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Art History NASA Style To some, art and science are opposed to one another. Art is aesthetics, expression, and intuition, while science is all cold, hard, rational thought. But that’s a simplistic understanding. They’re both quintessential human endeavours, and they’re both part of the human spirit. Some at NASA have always understood this, and there’s actually an interesting, collaborative history between NASA and the art world, that reaches back several decades. Not the kind of art that you see hanging in elite galleries in the world’s large cities, but the kind of art that documents achievements in space exploration, and that helps us envision whatRead More →

CERN Declares War On The Standard Model Ever since the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, the Large Hardon Collider has been dedicated to searching for the existence of physics that go beyond the Standard Model. To this end, the Large Hardon Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) was established in 2016, specifically for the purpose of exploring what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and create the Universe as we know it. Since that time, the LHCb has been doing some rather amazing things. This includes discovering five new particles, uncovering evidence of a new manifestation of matter-antimatter asymmetry, and (mostRead More →

Cygnus Soars to Space on Atlas Carrying SS John Glenn on Course to Space Station Orbital ATK’s seventh cargo delivery flight to the International Space Station -in tribute to John Glenn- launched at 11:11 a.m. EDT April 18, 2017, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Orbital ATK’s Cygnus supply ship soared to space from the Florida Space Coast at lunchtime today, Tuesday, April 18, drenched in sunshine and carrying the ‘SS John Glenn’ loaded with over three and a half tons ofRead More →

Ride Shotgun Through the Solar System with Chris Hadfield It sounds like a space nerd’s dream come true: riding in a Tesla with former astronaut Chris Hadfield, doing a science version of Carpool Karaoke. And to top it off, you’re actually driving through the Solar System. A new film out called “Miniverse” via Curiosity Stream takes you on a ride through a scaled-down version of our Solar System. It’s similar to other scaled solar system models — which make the huge distances in our cosmic neighborhood a little less abstract — like the Voyage Scale Model Solar System in Washington, DC, the Sagan Planet WalkRead More →

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 →