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Weekly Space Hangout: June 24, 2020 — Elizabeth Howell & Nicholas Booth, The Search for Life on Mars This week we are airing Fraser’s pre-recorded interview with Elizabeth Howell and Nicholas Booth, co-authors of the new book The Search for Life on Mars: The Greatest Scientific Detective Story of All Time. Their book documents our quest to find life on the Red Planet. Long-time viewers of the WSH will remember Elizabeth as one … Continue reading “Weekly Space Hangout: June 24, 2020 — Elizabeth Howell & Nicholas Booth, The Search for Life on Mars” The post Weekly Space Hangout: June 24, 2020 — Elizabeth HowellRead More →

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NASA Changes its Mind. It Will be Using Previously Flown Crew Dragons and Falcon 9 NASA has announced that starting next year, SpaceX will be able to reuse its Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 boosters to send astronauts to the ISS. The post NASA Changes its Mind. It Will be Using Previously Flown Crew Dragons and Falcon 9 appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager Over the next decade, several very powerful telescopes will come online. Observing time on these ‘scopes will be in high demand, and their range of targets will span a whole host of topics in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosomology. One of the topics near the top of the list is exoplanets. But how will astronomers know … Continue reading “Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager” The post Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager appeared first onRead More →

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Inferring the temperature structure of circumstellar disks from polarized emission Polarized light is a familiar phenomenon because the scattering or reflection of light results in one of its two components being preferentially absorbed. The majority of sunlight on Earth, for example, is preferentially polarized due to scattering in the atmosphere (this helps make polarized sunglasses effective). Electromagnetic radiation from astrophysical sources can also be polarized, typically because of scattering from elongated dust grains that are aligned with each other by the local magnetic fields. These fields are thought to play a major, perhaps even a dominant role in controlling the shapes and motions of interstellarRead More →

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How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy A black hole as a source of energy? We know black holes as powerful singularities, regions in space time where gravity is so overwhelming that nothing—not even light itself—can escape. About 50 years ago, British physicist Roger Penrose proposed that black holes could be a source of energy. Now, researchers at the University of Glasgow … Continue reading “How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy” The post How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy appeared first on Universe Today. UniverseRead More →

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Super-Earths discovered orbiting nearby red dwarf The nearest exoplanets to us provide the best opportunities for detailed study, including searching for evidence of life outside the solar system. In research led by the University of Göttingen, the RedDots team of astronomers has detected a system of super-Earth planets orbiting the nearby star Gliese 887, the brightest red dwarf star in the sky. Super-Earths are planets which have a mass higher than the Earth’s but substantially below those of our local ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. The newly discovered super-Earths lie close to the red dwarf’s habitable zone, where water can exist in liquid form, andRead More →

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Motions in the sun reveal inner workings of sunspot cycle The sun’s magnetic activity follows an 11-year cycle. Over the course of a solar cycle, the sun’s magnetic activity comes and goes. During solar maximum, large sunspots and active regions appear on the sun’s surface. Spectacular loops of hot plasma stretch throughout the sun’s atmosphere and eruptions of particles and radiation shoot into interplanetary space. During solar minimum, the sun calms down considerably. A striking regularity appears in the so-called butterfly diagram, which describes the position of sunspots in a time-latitude plot. At the beginning of a solar cycle, sunspots emerge at mid-latitudes. As theRead More →

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Astronomers discover ‘monster’ quasar from early universe Astronomers have discovered the most massive quasar known in the early universe, containing a monster black hole with a mass equivalent to 1.5 billion suns. Formally designated as J1007+2115, the newly discovered quasar is one of only two known from the same cosmological period. Quasars are the most energetic objects in the universe, and since their discovery, astronomers have been keen to determine when they first appeared in our cosmic history. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Last Year’s Total Solar Eclipse on Earth, Seen From the Moon On July 2, 2019, the Moon cast its shadow on the surface of the Earth. This time, the shadow’s path travelled across the South Pacific Ocean. It also passed over some of Argentina and Chile. For surface dwellers in the path, the Moon briefly blocked the Sun, turning night into day. But for one “eye” … Continue reading “Last Year’s Total Solar Eclipse on Earth, Seen From the Moon” The post Last Year’s Total Solar Eclipse on Earth, Seen From the Moon appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Drones help calibrate radio telescope at Brookhaven Lab Cosmologists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are experimenting with a prototype radio telescope, called the Baryon Mapping Experiment (BMX). Built at the Lab in 2017, the prototype serves as a testbed for managing radio interference and developing calibration techniques. Lessons learned from the prototype could pave the way for Brookhaven to develop a much larger radio telescope in collaboration with other national Labs, universities, and international partners. Such a telescope would map neutral hydrogen over large swaths of the universe, enabling researchers to gain a better understanding of its accelerated expansion, asRead More →

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First detector array ready for GUSTO mission The first detector array for NASA’s GUSTO mission has passed its pre-shipment review and is now shipping to the University of Arizona for integration into the balloon observatory. SRON together with TU Delft develops GUSTO’s three 8-pixel-arrays, for the frequencies 4.7, 1.9 and 1.4 terahertz. They have now finished the array for the 4.7 terahertz channel—the most challenging part. GUSTO is a balloon mission that will measure emissions from cosmic material between stars. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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ESOcast 224: First Interstellar Visitors to the Solar System In this ESOcast, we explore some of the many questions interstellar visitors 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov have raised including: what are they made of? How did they form? Are they like the comets or asteroids in our Solar System? And finally, what can they reveal about other planetary systems? ESO Video Casts Go to SourceRead More →

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Curiosity Sees Earth and Venus in the Night Skies on Mars Normally the images from NASA’s Curiosity rover, currently sitting near “Bloodstone Hill” on Mars, are of alien vistas and rock outcroppings that conspiracy theorists constantly try to anthropomorphize into UFOs.  However, the rover is also excellently positioned to capture a unique perspective of an alien sky.  And that is exactly what it did recently when … Continue reading “Curiosity Sees Earth and Venus in the Night Skies on Mars” The post Curiosity Sees Earth and Venus in the Night Skies on Mars appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Calculate the Number of Alien Civilizations in the Milky Way for Yourself. A new online tool created by a team of physicists allows users to calculate how many alien civilization could be out there for themselves! The post Calculate the Number of Alien Civilizations in the Milky Way for Yourself. appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Amazing View of How Dust Storms Grow on Mars In 2018, Mars experienced one of its global dust storms, a phenomenon seen nowhere else. As science would have it, there were no fewer than six spacecraft in orbit around Mars at the time, and two surface rovers. This was an unprecedented opportunity to watch and study the storm. Martian Global Dust Storms (GDS) occur … Continue reading “Amazing View of How Dust Storms Grow on Mars” The post Amazing View of How Dust Storms Grow on Mars appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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New Hubble Photos of Planetary Nebulae Planetary nebulae are astronomy’s gateway drug. Their eye-catching forms make us wonder what process created them, and what else is going on up there in the night sky. They’re some of the most beautiful, ephemeral looking objects in all of nature. The Hubble Space Telescope is responsible for many of our most gorgeous images of … Continue reading “New Hubble Photos of Planetary Nebulae” The post New Hubble Photos of Planetary Nebulae appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Beneath the surface of our galaxy’s water worlds Out beyond our solar system, visible only as the smallest dot in space with even the most powerful telescopes, other worlds exist. Many of these worlds, astronomers have discovered, may be much larger than Earth and completely covered in water—basically ocean planets with no protruding land masses. What kind of life could develop on such a world? Could a habitat like this even support life? phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Astronomers Just Detected Either the Least Massive Black Hole, or a Strange and Massive Neutron Star Somewhere around 2.5 solar masses is the line between black holes and neutron stars. Now we’ve found an object right on the edge. The post Astronomers Just Detected Either the Least Massive Black Hole, or a Strange and Massive Neutron Star appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Rogue’s gallery of dusty star systems reveals exoplanet nurseries Astronomers this month released the largest collection of sharp, detailed images of debris disks around young stars, showcasing the great variety of shapes and sizes of stellar systems during their prime planet-forming years. Surprisingly, nearly all showed evidence of planets. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →