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These 25 Billion Galaxies are Definitely Living in a Simulation Understanding the Universe and how it has evolved over the course of billions of years is a rather daunting task. On the one hand, it involves painstakingly looking billions of light years into deep space (and thus, billions of years back in time) to see how its large-scale structure changed over time. Then, massive amounts of computing power are needed to simulate what it should look like (based on known physics) and seeing if they match up. That is what a team of astrophysicists from the University of Zurich (UZH) did using the “Piz Daint”Read More →

Messier 46 – the NGC 2437 Open Star Cluster Welcome back to Messier Monday! In our ongoing tribute to the great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at Orion’s Nebula’s “little brother”, the De Marian’s Nebula! During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noted the presence of several “nebulous objects” in the night sky. Having originally mistaken them for comets, he began compiling a list of them so that others would not make the same mistake he did. In time, this list (known as the Messier Catalog) would come to include 100 of the most fabulous objects in the night sky. One ofRead More →

The Corona Australis Constellation Welcome back to Constellation Friday! Today, in honor of the late and great Tammy Plotner, we will be dealing with the “Southern Crown” – the Corona Australis 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 be 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. One of these was the Coronoa Australis constellation, otherwise known as the “Southern Crown”.  This small, southern constellation is oneRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – June 9, 2017: Dr. Jeffrey Forshaw Presents “Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos” Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Dr. Jeffrey Forshaw is a British particle physicist with an interest in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which is the study of the behavior of subatomic particles. Dr. Forshaw is the co-author (with Brian Cox) of Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos, which sends readers on an inspirational journey of scientific exploration. Guests: Sarah Marquart (Futurism.com / @SagaofSarah) Their stories this week: ALMA Finds Ingredient of Life Around Infant Sun-like Stars Wow! Mystery Signal From Space Finally Explained We use a tool called TrelloRead More →

What Made this Mysterious Pit on Mars? Impact Crater or Natural Collapse? The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this unusual crater or pit on the surface of Mars. Frozen carbon dioxide gives the region its unique “Swiss cheese” like appearance. Image:NASA/JPL/University of Arizona During late summer in the Southern hemisphere on Mars, the angle of the sunlight as it strikes the surface brings out some subtle details on the planet’s surface. In this image, the HiRISE camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured an area of frozen carbon dioxide on the surface. Some of the carbon dioxide ice has melted,Read More →

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 →