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Ceres Prank Lands Bart Simpson In Detention For Eternity Human-kind has a long history of looking up at the stars and seeing figures and faces. In fact, there’s a word for recognizing faces in natural objects: pareidolia. But this must be the first time someone has recognized Bart Simpson’s face on an object in space. Researchers studying landslides on the dwarf planet Ceres noticed a pattern that resembles the cartoon character. The researchers, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, are studying massive landslides that occur on the surface of the icy dwarf. Their findings are reinforcing the idea that Ceres has significant quantities of frozenRead More →

The Orbit of Neptune. How Long is a Year on Neptune? Here on Earth, a year lasts roughly 365.25 days, each of which lasts 24 hours long. During the course of a single year, our planet goes through some rather pronounced seasonal changes. This is the product of our orbital period, our rotational period, and our axial tilt. And when it comes to the other planets in our Solar System, much the same is true. Consider Neptune. As the eight and farthest planet from the Sun, Neptune has an extremely wide orbit and a comparatively slow orbital velocity. As a result, a year on NeptuneRead More →

Do I Believe in UFOs? Whenever I do a new livestream on Instagram (hint hint, @universetoday on Instagram), it’s generally with an audience that doesn’t have a lot of experience with my work here on Universe Today or YouTube. They’re enthusiastic about space, but they haven’t been exposed to a lot of the modern ideas about astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrials. They have, however, seen a lot of TV and movies. And so, the most common question I get, by a long shot is, “do you believe in aliens?” That’s actually a more complicated question. On the one hand, the question could be: doRead More →

SS John Glenn Launching Science Stash to Space Station atop Atlas V April 18 – Watch Live and 360 Degree Video Orbital ATK SS John Glenn CRS-7 launch vehicle with the Cygnus cargo spacecraft bolted to the top of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is poised for launch at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on April 18, 2017. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – The ‘SS John Glenn’ cargo freighter stands proudly poised for launch at pad 41 from the Florida Space Coast on Tuesday April 18, loaded with a stash of nearly 4 tons ofRead More →

The Orbit of Saturn. How Long is a Year on Saturn? Every planet in the Solar System takes a certain amount of time to complete a single orbit around the Sun. Here on Earth, this period lasts 365.25 days – a period that we refer to as a year. When it comes to the other planets, we use this measurement to characterize their orbital periods. And what we have found is that on many of these planets, depending on their distance from the Sun, a year can last a very long time! Consider Saturn, which orbits the Sun at a distance of about 9.5 AURead More →

Could Space Travelers Melt As They Accelerate Through Deep Space? Forty years ago, Canadian physicist Bill Unruh made a surprising prediction regarding quantum field theory. Known as the Unruh effect, his theory predicted that an accelerating observer would be bathed in blackbody radiation, whereas an inertial observer would be exposed to none. What better way to mark the 40th anniversary of this theory than to consider how it could affect human beings attempting relativistic space travel? Such was the intent behind a new study by a team of researchers from Sao Paulo, Brazil. In essence, they consider how the Unruh effect could be confirmed usingRead More →

What is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge? If you took geology in high school, then chances you remember learning something about how the Earth’s crust = the outermost layer of Earth – is arranged into a series of tectonic plates. These plates float on top of the Earth’s mantle, the semi-viscous layer that surrounds the core, and are in constant motion because of convection in the mantle. Where two plates meet, you have what it is known as a boundary. These can be “divergent” or “convergent”, depending on whether the plates are moving apart or coming together. Where they diverge, hot magma can rise from below, creatingRead More →

Carnival of Space #505 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Zain Husain at the Brownspaceman.com blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #505. 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, signRead More →

Who Discovered Uranus? If you’ve got really good eyesight and can find a place where the light pollution is non-existent, you might be able to see Uranus without a telescope. It’s only possible with the right conditions, and if you know exactly where to look. And for thousands of years, scholars and astronomers were doing just that. But given that it was just a tiny pinprick of light, they believed Uranus was a star. It was not until the late 18th century that the first recorded observation that recognized Uranus as being a planet took place. This occurred on March 13th, 1781, when British astronomerRead More →

SS John Glenn to Debut as World’s 1st Live 360 Degree Video of Rocket Launch April 18 Fiery blastoff of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the EchoStar XIX satellite from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fl., at 2:13 p.m. EST on Dec. 18, 2016. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Imagine watching a real rocket launch in a 360 degree live video broadcast. Well NASA is about to make it happen for the first time and in a big way on a significant mission. On Tuesday April 18, NASA will broadcast the launch of theRead More →

Dynamo At Moon’s Heart Once Powered Magnetic Field Equal To Earth’s When the Apollo astronauts returned to Earth, they came bearing 380.96 kilograms (839.87 lb) of Moon rocks. From the study of these samples, scientists learned a great deal about the Moon’s composition, as well as its history of formation and evolution. For example, the fact that some of these rocks were magnetized revealed that roughly 3 billion years ago, the Moon had a magnetic field. Much like Earth, this field would have been the result of a dynamo effect in the Moon’s core. But until recently, scientists have been unable to explain how the MoonRead More →

NASA Releases Spellbinding Images Of Earth At Night NASA strives to explore space and to expand our understanding of our Solar System and beyond. But they also turn their keen eyes on Earth in an effort to understand how our planet is doing. Now, they’re releasing a new composite image of Earth at night, the first one since 2012. We’ve grown accustomed to seeing these types of images in our social media feeds, especially night-time views of Earth from the International Space Station. But this new image is much more than that. It’s part of a whole project that will allow scientists—and the rest ofRead More →

Black Hole Imaged For First Time By Event Horizon Telescope For decades, scientists have held that Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) reside at the center of larger galaxies. These reality-bending points in space exert a extremely powerful influence on all things that surround them, consuming matter and spitting out a tremendous amount of energy. But given their nature, all attempts to study them has been confined to indirect methods. All of that changed beginning on Wednesday, April 12th, 2017, when an international team of astronomers obtained the first-ever image of a Sagittarius A*. Using a series of telescopes from around the globe – collectively known asRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – April 14, 2017: Brad Peterson and LUVOIR Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: This week’s special guest is Brad Peterson. Brad is a returning guest, and since his last appearance, he has been asked by NASA to serve as a community co-chair, with Debra Fischer of Yale, for the Science and Technology Definition Team for the Large Ultraviolet, Optical, and Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR). Brad has carried out research on active galactic nuclei for his entire career. He has been developing the technique of reverberation mapping for over 25 years. He is currently on appointment at STScI as Distinguished Visiting Astronomer, afterRead More →

Researchers Image Dark Matter Bridge Between Galaxies Dark matter is mysterious stuff, because we can’t really “see” it. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from researching it, and from theorizing about it. One theory says that there should be filament structures of dark matter connecting galaxies. Scientists from the University of Waterloo have now imaged one of those dark matter filaments for the first time. The two scientists, Seth D. Epps and Michael J. Hudson, present their results in a paper at the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society. Theory predicts that filaments of dark matter connect galaxies together, by reaching from the dark matterRead More →

NASA Bombshell: Key Ingredient For Life Discovered On Enceladus NASA has announced the discovery of hydrogen in the plumes on Enceladus. This is huge news, and Cassini scientists have looked forward to this day. What it means is that there is a potential source of energy for microbes in the oceans of Enceladus, and that energy from the Sun is not required to support life. We’ve known about the plumes on Enceladus for a while now, and Cassini has even flown through those plumes to determine their content. But hydrogen was never discovered until now. What it means is that there is a geochemical sourceRead More →

NEO Asteroid 2014 JO25 Set to Buzz Earth on April 19th Missed us… a concept image of a large asteroid passing by the Earth-Moon system. Credit: A combination of ESO/NASA images courtesy of Jason Major/Lights in the Dark. It’s a shooting gallery out there. The spattered face of Earth’s Moon and large impact sites such as Meteor Crater outside of Flagstaff, Arizona remind us that we still inhabit a dangerous neck of the solar neighborhood. But despite the inevitable cries proclaiming the “End of the World of the Week” this coming weekend, humanity can breathe a collective sigh of relief next Wednesday on April 19th,Read More →

A Bored New Horizons Spacecraft Takes Part Time Job To Fill The Time The New Horizons probe made history in July of 2015, being the first mission to ever conduct a close flyby of Pluto. In so doing, the mission revealed some never-before-seen things about this distant world. This included information about its many surface features, it’s atmosphere, magnetic environment, and its system of moons. It also provided images that allowed for the first detailed maps of the planet. Having completed its rendezvous with Pluto, the probe has since been making its way towards its first encounter with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) – knownRead More →

Space Station Trio Touches Down on Earth as NASA’s Next Cargo Ship Targets Apr. 18 Blastoff Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA, and Flight Engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 7:20 a.m. EDT April 10, 2017 in their Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Comings and goings continue apace on the International Space Station! After living and working fruitfully for six months in space aboard the ISS, an international trio of astronauts and cosmonauts including NASA’s Shane Kimbrough departed the orbiting lab complex aboard theirRead More →

Juno Sees Overlapping Colliding Clouds on Jupiter The Juno mission has made some remarkable finds since it reached Jupiter in July of 2016. During the many orbits it has made around Jupiter’s poles – which occur every 53 days – some stunning imagery has resulted. Not only have these pictures revealed things about Jupiter’s atmosphere, they have also been an opportunity for the public to participate in the exploration of this giant planet. The latest feature that was publicly selected to be photographed is known as “STB Spectre“. This feature  was photographed on March 27th, 2017, at 2:06 a.m. PDT (5:06 a.m. EDT), when JunoRead More →