While small, cool, and relatively dim compared to our Sun, red dwarf star systems are where many of the most recent and promising exoplanet finds have been made. These include Proxima b, the seven rocky planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, and the super-Earth discovered around LHS 1140b. Unfortunately, red dwarf stars pose a bit of a problem when it comes to habitability. In addition to being variable in terms of the light theyRead More →

Mars Had Way More Water on its Surface Than We Thought Mars has an extensive network of ancient valleys that were likely carved out by water over geologic time periods. Now a new study suggests that Mars had much more water than previously thought, and the key behind calculating that amount of water is in the valleys themselves. The issue of exactly how much liquid water Mars had on its surface has been a hotly debated topic. There’s ample evidence that there was liquid water there. Orbiters and rovers have provided most of that evidence. Sedimentary rock, hydrated minerals that only form in the presenceRead More →

Cancer Risk for a Human Mars Mission Just Got a Lot Worse Astronauts hoping to take part in a crewed mission to Mars might want to pack some additional rad tablets! Long before NASA announced their proposal for a “Journey to Mars“, which envisions putting boots on the Red Planet by the 2030s, mission planners have been aware that one of the greatest risks for such a mission has to do with the threat posed by cosmic and solar radiation. But according to a new study from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, this threat is even worse than previously thought. Using a predictive model,Read More →

Summer Astronomy, Minimoon & Saturn Opposition 2017 Saturn on June 1st, nearing opposition. Image credit and copyright: Peter on the Universe Today Flickr forum Summertime astronomy leaves observers with the perennial question: when to observe? Here in Florida, for example, true astronomical darkness does not occur until 10 PM; folks further north face an even more dire situation. In Alaska, the game in late July became “on what date can you first spot a bright planet/star? around midnight. And evening summer thunder showers don’t help. Our solution is to get up early (4 AM or so) when the roiling atmosphere has settled down a bit. ButRead More →

How Do We Know the Universe is Flat? Discovering the Topology of the Universe Whenever we talk about the expanding Universe, everyone wants to know how this is going to end. Sure, they say, the fact that most of the galaxies we can see are speeding away from us in all directions is really interesting. Sure, they say, the Big Bang makes sense, in that everything was closer together billions of years ago. But how does it end? Does this go on forever? Do galaxies eventually slow down, come to a stop, and then hurtle back together in a Big Crunch? Will we get aRead More →

Reused SpaceX Dragon Supply Ship Arrives Space Station, Cygnus Departs, Falcon 9 Launch & Landing: Photos/Videos The newly arrived SpaceX Dragon CRS-11 resupply ship is installed to the Harmony module on June 5, 2017. The Progress 66 cargo craft is docked to the Pirs docking compartment and the Soyuz MS-04 crew vehicle is docked to the Poisk module. Credit: NASA KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – The first ever reused Dragon supply ship successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) two days after a thunderous liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday, June 3. The first stage boosterRead More →

We Finally Know why the Boomerang Nebula is Colder than Space Itself The Boomerang Nebula, a proto-planetary nebula that was created by a dying red giant star (located about 5000 light years from Earth), has been a compelling mystery for astronomers since 1995. It was at this time, thanks to a team using the now-decommissioned 15-meter Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SESTI) in Chile, that this nebula came to be known as the coldest object in the known Universe. And now, over 20 years later, we may know why. According to a team of astronomers who used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) – located in theRead More →