Universe Today (Page 195)

There are new Stars Forming Near the Core of the Milky Way Despite the Harsh Environment The central core of our galaxy is not a friendly place for star formation, and yet new observations have revealed almost four dozen newly-forming systems. These results challenge our understanding of the complicated physics of our galactic heart. The core of our galaxy may be pretty, but it’s not a friendly place. Within the innermost 1000 light-years of the core, known as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), there’s simply too much activity for stars to form. Stars can only form after clumps of gas cool and condense, and anythingRead More →

Roman Telescope Could Turn up Over 100,000 Planets Through Microlensing Recently we reported on a haul of 2,200 new exoplanets from the 2 year primary mission of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). But that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of exoplanet hunting.  If calculations from NASA are correct the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could detect up to 100,000 new exoplanets when it launches in 2025. There are two ways Roman will look for potential exoplanets.  The first is a more traditional method, already used by TESS and Kepler, to watch for the faiting dimming of a star that happensRead More →

InSight Detects Two Significant Quakes from the Cerberus Fossae Region on Mars NASA’s InSight lander felt the distant rumble of two major ‘marsquakes’ in March, originating from a region near the Martian equator known as the Cerberus Fossae. Registering magnitudes of 3.1 and 3.3 on March 7th and March 18th respectively, the quakes cement the Cerberus Fossae’s reputation as one of the most geologically active places on the Red Planet today. A pair of similarly strong marsquakes rocked the same region back in 2019. The Cerberus Fossae region is scarred by a series of massive, nearly-parallel fissures, created when the planet’s crust was pulled openRead More →

A new way to see Inside Neutron Stars Imagine trying to study an object light-years away that is less than 20 kilometers in diameter. The object is so dense that it’s made of material that can’t exist naturally on Earth. This is the challenge astronomers face when studying neutron stars, so they have to devise ingenious ways to do it. Recently a team figured out how to study them by using the power of resonance. Resonance occurs when energy is given to a system near the natural oscillation frequency of an object. For example, if you want to make a swing go high, you can’tRead More →

Interstellar Comet Borisov is so Pristine, it’s Probably Never Been Close to a Star Before By comparing our local Comet Hale-Bopp to the interstellar visitor 2I/Borisov, a team of astronomers have concluded that the interloper is perhaps one of the most pristine comets we’ve ever seen. “2I/Borisov could represent the first truly pristine comet ever observed,” says Stefano Bagnulo of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, Northern Ireland, UK, who led the new study published recently in Nature Communications. Many comets pass at least once through the inner solar system in their lifetimes. When they do, they encounter the solar wind and any other random pieces of microscopicRead More →

A Lake in a Martian Crater was Once Filled by Glacial Runoff All across the Martian surface, there are preserved features that tell the story of what Mars once looked like. These include channels that were carved by flowing water, delta fans where water deposited sediment over time, and lakebeds where clay and hydrated minerals are found. In addition to telling us more about Mars’ past, the study of these features can tell us about how Mars made the transition to what it is today. According to new research led by Brown Ph.D. student Ben Boatwright, an unnamed Martian crater in Mars southern highlands showedRead More →

Satellites Have Brightened the Skies by About 10% Across the Entire Planet New research has found that as the number of satellites in Earth orbit continues to increase, their accumulated light pollution will brighten the night sky – making it much harder to do fundamental astronomy. The continued launch of so-called “mega-constellations” of satellites, used to power global internet access, has been met with concern by astronomers worldwide. Those astronomers worry that individual exposures of distant objects will be ruined by a satellite crossing in front of the telescope. But new research recently appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society paints anRead More →

TESS has Found 2,200 Potential Exoplanets so far Exoplanetology has been on a tear recently.  This is largely due to an abundance of data collected by a new generation of satellites, one of which is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).  Now the project has reached a new milestone with another release of data – 2,200 planet candidates collected, far surpassing the 1,600 expected candidates in the mission’s first two years.  Now comes a potentially even more daunting task – following up with each of them. That follow-up is where the real potential lies, according to Natalia Guerrero, the lead author on the paper releasingRead More →

If Astronomers see Isoprene in the Atmosphere of an Alien World, There’s a Good Chance There’s Life There It is no exaggeration to say that the study of extrasolar planets has exploded in recent decades. To date, 4,375 exoplanets have been confirmed in 3,247 systems, with another 5,856 candidates awaiting confirmation. In recent years, exoplanet studies have started to transition from the process of discovery to one of characterization. This process is expected to accelerate once next-generation telescopes become operational. As a result, astrobiologists are working to create comprehensive lists of potential “biosignatures,” which refers to chemical compounds and processes that are associated with lifeRead More →

In a Comprehensive new Test, the EmDrive Fails to Generate any Thrust The EmDrive is a hypothetical rocket that proponents claim can generate thrust with no exhaust. This would violate all known physics. In 2016, a team at NASA’s Eagleworks lab claimed to measure thrust from an EmDrive device, the news of which caused quite a stir. The latest attempt to replicate the shocking results has resulted in a simple answer: the Eagleworks measurement was from heating of the engine mount, not any new physics. The EmDrive is a relatively simple device: it’s an empty cavity that isn’t perfectly symmetrical. According to proponents of theRead More →

Clear Signs of Recent Erosion on Mars Erosion can take many forms.  Most commonly known is water wearing away the sides of creeks or lakes.  But wind can erode just as effectively, especially if it carries dust particles that can eat away at otherwise solid objects.  While this wind-driven process is most commonly observed on Earth, it plays a role in the history of most other rocky bodies that have an atmosphere.  Recently, a team lead scientists from the Planetary Science Institute found evidence for some erosion from between 50,000 and a few million years ago in Mars’s polar ice cap.  That is a blinkRead More →

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has a Dark Secret. It Feeds on Smaller Storms Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – the largest and most powerful of all the storms in the solar system – has been churning for hundred of years. Recently dozens of smaller storms have slammed into the Red Spot. Those smaller storms only caused superficial damage – and may have ended up feeding the beast itself. While astronomers suspect that Galileo himself spotted the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, it wasn’t until the 1800’s the continuous observations confirmed that it was a single, long-running storm in the atmosphere of our solar system’s largest planet.Read More →

A Billion Years From now There won’t be Much Oxygen in the Earth’s Atmosphere Breathe it while you still can. A new research study forecasts the future of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere and finds grim news. As the sun continues to warm, carbon dioxide will bind to rocks. This will starve plants, and in as little as a billion years they won’t be able to produce enough oxygen to keep our planet habitable (for us). Our sun, like all stars, is steadily getting warmer. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the fusion of hydrogen in the core leaves behind inert helium,Read More →

There are Ocean Currents Under the ice on Enceladus Underneath its shell of ice, the globe-spanning ocean of Enceladus isn’t sitting still. Instead, it might possibly host massive ocean currents, driven by changes in salinity. Ocean world By all rights, the tiny world of Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, shouldn’t be this interesting. It’s no more than 1/7th the width of our own Moon and has a surface completely covered in water ice – nothing at all out of the ordinary. But in 2014 the NASA mission Cassini spotted something surprising: plumes of water spraying through cracks in the ice. Further studies revealed thatRead More →

The Debris Cloud From a Supernova Shows an Imprint of the Actual Explosion Computer models are continuing to play an increasing role in scientific discovery.  Everything from the first moments after the Big Bang to potential for life to form on other planets has been the target of some sort of computer model.  Now scientists from the RIKEN Astrophysical Big Bang Laboratory are turning this almost ubiquitous tool to a very violent event – Type Ia supernovae.  Their work has now resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the effects of these important events. Type Ia supernovae are a type of supernova that occur inRead More →

The Closest Star Cluster to Earth is Being Dismantled in Front of our Eyes Star clusters are interesting inhabitants of the sky.  They vary in sizes, distances, and number of stars, but almost all are spectacular to look at.  And most of them are in the process of being torn apart.  That is certainly the case for the Hyades star cluster – the closest one to Earth at only 153 light years away.  The problem is, there is something causing a lot more destruction than would be expected given the mass and energy in the surrounding space.  Now, a team of scientists from ESA haveRead More →

Simulating the Universe a Trillionth of a Second After the Big Bang The Big Bang remains the best way to explain what happened at the beginning of the Universe.   However, the incredible energies flowing during the early part of the bang are almost incomprehensive to our everyday experience.  Luckily, computers aren’t so attached to normal human ways of thinking and have long been used to model the early universe right after the Bang.  Now, a team from the University of Göttingen have created the most comprehensive model of what exactly happened in that very early stage of the universe – one trillionth of aRead More →

Seen From Space, Iceland’s new Volcano Lights up the Island at Night You’ve probably seen stunning images of the night side of the Earth from space. Most people have seen the veritable constellations of city lights scattered familiarly across the continents, separated by wide oceans of darkness. You very well may have seen some stunning videos from the ISS showing the dynamic and mesmerizing ribbons of the polar aurorae and the even more frenetic flashes of nighttime lightning storms. If you’re a frequent reader of this site, you’ve likely even seen the effects of rolling blackouts during the catastrophic winter storms of February 2021 inRead More →

Maybe Mars Didn’t Lose its Water After All. It’s Still Trapped on the Planet Roughly 4 billion years ago, Mars looked a lot different than it does today. For starters, its atmosphere was thicker and warmer, and liquid water flowed across its surface. This included rivers, standing lakes, and even a deep ocean that covered much of the northern hemisphere. Evidence of this warm, watery past has been preserved all over the planet in the form of lakebeds, river valleys, and river deltas. For some time, scientists have been trying to answer a simple question: where did all that water go? Did it escape intoRead More →

Latest Starship Prototype SN11 Explodes in mid-air, Raining Debris on the Launch Site Space exploration sure is hard, huh? Luckily, it’s an iterative process, where engineers test and test and test again to work out all the bugs in advance. At least, that’s what we remind ourselves when the prototype goes “kaboom!” Earlier today, the SN11 joins its predecessors by being the fourth Starship prototype to conduct a successful flight test and then explode while attempting to make a landing (or shortly thereafter). This was SpaceX’s fourth high-altitude flight test, which saw a three-engine Starship prototype fly to an altitude of 10 km (6.2 mi),Read More →