Some Stars Could Support as Many as 7 Habitable Planets A new study by a team of astronomers and planetary scientists calculate that some stars could have as many as 7 habitable planets orbiting them! The post Some Stars Could Support as Many as 7 Habitable Planets appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go […]
The Universe is the Same, Everywhere We Look. Even More than Cosmologists Predicted The Universe is about 10% smoother than we expect, and astronomers aren’t entirely sure why. The post The Universe is the Same, Everywhere We Look. Even More than Cosmologists Predicted appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to Source
Microbes Were Dormant for Over 100 Million Years, But They Were Able to Spring Back to Life At the bottom of the ocean in the South Pacific Gyre, there’s a sediment layer that is among the most nutrient-starved environments on Earth. Because of conditions in that area, there’s almost no “marine snow”—the shower of organic […]
Perseverance Went Into Safe Mode Shortly After Launch, But it’s Fine NASA’s Perseverance rover experienced some hiccups shortly after launch, but is back on track and making its seven-month journey to Mars. The post Perseverance Went Into Safe Mode Shortly After Launch, But it’s Fine appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to Source
SpaceX Just Completed a Static Fire of Starship Prototype SN5. Next Comes the Hop SpaceX successfully completed a static fire test with its SN5, which will be followed shortly by a hop test! The post SpaceX Just Completed a Static Fire of Starship Prototype SN5. Next Comes the Hop appeared first on Universe Today. Universe […]
How Loop Quantum Gravity Could Match Anomalies in the CMB with Large Structures in the Modern Universe A strange celestial tension could be caused by a cosmic tango between events at very small and very large scales. The post How Loop Quantum Gravity Could Match Anomalies in the CMB with Large Structures in the Modern […]
Juno Captures Pictures of Ganymede for the First Time On July 5, 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrived around Jupiter, becoming the second mission in history to study the gas giant from orbit – the last being the Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Since then, the spacecraft has gathered data on Jupiter’s […]
Ancient Meteorites Can be Found Embedded in Rocks, Like Fossils Comets visit the inner Solar System, and leave without saying goodbye. Maybe they leave a trail of dust behind, and when the Earth passes through it, we get a pretty light show in the night sky, in the form of a meteor shower. Likewise, asteroids […]
This Is Fascinating. An Image of a Galaxy’s Magnetic Field There’s always more than one way to look at the world. There’s also more than one way to look at a galaxy. And sometimes combining those ways of looking can result in something truly special. That is what happened recently when a team of astronomers […]
There are Natural Starshades Out There, Which Would Help Astronomers Image Exoplanets A new study by an international team of astronomers has shown that eclipsing binary stars could act as a natural “starshade,” making it easier to spot orbiting exoplanets. The post There are Natural Starshades Out There, Which Would Help Astronomers Image Exoplanets appeared […]
Supermassive black holes can cloak themselves in a cocoon of dust, making them invisible even when they should be bright quasars Quasars are the most powerful sources of light in the universe, but sometimes they’re hard to find. A team of astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Space Telescope to find some diamonds in the rough. […]
China’s Mars Mission Took This Picture of the Earth and Moon No matter where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re going, it’s always good to see home. And we all love seeing pictures of our home planet, as seen from space. The latest image of the Terran System comes from China’s Mars mission, […]
Earth Observation Satellites Could be Flown Much Lower than Current Altitudes and Do Better Science Satellite engineers know what every photographer knows: get close to your subject to get better pictures. Not just visible light pictures, but all across the spectrum. The lower altitude also improves things like radar, lidar, communications, and gps. But when […]
Perseverance Rover Rumbles Off the Launchpad to Mars NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is now successfully on its journey to Mars, launching from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:50 am EDT (1150 GMT). Just minutes before the Atlas 5 rocket rumbled off the launchpad, a 2.9 magnitude earthquake rumbled […]
There’s a flash of ultraviolet just as a white dwarf is exploding as a supernova Astronomers recently spotted a rare type of supernova explosion that was accompanied by a massive flare of ultraviolet radiation. Untangling the mystery of the UV flash could help unravel the mysterious nature of these supernova explosions, and even help us […]
Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” IV: What is the Rare Earth Hypothesis? Looking to answer the question of “where are all the aliens,” some scientists have suggested that planets like Earth might actually be very rare. The post Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” IV: What is the Rare Earth Hypothesis? appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to […]
A Group of Meteorites All Came From a Destroyed Planetesimal With a Magnetic Core Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth are fragments of these planetesimals. Scientists also think that these planetesimals either melted completely, very early in their history, or that […]
Thanks to Cosmic Radiation, There Could be Life on Mars, Just a Couple of Meters Under the Surface Remember back in 2008 when the Phoenix lander on Mars scraped away a few inches of rust-colored regolith to reveal water ice? Or in 2009, when Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observations revealed vast areas of subsurface ice, event […]
There Might Be an Entire Orbit, Filled with Asteroids that Came from Outside the Solar System Some asteroids orbit the Sun in highly inclined orbits, and they might be aliens to our solar system. The post There Might Be an Entire Orbit, Filled with Asteroids that Came from Outside the Solar System appeared first on […]
Russia Just Tested an Anti-Satellite Weapon The United States and Russia/USSR have been adversaries for a long time. Their heated rivarly stretches back to the waning days of WW2, when the enormous Red Army was occupying large swathes of eastern Europe, and the allies recognized the inherent threat. The Cold War followed, when the two […]
