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Gaia Turns Up 13,928 White Dwarfs Nearby the Sun, Including Several Formed Through Mergers In 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA) deployed the Gaia mission, a space observatory designed to measure the positions of movements of celestial bodies. For the past four years, Gaia has been studying distant stars, planets, comets, asteroids, quasars and other astronomical objects, and the data it has acquired will be used to construct the largest and most precise 3D space catalog ever made, totaling 1 billion objects. The second release of Gaia data, which took place on April 25th, 2018, has already resulted in a number of impressive discoveries. TheRead More →

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Weekly Space Hangout: May 16, 2018: Ethan Siegel’s Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain) Dr. Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter) Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier ) Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org) Special Guests: Ethan Siegel is the author of the new book, Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive. In his book, Ethan examines over 25 items from the Star Trek universe, describes their underlying science, and lets his readers know how close we are to having many of these iconic items today. Ethan isRead More →

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ALMA and VLT Find Evidence for Stars Forming Just 250 Million Years After Big Bang Astronomers have used observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to determine that star formation in the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1 started at an unexpectedly early stage, only 250 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery also represents the most distant oxygen ever detected in the Universe and the most distant galaxy ever observed by ALMA or the VLT. The results will appear in the journal Nature on 17 May 2018. ESO News Feed Go to Source Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Not long after the Big Bang, the first generations of stars began altering the chemical make-up of primitive galaxies, slowly enriching the interstellar medium with basic elements such as oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Finding the earliest traces of these common elements would shed important light on the chemical evolution of galaxies, including our own. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Interview With Dr. Alan Stern and Dr. David Grinspoon, Authors of Chasing Pluto I was fortunate enough to spend half an hour with Dr. Alan Stern and Dr. David Grinspoon to talk about their new book: Chasing New Horizons – Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto. We had a great conversation, all about the political and engineering hurdles it took to get the mission literally off the ground, and out to Pluto. We also talked about what future missions could be in the works to return to Pluto, the amazing recent discoveries made at the Pluto system, and the next target for New Horizons.Read More →

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If There is a Multiverse, Can There be Life There Too? The Multiverse Theory, which states that there may be multiple or even an infinite number of Universes, is a time-honored concept in cosmology and theoretical physics. While the term goes back to the late 19th century, the scientific basis of this theory arose from quantum physics and the study of cosmological forces like black holes, singularities, and problems arising out of the Big Bang Theory. One of the most burning questions when it comes to this theory is whether or not life could exist in multiple Universes. If indeed the laws of physics changeRead More →

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A group of scientists led by Avrajit Bandyopadhyay of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, has conducted chemical analysis of two bright, extremely metal-poor stars. The results of the analysis, presented May 6 in a paper published on arXiv.org, provide important insights into the nature of these stars, and could help astronomers better understand their origin. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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A team of researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and at the National Astronomical Observatories of Beijing (NAOC) have published a paper which suggests that if we could travel at the speed of light it would take us 200,000 years to cross the disc of our galaxy. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Nicholas Warner wants to figure out how matter behaves at the most extreme frontier of the universe. Warner, professor of physics and astronomy and mathematics at USC Dornsife, recently received a prestigious grant from the European Research Council to study a problem first revealed by Stephen Hawking—the black hole information paradox. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

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Pros and Cons of Various Methods of Interstellar Travel It’s a staple of science fiction, and something many people have fantasized about at one time or another: the idea of sending out spaceships with colonists and transplanting the seed of humanity among the stars. Between discovering new worlds, becoming an interstellar species, and maybe even finding extra-terrestrial civilizations, the dream of  spreading beyond the Solar System is one that can’t become reality soon enough! For decades, scientists have contemplated how humanity might one-day reach achieve this lofty goal. And the range of concepts they have come up with present a whole lot of pros andRead More →

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Carnival of Space #561 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang at his NextBigCoins blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #561 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 susie@wshcrew.space, 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, sign up to beRead More →

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Recovered Asteroid 2010 WC9 Set to Buzz the Earth Tomorrow The orbit of asteroid 2010 WC9. Credit: NASA/JPL Incoming: The Earth-Moon system has company tonight. The Asteroid: Near Earth Asteroid 2010 WC9 is back. Discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey outside Tucson, Arizona on November 30th, 2010, this asteroid was lost after a brief 10 day observation window and was not recovered until just earlier this month. About 71 meters in size, 2010 WC9 is one of the largest asteroids to pass us closer than the Earth-Moon distance. A closeup of the passage of asteroid 2010 WC9 through the Earth-Moon system on May 15th. Credit:Read More →

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Using European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) European astronomers have uncovered a complex circumstellar environment of the star HD 50138. The finding, which could provide important clues about the evolutionary status of this star, was presented in a paper published May 3 on the arXiv pre-print repository. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →