What Will It Take To Feed A Million People On Mars? In 2017, Elon Musk laid out his grand sweeping plans for the future of SpaceX, the company that would take humanity to Mars. Over decades, tens of thousands of Starship flights would carry a million human beings to the surface of the Red Planet, the minimum Musk expects it’ll take to create a self-sustaining civilization. … Continue reading “What Will It Take To Feed A Million People On Mars?” The post What Will It Take To Feed A Million People On Mars? appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is Thanks to the Kepler mission and other efforts to find exoplanets, we’ve learned a lot about the exoplanet population. We know that we’re likely to find super-Earths and Neptune-mass exoplanets orbiting low-mass stars, while larger planets are found around more massive stars. This lines up well with the core accretion theory of planetary formation. But … Continue reading “A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is” The post A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. SoRead More →

Carnival of Space #631 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #631. 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 … Continue reading “Carnival of Space #631” The post Carnival of Space #631 appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers identify four globular cluster planetary nebulae candidates Astronomers from Chile and Argentina report the detection of four new planetary nebulae (PN) candidates residing in galactic globular clusters (GCs). If confirmed, the discovery would double the number of known PNe in galactic GCs. The finding is presented in a paper published September 19 on the arXiv pre-print server. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Spitzer spots a starry region bursting with bubbles This infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust full of bubbles, which are inflated by wind and radiation from young, massive stars. Each bubble is filled with hundreds to thousands of stars, which form from dense clouds of gas and dust. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

#88 – October 2019 Part 1 The Discussion: A look back at our 50th anniversary of the moon landings-themed dark sky star party, AstroCamp, and some wonderful suggestions as an alternative name for a ‘pair instability supernova’. The News: Rounding up the astronomy news this month we have: Discovery of an exoplanet stripped of its atmosphere Understanding more about the features you can observe in Jupiter’s storms Gaia tells us more about the evolution of open clusters Chandra probes black hole clusters Planet 9 (groan…) could be a tiny black hole (it couldn’t) Amateur astronomer discovery of an interstellar comet Understanding the evolution of globularRead More →

Confirmed. Fossils That Formed 3.5 billion Years Ago, Really are Fossils. The Oldest Evidence of Life Found So Far The title of Earth’s Earliest Life has been returned to the fossils in the Pilbara region of Australia. The Pilbara fossils had held that title since the 1980s, until researchers studying ancient rocks in Greenland found evidence of ancient life there. But subsequent research questioned the biological nature of the Greenland evidence, which put the … Continue reading “Confirmed. Fossils That Formed 3.5 billion Years Ago, Really are Fossils. The Oldest Evidence of Life Found So Far” The post Confirmed. Fossils That Formed 3.5 billion YearsRead More →

Tracking Twilight: ‘Purple Sunset Effect’ Seen Worldwide Has twilight looked at little… mauve to you as of late? The effect is subtle, but noticeable on a clear evening. Sunsets are always colorful events, as the Sun’s rays shine through a thicker layer of the atmosphere at an oblique angle, scattering out at longer, redder wavelengths. The post Tracking Twilight: ‘Purple Sunset Effect’ Seen Worldwide appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Data from Chinese satellite shedding light on cosmic rays An international team of researchers studying data from China’s Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) has measured cosmic ray protons up to the energy of 100 TeV with high precision for the first time. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes the research they have been conducting on data received from the satellite and what they have learned thus far. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Planet Nine could be a primordial black hole, new research suggests The hypothetical Planet Nine, assumed to be lurking somewhere in the outskirts of our solar system, may not be a planet at all. A new study, published September 24 on the arXiv pre-print server, suggests that the mysterious and still undiscovered object might be a primordial black hole. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Heating the solar corona The hot outer layer of the sun, the corona, has a temperature of over a million degrees Kelvin, much more than the surface temperature of the Sun which is only about 5500 degrees Kelvin. Moreover, the corona is very active and ejects a wind of charged particles at a rate equivalent to about one-millionth of the moon’s mass each year. Some of these particles bombard the Earth, producing auroral glows and occasionally disrupting global communications. There are two important, longstanding, and related questions about the corona that astronomers are working to answer: how is it heated to temperatures that are soRead More →

Musk Presents the Orbital Starship Prototype. Flights will Begin in Six Months Coinciding with SpaceX’s 17th anniversary, Elon Musk provided the latest updates on the design of the Starship and Super Heavy launch system. The post Musk Presents the Orbital Starship Prototype. Flights will Begin in Six Months appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Mice That Spend a Month in Space Were Able to Reproduce Once They Got Back to Earth A team of Japanese researchers have used sperm from mice that spent time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to fertilize female mice back on Earth. While previous research has shown that freeze-dried mouse sperm stored in space can experience radiation damage, these results show that the sperm from live mice may not suffer the … Continue reading “Mice That Spend a Month in Space Were Able to Reproduce Once They Got Back to Earth” The post Mice That Spend a Month in Space Were Able to ReproduceRead More →

Astronomers Have Found a Place With Three Supermassive Black Holes Orbiting Around Each Other Astronomers have spotted three supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of three colliding galaxies a billion light years away from Earth. That alone is unusual, but the three black holes are also glowing in x-ray emissions. This is evidence that all three are also active galactic nuclei (AGN,) gobbling up material and flaring brightly. … Continue reading “Astronomers Have Found a Place With Three Supermassive Black Holes Orbiting Around Each Other” The post Astronomers Have Found a Place With Three Supermassive Black Holes Orbiting Around Each Other appeared first onRead More →

Many gas giant exoplanets waiting to be discovered There is an as-yet-unseen population of Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars, awaiting discovery by future missions like NASA’s WFIRST space telescope, according to new models of gas giant planet formation by Carnegie’s Alan Boss, described in an upcoming publication in The Astrophysical Journal. His models are supported by a new Science paper on the surprising discovery of a gas giant planet orbiting a low-mass star. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Non-thermal emission from cosmic rays accelerated in HII regions Radio observations at metre-centimetre wavelengths shed light on the nature of the emission of HII regions. Usually, this category of objects is dominated by thermal radiation produced by ionised hydrogen, namely protons and electrons. A number of observational studies have revealed the existence of HII regions with a mixture of thermal and non-thermal radiation. The latter represents a clue to the presence of relativistic electrons. However, neither the interstellar cosmic-ray electron flux nor the flux of secondary electrons produced by primary cosmic rays through ionisation processes are high enough to explain the observed flux densities. phys.orgRead More →