News (Page 869)

This is Important! Students Are Figuring Out How to Make Beer on the Moon When human being colonize other Solar bodies, how will they see to their basic needs? Already, research has been performed to determine where colonists would be able to procure water, how they might grow their own food, and where and how they might live. But what about the finer things in life, the things that make all the hard labor and sacrifice worth it? In case it’s not clear yet, I’m talking about beer! If and when Lunar or Martian colonies become a reality, will the colonists be able to brewRead More →

Space Station-Based Experiment Might Have Found Evidence of Dark Matter Destroying Itself Since it was first proposed in the 1960s to account for all the “missing mass” in the Universe, scientists have been trying to find evidence of dark matter. This mysterious, invisible mass theoretically accounts for 26.8% of the baryonic matter (aka. visible matter) out there. And yet, despite almost fifty years of ongoing research and exploration, scientists have not found any direct evidence of this missing mass. However, according to two new research papers that were recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters, we may have gotten our first glimpse of darkRead More →

The Circinus Constellation Welcome back to Constellation Friday! Today, in honor of the late and great Tammy Plotner, we will be dealing with the compass – the Circinus 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 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. Over time, the number of recognized constellations has grown as astronomers and explorers became aware of other stars visible from other location around theRead More →

It’s Been Three Years Since We’ve Had a Supernova This Close A supernova is one of the most impressive astronomical events anyone can possibly witness. Characterized by a massive explosion that takes place during the final stages of a massive star’s life (after billions of years of evolution), this sort of event is understandably quite rare. In fact, within the Milky Way Galaxy, a supernova event is likely to happen just once a century. But within the Fireworks Galaxy (aka. the spiral galaxy NGC 6946), which is located 22 million light years from Earth and has half as many stars as our galaxy, supernovae areRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – May 19, 2017: Eric Fisher of Labfundr Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Eric Fisher is the head of Labfundr, a Canadian crowdsourcing platform for science research and outreach. Eric is an entrepreneur, recovering biochemist, and son of a glaciologist. He completed a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. At Dalhousie, Eric investigated how liver cells create and destroy “bad” cholesterol particles. Eric recently founded Labfundr, Canada’s first crowdfunding platform for science, which aims to boost public engagement and investment in research. He stays on his toes by trying to keep up withRead More →

We Will Launch on Reuseable Rocket After Exceptional SpaceX Performance – Inmarsat CEO Tells Universe Today All 9 Merlin 1D first stage engines firing beautifully as SpaceX Falcon 9 arcs over down range successfully carrying Inmarsat 5F4 #I5F4 to geostationary transfer orbit at twilight after liftoff from Launch Complex 39A on 15 May 2017 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Following SpaceX’s “exceptional performance” launching an immensely powerful broadband satellite on their maiden mission for Inmarsat this week on a Falcon 9 rocket, the company CEO told Universe Today that Inmarsat was willing to conduct futureRead More →

Dinosaur Killing Asteroid Hit in Exactly the Wrong Place The asteroid that struck Earth about 66 million years ago and led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs may have hit one of the worst places possible as far as life on Earth was concerned. When it struck, the resulting cataclysm choked the atmosphere with sulphur, which blocked out the Sun. Without the Sun, the food chain collapsed, and it was bye-bye dinosaurs, and bye-bye most of the other life on Earth, too. But, as it turns out, if it had struck a few moments earlier or later, it would not have hit the Yucatan, andRead More →

Carnival of Space #509 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang at his Next Big Future blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #509 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, sign upRead More →

Comet V2 Johnson Takes Center Stage Comet V2 Johnson from February 21st, 2017. Image credit and copyright: John Purvis Had your fill of binocular comets? Turns out, 2017 may have saved the best for last. The past few months has seen a steady stream of dirty snowball visitations to the inner solar system, both short term periodic and long term hyperbolic. First, let’s run through the cometary roll call for the first part of the year: There’s 41P Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák, 2P/Encke, 45P Honda-Markov-Padjudašáková, C/2015 ER61 PanSTARRS and finally, the latecomer to the party, C/2017 E4 Lovejoy. Next up is a comet with a much easier to pronounceRead More →

We Might Have a New Way to Push Back Space Radiation Human beings have known for quite some time that our behavior has a significant influence on our planet. In fact, during the 20th century, humanity’s impact on the natural environment and climate has become so profound that some geologists began to refer to the modern era as the “Anthropocene”. In this age, human agency is the most deterministic force on the planet. But according to a comprehensive new study by an Anglo-American team of researchers, human beings might be shaping the near-space environment as well. According to the study, radio communications, EM radiation fromRead More →

Dawn Gets Right in Between the Sun and Ceres and Takes this Video The Dawn probe continues to excite and amaze! Since it achieved orbit around Ceres in March of 2015, it has been sending back an impressive stream of data and images on the protoplanet. In addition to capturing pictures of the mysterious “bright spots” on Ceres’ surface, it has also revealed evidence of cryovolcanism and the possibility of an interior ocean that could even support life. Most recently, the Dawn probe conducted observations of the protoplanet while it was at opposition – directly between the Sun and Ceres surface – on April 29th.Read More →

Could the Closest Extrasolar Planet Be Habitable? Astronomers Plan to Find Out The extra-solar planet known as Proxima b has occupied a special place in the public mind ever since its existence was announced in August of 2016. As the closest exoplanet to our Solar System, its discovery has raised questions about the possibility of exploring it in the not-too-distant future. And even more tantalizing are the questions relating to its potential habitability. Despite numerous studies that have attempted to indicate whether the planet could be suitable for life as we know it, nothing definitive has been produced. Fortunately, a team of astrophysics from theRead More →

New Explanation for Dark Energy? Tiny Fluctuations of Time and Space Since the late 1920s, astronomers have been aware of the fact that the Universe is in a state of expansion. Initially predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, this realization has gone on to inform the most widely-accepted cosmological model – the Big Bang Theory. However, things became somewhat confusing during the 1990s, when improved observations showed that the Universe’s rate of expansion has been accelerating for billions of years. This led to the theory of Dark Energy, a mysterious invisible force that is driving the expansion of the cosmos. Much like Dark MatterRead More →

Mysterious Flashes Coming From Earth That Puzzled Carl Sagan Finally Have An Explanation Back in 1993, Carl Sagan encountered a puzzle. The Galileo spacecraft spotted flashes coming from Earth, and nobody could figure out what they were. They called them ‘specular reflections’ and they appeared over ocean areas but not over land. The images were taken by the Galileo space probe during one of its gravitational-assist flybys of Earth. Galileo was on its way to Jupiter, and its cameras were turned back to look at Earth from a distance of about 2 million km. This was all part of an experiment aimed at finding lifeRead More →

SpaceX Blasts Biggest High Speed Communications Satellite to Orbit for Inmarsat SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying commercial Inmarsat 5 F4 broadband satellite blasts off to geostationary orbit at twilight at 7:20 p.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A on 15 May 2017 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/Kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – SpaceX blasted the “largest and most complicated communications satellite ever built to orbit” for London based Inmarset at twilight this evening, May 15, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. In fact the Inmarsat 5F4 satellite is so powerful that it has the potential to reach “hundreds of millions of customers”Read More →

Finding Alien Megastructures Around Nearby Pulsars During the 1960s, Freeman Dyson and Nikolai Kardashev captured the imaginations of people everywhere by making some radical proposals. Whereas Dyson proposed that intelligent species could eventually create megastructures to harness the energy of their stars, Kardashev offered a three-tiered classification system for intelligent species based on their ability to harness the energy of their planet, solar system and galaxy, respectively. With missions that are now capable of locating extra-solar planets (i.e. the Kepler Space Observatory) scientists have been on the lookout for signs of possible alien megastructures. Unfortunately, aside from some very arguable results, no concrete evidence hasRead More →

Messier 42 – The Orion Nebula Welcome back to Messier Monday! In our ongoing tribute to the great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at that Great and most brightest of nebulae – the Orion 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 →

New Estimate Puts the Supernova Killzone Within 50 Light-Years of Earth There are a lot of ways that life on Earth could come to an end: an asteroid strike, global climate catastrophe, or nuclear war are among them. But perhaps the most haunting would be death by supernova, because there’s absolutely nothing we could do about it. We’d be sitting ducks. New research suggest that a supernova’s kill zone is bigger than we thought; about 25 light years bigger, to be exact. Iron in the Ocean In 2016, researchers confirmed that Earth has been hit with the effects from multiple supernovae. The presence of ironRead More →

SpaceX Targeting Twilight Thunder for May 15 Inmarsat Blastoff – Watch Live The Inmarsat-5 F4 satellite is loaded into the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and rolled out to Launch Complex 39A. Launch is slated for May 15, 2017. Credit: Inmarsat KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – SpaceX is targeting twilight thunder with the firms Falcon 9 rocketing skyward from the Florida Space Coast on Monday 15 carrying a commercial High-Speed broadband satellite for London based Inmarsat. Blastoff of the Inmarsat-5 Flight 4 communications satellite for commercial broadband provider Inmarsat is slated for early Monday evening, May 15 at 7:21 p.m. EDT (or 23:21 UTC) from SpaceX’sRead More →

NASA Nixes Proposal Adding Crew to First SLS/Orion Deep Space Flight Artist concept of the SLS Block 1 configuration on the Mobile Launcher at KSC. Credit: NASA/MSFC KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – After conducting a thorough review examining the feasibility of adding a two person crew to the first integrated launch of America’s new Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and Orion capsule on a mission that would propel two astronauts to the Moon and back by late 2019, NASA nixed the proposal during a media briefing held Friday. The announcement to forgo adding crew to the flight dubbed Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) was made by NASARead More →