Universe Today (Page 199)

Dark Energy Survey Finds Hundreds of New Gravitational Lenses It’s relatively rare for a magical object from fantasy stories to have a analog in real life.  A truly functional crystal ball (or palantir) would be useful for everything from military operations to checking up on grandma. While nothing exists to be able to observe the mundanities of everyday life, there is something equivalent for extraordinarily far away galaxies: gravitational lenses.  Now a team led by Xiaosheng Huang from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and several universities around the world have published a list of more than 1200 new gravitational lensing candidates. Gravitational lenses occur whenRead More →

SLS Will be Tested Again in About 3 Weeks In November of 2021, NASA will embark on a new era of space exploration as they make the inaugural launch of the Space Launch System (SLS). When it enters service, this booster will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V, which took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. This is fitting since the SLS will be the rocket returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024 (as part of Project Artemis). To get the SLS ready for its first launch, NASA has been running the Core Stage through a series of tests designed to testRead More →

Astronomers are now Finding Planetary Disks Around the Smallest, Least Massive Stars Astronomers have been watching planetary systems form around sun-like stars for decades. And now, new observations with the ALMA telescope reveal the same process playing out around the smallest, but most common, stars in galaxy. The smallest stars in the universe, red dwarf stars, are known to have planetary systems, as shown by the famous examples of Proxima b and the TRAPPIST-1 system. But to date, astronomers have never seen one of these stars in the process of actually forming those planets. But also to date, astronomers haven’t had ALMA, currently one ofRead More →

Every Challenge Astronauts Will Face on a Flight to Mars In 1972, the Space Race officially ended as NASA sent one last crew of astronauts to the surface of the Moon (Apollo 17). This was the brass ring that both the US and the Soviets were reaching for, the “Moonshot” that would determine who had supremacy in space. In the current age of renewed space exploration, the next great leap will clearly involve sending astronauts to Mars. This will present many challenges that will need to be addressed in advance, many of which have to do with simply getting the astronauts there in one piece!Read More →

Narrowing Down the Mass of Dark Matter Most of the matter of the universe is of a form unknown to physics. While we don’t know what the identity of the dark matter is, a new insight provided by quantum gravity is helping to drastically narrow down its mass. Numerous observations, from the motion of stars within galaxies, to the properties of galaxy clusters, to the very structure of the universe itself, all point to the existence of a new ingredient in the cosmos. This new ingredient, known as dark matter, is some new particle (or particles) that is currently unknown to the Standard Model ofRead More →

It Looks Like Iceberg A-68A is Coming Apart Iceberg A-68A, the massive frigid behemoth posing a threat to South Georgia Island, might be breaking into pieces. Satellite images from the European Space Agency showed large cracks forming in the iceberg. Now it appears to breaking apart. Iceberg A-68A’s journey started back in July 2017 when it broke off from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf. Over the years, orbital eyes of satellites from both the ESA and NASA watched its drifting progress. Measuring 5,800 square kilometres (2200 sq. mi.) in surface area and estimated to weigh one trillion tons, the iceberg spent its first couple ofRead More →

BluShift Aerospace Launches Stardust 1.0 Rocket Maine-based BluShift Aerospace launches of a unique rocket from a Cold War Air Force base. A small company took a major step towards the reality of a ‘Spaceport Maine’ this past weekend. After several attempts, the Maine-based company BluShift Aerospace successfully launched its first rocket from Loring Commerce Center in Northern Maine this past weekend, with the liftoff of Stardust 1.0. The day dawned clear, but a chilly 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius). The launch of the single-stage 20-foot high Stardust 1.0 rocket went off at 2:47 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST)/19:47 Universal Time (UT) on Sunday, JanuaryRead More →

Is There An Apollo 14 Moon Tree Near You? 50 years ago this week, the Apollo 14 crew flew their mission to the Moon. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell were the third pair of astronauts to walk on the lunar surface. They conducted two moonwalks in the Frau Mauro highlands, collecting rocks and setting up science experiments, as well as broadcasting the first color TV images from the Moon. Meanwhile, Stuart Roosa remained in orbit as the Command Module pilot. But Roosa wasn’t alone while circling above the Moon.   The crew of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission: Alan B. Shepard Jr., center, commander;Read More →

The Earth’s Magnetosphere Might be Creating Water on the Moon There’s no doubt that the Moon has water on its surface. Orbiters have spotted deposits of ice persisting in the perpetual shadows of polar craters. And recent research shows that water exists in sunlit parts of the Moon, too. Over the years, scientists have presented evidence that the Moon’s water came from comets, from asteroids, from inside the Moon, and even from the Sun. But now new research is pointing the finger directly at Earth as the source of some of the Moon’s water. The new study is titled “Earth Wind as a Possible ExogenousRead More →

By Measuring Light From Individual Stars Between Galaxy Clusters, Astronomers Find Clues About Dark Matter Astronomers have been able to measure an extremely faint glow of light within galaxy clusters, and that measurement came with a surprise: it traced the amount of invisible dark matter, something that scientists have been trying to pin down for decades. Using the latest data release of the Dark Energy Survey, a massive scan of the sky designed to map out the positions of galaxies throughout the universe, a team of astronomers instead focused on something else: the space between galaxies. Each galaxy cluster in our universe is home toRead More →

Black Holes Simulated in a Tank of Water Reveals “Backreaction” for the First Time It’s hard to make a black hole in the lab. You have to gather up a bunch of mass, squeeze it until it gravitationally collapses on itself, work, work, work. It’s so hard to do that we’ve never done it. We can, however, make a simulated black hole using a tank of water, and it can tell us interesting things about how black holes work. Water simulations of black holes are possible because the mathematics that describes the behavior of water is similar to the mathematics that describes the behavior ofRead More →

A new Class of Exoplanets can Shrink, From Subneptunes Into Superearths Mighty planets can be whittled down, leaving behind only their rocky cores, becoming nothing bigger than superearths. While astronomers had long suspected that this could happen, a new study reveals that it can occur in as little as a billion years. The largest planets in the solar system – and, indeed, the galaxy – are mostly gas and ices: hydrogen, helium, water, ammonia, and so on. They likely do have rocky cores, though, buried deep under all those suffocating layers. And those layers can persist essentially forever, unless something blows them away. Astronomers hadRead More →

Physicists Figure out how to Make Gravitational Wave Detectors “Hear” 6x More Universe Gravitational wave detectors are limited by fundamental quantum noise – an incessant “hum” that they cannot ever remove. But now physicists have recently improved a technique, called “squeezing”, that can allow the next generation of detectors to double their sensitivity. All the gravitational waves sloshing around the universe are incredibly weak. When they wash over the Earth, even the strongest waves wiggle no more than the width of an atomic nucleus. Our detectors, like LIGO and VIRGO that bounce laser beams back and forth, need to measure these tiny differences. But whenRead More →

What Could We Learn From a Mission to Phobos? According to new research that appeared in the scientific journal Nature, the larger of Mars’ two moons (Phobos) has an orbit that takes it through a stream of charged particles (ions) that flow from the Red Planet’s atmosphere. This process has been taking place for billions of years as the planet slowly lost its atmosphere, effectively establishing a record of Martian climate change on Phobos’ surface. This research has provided yet another incentive for landing a mission on Phobos, something that has never been done successfully. In essence, this mission could gather sample data that wouldRead More →

SN9 Tests Ends With a Boom. You’re Up SN10 Another day, another round of testing (and yes, another explosion). Today, on Tuesday, Feb. 2nd, 2021, flight teams at SpaceX’s launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas, conducted a high-altitude test flight with a Starship prototype. Similar to the previous test in December, the SN9 was powered by three Raptor engines, flew to an altitude of 10 km (6.2 mi), then attempted another “belly flop” to test out its fins and aerodynamic surfaces. As always, the event was broadcast via live stream by SpaceX, NASASpaceFlight, LabPadre, and several other observers. Like the SN8 test flight, SpaceX’s coverageRead More →

When Galaxies Collide, Black Holes Don’t Always Get the Feast They Were Hoping for What happens when galaxies collide? Well, if any humans are around in about a billion years, they might find out. That’s when our Milky Way galaxy is scheduled to collide with our neighbour the Andromeda galaxy. That event will be an epic, titanic, collision. The supermassive black holes at the center of both galaxies will … Continue reading “When Galaxies Collide, Black Holes Don’t Always Get the Feast They Were Hoping for” The post When Galaxies Collide, Black Holes Don’t Always Get the Feast They Were Hoping for appeared first onRead More →

MESSENGER Saw a Meteoroid Strike Mercury Telescopes have captured meteoroids hitting the Moon and several spacecraft imaged Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 smacking into Jupiter in 1994. But impacts as they happen on another rocky world have never been observed. However, the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) mission may have seen an impact take place back in 2013. In looking … Continue reading “MESSENGER Saw a Meteoroid Strike Mercury” The post MESSENGER Saw a Meteoroid Strike Mercury appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers are Starting to Understand the Quasar Lifecycle Supermassive black holes have a complicated lifecycle. Sometimes they’re “on”, blasting out tremendous amounts of energy, and sometimes they’re “off’, where they sleep like dragons in their caves. By comparing the proportion of high-energy to low-energy waves emitted by quasars, astronomers are beginning to pin down how many black holes are sleeping, and when they’re … Continue reading “Astronomers are Starting to Understand the Quasar Lifecycle” The post Astronomers are Starting to Understand the Quasar Lifecycle appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Galaxy Mergers can Boost Star Formation, and it can Also Shut it Down Galaxy mergers are beautiful sights, but ultimately deadly. In the midst of the collision, the combined galaxy will shine brighter than it ever has before. But that glory comes with a price: all those new stars use up all the available fuel, and star formation grinds to a halt. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, … Continue reading “Galaxy Mergers can Boost Star Formation, and it can Also Shut it Down” The post Galaxy Mergers can Boost Star Formation, and it can Also Shut it Down appeared first on Universe Today. UniverseRead More →

A Sunlike Star Found With Four (No, Five!) Exoplanets Orbiting It Thanks to an international team astronomers led from MIT, a nearby Sun-like star has been spotted with a system of five exoplanets, making it the perfect target for observations with the James Webb Space Telescope. The post A Sunlike Star Found With Four (No, Five!) Exoplanets Orbiting It appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →