News (Page 3)

Supermassive Black Holes Got Started From Massive Cosmic Seeds Supermassive black holes are central to the dynamics and evolution of galaxies. They play a role in galactic formation, stellar production, and possibly even the clustering of dark matter. Almost every galaxy has a supermassive black hole, which can make up a small fraction of a galaxy’s mass in nearby galaxies. While we know a great deal about these gravitational monsters, one question that has lingered is just how supermassive black holes gained mass so quickly. Most of what we know about early black holes comes from quasars. These occur when supermassive black holes are inRead More →

If You’ve Never Seen An Aurora Before, This Might Be Your Chance! Tonight and the rest of the weekend could be your best chance ever to see the aurora. The Sun has been extremely active lately as it heads towards solar maximum. A giant Earth-facing sunspot group named AR3664 has been visible, and according to Spaceweather.com, the first of an unbelievable SIX coronal mass ejections were hurled our way from that active region, and is now hitting our planet’s magnetic field. Solar experts predict that people in the US as far south as Alabama and Northern California could be treated to seeing the northern lightsRead More →

Lighting Up the Moon’s Permanently Shadowed Craters The Moon’s polar regions are home to permanently shadowed craters. In those craters is ancient ice, and establishing a presence on the Moon means those water ice deposits are a valuable resource. Astronauts will likely use solar energy to work in these craters and harvest water, but the Sun never shines there. What’s the solution? According to one team of researchers, a solar collector perched on the crater’s rim. There’s abundant solar energy on the Moon. But not all the time and not everywhere. At the bottom of the deepest craters closest to the poles, there’s no Sun.Read More →

Here’s Where China’s Sample Return Mission is Headed Humanity got its first look at the other side of the Moon in 1959 when the USSR’s Luna 3 probe captured our first images of the Lunar far side. The pictures were shocking, pointing out a pronounced difference between the Moon’s different sides. Now China is sending another lander to the far side. This time, it’ll bring back a sample from this long-unseen domain that could explain the puzzling difference. Chang’e-6 (CE-6) launched on May 3rd and is headed for the second largest impact crater in the Solar System: the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin. It’ll landRead More →

Why Hot Jupiters Spiral into Their Stars Exoplanets are a fascinating astronomy topic, especially the so-called “Hot Jupiters”. They’re overheated massive worlds often found orbiting very close to their stars—hence the name. Extreme gravitational interactions can tug them right into their stars over millions of years. However, some hot Jupiters appear to be spiraling in faster than gravity can explain. WASP-12b is a good example of one of these rapidly spiraling hot Jupiters. In about three million years, thanks to orbital decay, it will become one with its yellow dwarf host star. Both are part of a triple-star system containing two red dwarf stars. TheRead More →

Does the Milky Way Have Too Many Satellite Galaxies? The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are well known satellite galaxies of the Milky Way but there are more. It is surrounded by at least 61 within 1.4 million light years (for context the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away) but there are likely to be more. A team of astronomers have been hunting for more companions using the Subaru telescope and so far, have searched just 3% of the sky. To everyone’s surprise they have found nine previously undiscovered satellite galaxies, far more than expected.  Data from Gaia (the satellite collecting accurate positionRead More →

Astronomers are on the Hunt for Dyson Spheres There’s something poetic about humanity’s attempt to detect other civilizations somewhere in the Milky Way’s expanse. There’s also something futile about it. But we’re not going to stop. There’s little doubt about that. One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson Spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data. A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical engineering project that only highly advanced civilizations could build. In this sense, ‘advance’ means the kind of almost unimaginable technological prowess that would allow a civilization to buildRead More →

We Need to Consider Conservation Efforts on Mars Astrobiology is the field of science that studies the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the Universe. In practice, this means sending robotic missions beyond Earth to analyze the atmospheres, surfaces, and chemistry of extraterrestrial worlds. At present, all of our astrobiology missions are focused on Mars, as it is considered the most Earth-like environment beyond our planet. While several missions will be destined for the outer Solar System to investigate “Ocean Worlds” for evidence of life (Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Enceladus), our efforts to find life beyond Earth will remain predominantly on Mars. IfRead More →

Roman Space Telescope Will Be Hunting For Primordial Black Holes When astrophysicists observe the cosmos, they see different types of black holes. They range from gargantuan supermassive black holes with billions of solar masses to difficult-to-find intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) all the way down to smaller stellar-mass black holes. But there may be another class of these objects: primordial black holes (PBHs) that formed in the very early Universe. If they exist, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope should be able to spot them. Stellar-mass black holes form when massive stars explode as supernovae. SMBHs grow over time by merging with other black holes. HowRead More →

What Deadly Venus Can Tell Us About Life on Other Worlds Even though Venus and Earth are so-called sister planets, they’re as different as heaven and hell. Earth is a natural paradise where life has persevered under its azure skies despite multiple mass extinctions. On the other hand, Venus is a blistering planet with clouds of sulphuric acid and atmospheric pressure strong enough to squash a human being. But the sister thing won’t go away because both worlds are about the same mass and radius and are rocky planets next to one another in the inner Solar System. Why are they so different? What doRead More →

A Nebula that Extends its Hand into Space The Gum Nebula is an emission nebula almost 1400 light-years away. It’s home to an object known as “God’s Hand” among the faithful. The rest of us call it CG 4. Many objects in space take on fascinating, ethereal shapes straight out of someone’s psychedelic fantasy. CG4 is definitely ethereal and extraordinary, but it’s also a little more prosaic. It looks like a hand extending into space. The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the NSF’s Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope captured the image. DECam’s primary job is to survey hundreds of millions of galaxies in its study ofRead More →