Universe Today

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

What’s the Best Material for a Lunar Tower?

Artist rendition of a future lunar base. (Credit: ESA - P. Carril)

Physical infrastructure on the Moon will be critical to any long-term human presence there as both America and China gear up for a sustained human lunar presence. Increasingly, a self-deploying tower is one of the most essential parts of that physical infrastructure. These towers can hold numerous pieces of equipment, from solar panels to communications arrays, and the more weight they can hold in the lunar gravity, the more capable they become. So it’s essential to understand the best structural set-up for these towers, which is the purpose of a recent paper by researchers at North Carolina State University and NASA’s Langley Research Center.

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024 by Mark Thompson

What Does a Trip to Mars Do to the Brain?

It’s not long before a conversation about space travel is likely to turn to the impact on the human body. Our bodies have evolved to exist on Earth with a constant force of 1G acting upon them but up in orbit, all of a sudden that force is apparently lacking. The impact of this is well known; muscle loss and reduction in bone density but there are effects of spaceflight. Cosmic radiation from the Galaxy has an impact on cognition too, an effect that has recently been studied in mice!

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024 by David Dickinson

Could a New Sungrazer Comet Put on a Show at the End of October?

Comet W3 Lovejoy imaged from the ISS after perihelion in 2011. Credit: NASA

Could this be the next great comet? To be sure, these words have been said lots of times before. In a clockwork sky, how comets will perform is always the great wildcard. Comets from Kohoutek to ISON have failed to live up to expectations, while others like W3 Lovejoy took us all by surprise. But a discovery this past weekend has message boards abuzz, as an incoming sungrazer could put on a show right around Halloween.

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024 by Brian Koberlein

Gravitational Lens Confirms the Hubble Tension

Webb image showing the appearances of a lensed supernova. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

We’ve known the Universe is expanding for a long time. The first solid paper demonstrating cosmic expansion was published by Edwin Hubble in 1929, based on observations made by Vesto Slipher, Milton Humason, and Henrietta Leavitt. Because of this, the rate of cosmic expansion is known as the Hubble constant, or Hubble parameter, H₀. From this parameter, you can calculate things such as the age of the Universe since the Big Bang, so knowing the value of H₀ is central to our understanding of modern cosmology.

October 2, 2024October 2, 2024 by Matt Williams

Jets From Supermassive Black Holes Create New Stars Along Their Trajectory

Artist's concept looking down into the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. Credit: NASA/ESA,/J. Olmsted (STScI)

Since the 1970s, astronomers have observed that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the centers of most massive galaxies. In some cases, these black holes accelerate gas and dust from their poles, forming relativistic jets that can extend for thousands of light-years. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers observed the jet emanating from the center of M87, the supermassive galaxy located 53.5 million light-years away. To their surprise, the team observed nova erupting along the jet’s trajectory, twice as many as they observed in M87 itself.

October 2, 2024October 2, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

NASA Turns Off One of Voyager 2's Science Instruments

Voyager 2. Credit: NASA — Artist's impression of the Voyager 2 space probe. Credit: NASA

The two Voyager spacecraft have been speeding through space since 1977, powered by decaying chunks of plutonium that produce less and less energy every year. With less electricity available, NASA has decided to shut down one experiment on Voyager 2, the plasma science instrument. This device measures the quantity and direction of ionized particles passing the spacecraft. While Voyager 2 still has enough electricity to support its four other operational instruments, it will likely be down to just one by the 2030s.

October 2, 2024October 2, 2024 by Brian Koberlein

Bernard's Star Has a Planet (Again)!

This artist’s impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard’s star. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

The thing about exoplanets is that astronomers don’t see them the way most people think they do. Part of the reason for that is the way we announce them. Whenever an interesting exoplanet is discovered, the press release usually has colorful artwork showing oceans, mountains, and clouds. Something visually captivating like the image above. But the reality is that we have only imaged a few exoplanets directly, and even then, they appear only as small fuzzy blobs. Most of the known exoplanets were discovered by the transit method, where the star dims slightly as the planet passes in front of it. So what astronomers actually see is a periodic flickering of starlight.

October 1, 2024October 2, 2024 by Matt Williams

An Earth-like Planet Around a Dead Sun Provides Some Reassurance About the Future of Earth

Astronomers have discovered a distant white dwarf with an Earth-like planet in an orbit just beyond where Mars is in our solar system. Earth could end up in such an orbit circling a white dwarf in about 8 billion years, if, like this exoplanet, it can survive the sun's red giant phase on its way to becoming a white dwarf. Credit: Adam Makarenko

In about five billion years, our Sun will exit its main sequence phase and transition to its red giant phase. At this point, the Sun will expand and consume the planets of the inner Solar System, including Mercury and Venus. What will become of Earth when this happens has been the subject of debate for many decades. But with the recent explosion in exoplanet discoveries, 5,759 confirmed in 4,305 systems so far, astronomers hope to learn more about how planets fare as their stars near the end of their life cycle.

Using the 10-meter telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a white dwarf star 4,000 light-years from Earth. This planet orbits its star, about half the mass of our Sun, at a distance roughly twice that of the Earth today. The system resembles what is expected to become of our system once the Sun has exhausted the last of its fuel and sheds its outer layers. It also offers some assurances that Earth will survive the Sun becoming a red giant and exploding in a supernova.

October 1, 2024October 1, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

We Don’t See Many Planets in Old Triple Star Systems

Example of a triple star system. (Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, or IPAC)

Why is it important to search for exoplanets in triple star systems and how many can we find there? This is what a recent study accepted by Astrophysics & Space Science hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington investigated the statistical likelihood of triple star systems hosting exoplanets. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of triple star systems and whether they are suitable to find life as we know it.

September 30, 2024October 3, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Perseverance Finds a Strange Black-and-White Striped Rock on Mars

Mars Perseverance Rover's September 13, 2024 view of Freya Castle, a strange-looking striped rock in Jezero Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

The hits just keep on coming from the Mars Perseverance rover. It’s exploring Jezero Crater on the Red Planet, looking for evidence of microbial life in the planet’s ancient (or even recent) past. Recently it spotted a very strange-looking rock with black and white stripes. Its appearance and location sparked a lot of questions. Perseverance team members have named it “Freya Castle.”