News (Page 897)

The Aerospike Engine Was Considered for the Shuttle, But Never Flew. That’s About to Change The aerospike engine is a time-honored concept. In the past, NASA tested the concept extensively on the ground and hoped to incorporate it into the Space Shuttle and their next-generation Venture Star program (a Single-Stage-To-Orbit (SSTO) vehicle). However, due to budget constraints, the Space Shuttle ended up being equipped with bell-shaped nozzles instead, and the Venture Star never saw the light of day. But thanks to New Mexico-based aerospace company ARCA, the aerospike engine is getting a new lease on life. This coming August, they will conduct a test flightRead More →

Gravitational Astronomy? How Detecting Gravitational Waves Changes Everything Just a couple of weeks ago, astronomers from Caltech announced their third detection of gravitational waves from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO. As with the previous two detections, astronomers have determined that the waves were generated when two intermediate-mass black holes slammed into each other, sending out ripples of distorted spacetime. One black hole had 31.2 times the mass of the Sun, while the other had 19.4 solar masses. The two spiraled inward towards each other, until they merged into a single black hole with 48.7 solar masses. And if you do the math, twiceRead More →

Elon Musk Details His Vision for a Human Civilization on Mars Elon Musk has never been one to keep his long-term plans to himself. Beyond the development of reusable rockets, electric cars, and revolutionizing solar power, he has also been quite vocal about establishing a colony on Mars within his lifetime. The goal here is nothing less than ensuring the survival of the human race by creating a “backup location”, and calls for some serious planning and architecture. These and other aspects of Musk’s proposed mission to Mars were outlined in an essay titled “Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species“, which was published in the JuneRead More →

Opportunity Reaches ‘Perseverance Valley’ Precipice – Ancient Fluid Carved Gully on Mars Opportunity rover looks south from the top of Perseverance Valley along the rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars in this partial self portrait including the rover deck and solar panels. Perseverance Valley descends from the right and terminates down near the crater floor. This navcam camera photo mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 4736 (20 May 2017) and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com Now well into her 13th year roving the Red Planet, NASA’s astoundingly resilient Opportunity rover has arrived at the precipice of “Perseverance Valley” – overlooking theRead More →

The Corona Borealis Constellation Welcome to another edition of Constellation Friday! Today, in honor of the late and great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at the “Northern Crown” – the Corona Borealis constellation. Enjoy! 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 constellations was Corona Borealis, otherwise known as the “Northern Crown”. This small, faint constellation isRead More →

Weekly Space Hangout – June 16, 2017: Dr. Natalie Batalha and NASA’s NExSS Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Dr. Natalie Batalha is an astrophysicist at NASA Ames Research Center and project scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission. Dr. Batalha leads the effort to understand planet populations in the galaxy based on Kepler’s discoveries, and in 2015 she joined the leadership team of NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Coalition (NExSS,) a multidisciplinary team dedicated to searching for evidence of life beyond the Solar System as well as understanding the diversity of exoplanetary worlds and which of these worlds are most likely to harbor life. OnRead More →

This is Kind of Sad. Astronomers Find a Failed Star Orbiting a Dead Star Death is simply a part of life, and this is no less the case where stars and other astronomical objects are concerned. Sure, the timelines are much, much greater where these are concerned, but the basic rule is the same. Much like all living organism, stars eventually reach old age and become white dwarfs. And some are not even fortunate enough to be born, instead becoming a class of failed stars known as brown dwarfs. Despite being familiar with these objects, astronomers were certainly not expecting to find examples of bothRead More →

The Sun Probably Lost a Binary Twin Billions of Years Ago For us Earthlings, life under a single Sun is just the way it is. But with the development of modern astronomy, we’ve become aware of the fact that the Universe is filled with binary and even triple star systems. Hence, if life does exist on planets beyond our Solar System, much of it could be accustomed to growing up under two or even three suns. For centuries, astronomers have wondered why this difference exists and how star systems came to be. Whereas some astronomers argue that individual stars formed and acquired companions over time,Read More →

Carnival of Space #513 Welcome, come in to the 513th Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. I’m Susie Murph, part of the team at Universe Today and CosmoQuest. So now, on to this week’s stories! First, we head over to The Evolving Planet, where Donna Mapacpac tells us how Mice were sent to space to test a bone-building drug developed at UCLA. Then Donna shares a few fun facts about our solar system that you may not know! Over at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory website,Read More →

Time Machine Tales “Tell me what time is it?” asked the stranger on the street. A simple enough question that can be answered with a simple enough glance at the watch on your wrist. And so goes the appreciation of time for the average person. But is time simply a notation of events in our life? Or is it a truly robust dimensional attribute? For one answer read Paul Nahin’s book “Time Machine Tales” and you will soon discover that it is the later. And that time may be much, much more. If time is a dimension, then Nahin’s book has us believe that weRead More →

What is the Drake Equation? Is there life out there in the Universe? That is a question that has plagued humanity long before we knew just how vast the Universe was – i.e. before the advent of modern astronomy. Within the 20th century – thanks to the development of modern telescopes, radio astronomy, and space observatories – multiple efforts have been made in the hopes of finding extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). And yet, humanity is still only aware of one intelligent civilization in the Universe – our own. And until we actually discover an alien civilization, the best we can do is conjecture about the likelihoodRead More →

Flying Into the Sun? NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Mission If you’ve read enough of our articles, you know I’ve got an uneasy alliance with the Sun. Sure, it provides the energy we need for all life on Earth. But, it’s a great big ongoing thermonuclear reaction, and it’s right there! As soon as we get fusion, Sun, in like, 30 years or so, I tell you, we’ll be the ones laughing. But to be honest, we still have so many questions about the Sun. For starters, we don’t fully understand the solar wind blasting out of the Sun. This constant wind of charged particles isRead More →

The WOW Signal was Probably just a Comet and not a Message from an Intelligent Civilization On August 15th, 1977, astronomers using the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University detected a 72-second radio signal coming from space. This powerful signal, which quickly earned the nickname the “Wow! signal”, appeared to be coming from the direction of the Sagittarius Constellation, and some went so far as to suggest that it might be extra-terrestrial in origin. Since then, the Wow! signal has been an ongoing source of controversy among SETI researchers and astronomers. While some have maintained that it is evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI),Read More →

We’d Like One of These For Here on Earth. NASA’s New Mobile Mars Laboratory Concept Rover When it comes time to explore Mars with crewed missions, a number of challenges will present themselves. Aside from the dangers that come with long-duration missions to distant bodies, there’s also the issue of the hazards presented by the Martian landscape. It’s desiccated ans cold, it gets exposed to a lot of radiation, and its pretty rugged to boot! So astronauts will need a way to get around and conduct research in comfort and safety. To meet this challenge, NASA created a vehicle that looks like it could giveRead More →

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 →