Design for a Space Habitat With Artificial Gravity That Could Be Grown Larger Over Time to Fit More People There are two main approaches that humanity can take to living in space. The one more commonly portrayed is of us colonizing other celestial bodies such as the Moon and Mars. That approach comes with some […]
Searching for Phosphorus in Other Stars The Search for Life can be a lot messier than it sounds. The three words make a nice, tidy title, but what it entails is extraordinarily difficult. How, in this vast galaxy, can we find life and the planets or moons that might host it? We’re barely at the […]
The Space Court Foundation is Now in Session! The Space Court Foundation hopes to play a pivotal role in the evolving domain of space law, which is going to become very important in the coming years! The post The Space Court Foundation is Now in Session! appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to […]
James Webb Will Look for Signs of Life on Planets Orbiting Dead Stars Can the galaxy’s dead stars help us in our search for life? A group of researchers from Cornell University thinks so. They say that watching exoplanets transit in front of white dwarfs can tell us a lot about those planets. It might […]
Weekly Space Hangout: September 16, 2020 – Dr. Merav Opher Discusses the Shape of the Sun’s Heliosphere This week we are pleased to welcome Dr. Merav Opher, Professor from the Astronomy Department of Boston University and the Director of the SHIELD (Solar wind with Hydrogen Ion charge Exchange and Large-Scale Dynamics) DRIVE Science Center. Using […]
Astronomers Measure a 1-billion Tesla Magnetic Field on the Surface of a Neutron Star Astronomers Measure a 1-billion Tesla Magnetic Field on the Surface of a Neutron Star We recently observed the strongest magnetic field ever recorded in the Universe. The record-breaking field was discovered at the surface of a neutron star called GRO J1008-57 […]
Colliding Neutron Stars Don’t Make Enough Gold to Explain What We See in the Universe Much of the gold we find on Earth was created by colliding neutron stars, but astronomers now know gold must also be formed elsewhere. The post Colliding Neutron Stars Don’t Make Enough Gold to Explain What We See in the […]
Check Out How Big the Planets and the Moon Will be in Our Sky Over the Next Two Years Everything in space is moving. Galaxies collide and merge, massive clouds of gas migrate, and asteroids, comets, and rogue planets zip around and between it all. And in our own Solar System, the planets follow their […]
Thousands Saw a UFO in New Jersey. It was the Goodyear Blimp It was like the opening scene from a movie: cars pulled over on a busy freeway, with everyone gawking in disbelief at what they were seeing. Drivers in New Jersey this week thought a flying saucer was hovering above them. But in reality, […]
Missions Are Already Being Planned to Figure Out What’s Creating the Biosignature on Venus The discovery of phosphine in the upper clouds in Venus’ atmosphere has generated a lot of excitement. On Earth, phosphine is produced biologically, so it’s a sign of life. If it’s not produced by life, it takes an enormous amount of […]
Uranus’ Moons are Surprisingly Similar to Dwarf Planets in the Kuiper Belt Astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus—and two of its moons—230 years ago. Now a group of astronomers working with data from the telescope that bears his name, the Herschel Space Observatory, have made an unexpected discovery. It looks like Uranus’ moons bear a striking […]
Sunrises Across the Solar System Scientists have learned a lot about the atmospheres on various worlds in our Solar System simply from planetary sunrises or sunsets. Sunlight streaming through the haze of an atmosphere can be separated into its component colors to create spectra, just as prisms do with sunlight. From the spectra, astronomers can […]
NASA Will Pay You to Retrieve Regolith and Rocks from the Moon NASA is offering to pay commercial contractors to retrieve lunar regolith and rocks to demonstrate their ability to harvest resources on the Moon The post NASA Will Pay You to Retrieve Regolith and Rocks from the Moon appeared first on Universe Today. Universe […]
Astronomers Have Discovered a 2-km Asteroid Orbiting Closer to the Sun than Venus Astronomers have painstakingly built models of the asteroid population, and those models predict that there will be ~1 km sized asteroids that orbit closer to the Sun than Venus does. The problem is, nobody’s been able to find one. Until now. Astronomers […]
The Milky Way is Already Starting to Digest the Magellanic Clouds, Starting With Their Protective Halos of Hot Gas Massive galaxies like our Milky Way gain mass by absorbing smaller galaxies. The Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud are irregular dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound to the Milky Way. Both the clouds […]
Extreme galaxies depend on extreme conditions for their formation Some galaxies are too small, and some galaxies are too big, while others are just right. A new survey of the nearby Virgo cluster has potentially revealed why extreme galaxies are the wrong size, and how they might be connected. We’re going to talk about two […]
A beautiful picture of Saturn’s heavily-cratered moon Mimas, processed by @kevinmgill The Cassini mission to Saturn took many images of Mimas, one of the smallest moons in the solar system. And now you can view it in all its icy, cratered glory, thanks to the work of Kevin Gill. Mimas is perhaps best known as […]
The SpaceX Starship Could be Making its Biggest Hop Yet (and a Belly-Flop) Next Month! Elon Musk and SpaceX appear to be gearing up for a high-altitude hop test with the SN8 before the end of October! The post The SpaceX Starship Could be Making its Biggest Hop Yet (and a Belly-Flop) Next Month! appeared […]
Did Scientists Just Find Signs of Life on Venus? A team of scientists has just published a paper announcing their discovery of a peculiar chemical in the cloudtops of Venus. As far as scientists can tell, this chemical, called phosphine, could only be produced by living processes on a planet like Venus. So the whole […]
Small Amounts of Dark Matter are Creating Much Stronger Gravitational Distortions than Anyone Expected to See Dark matter is much more clumpy than we thought, which means some dark matter might be very cold. The post Small Amounts of Dark Matter are Creating Much Stronger Gravitational Distortions than Anyone Expected to See appeared first on […]
