Brian Koberlein, Author at Universe Today

April 21, 2022April 21, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Venus' Atmosphere Stops it From Locking to the Sun

Of the thousands of exoplanets we’ve discovered, most of them closely orbit red dwarf stars. Part of this is because planets with short orbital periods are easier to find, but part of this is that red dwarf stars make up about 75% of the stars in our galaxy. This propensity of close orbiting planets has some pretty big implications for “potentially habitable” worlds, not the least of which is that most of these planets are likely tidally locked to their star. Or so we’ve thought.

April 18, 2022April 18, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

When Will Humanity Become a Type I Civilization?

Dyson Sphere as Depicted in the videogame "Stellaris", developed and published by Paradox Interactive. Used with permission. Screenshot by author

There are several ways we can measure the progress of human civilization. Population growth, the rise and fall of empires, our technological ability to reach for the stars. But one simple measure is to calculate the amount of energy humans use at any given time. As humanity has spread and advanced, our ability to harness energy is one of our most useful skills. If one assumes civilizations on other planets might possess similar skills, the energy consumption of a species is a good rough measure of its technological prowess. This is the idea behind the Kardashev Scale.

April 8, 2022April 8, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Dying Star Puffs out six Smoke Rings

Artist view of V Hya in its death throes. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Our Sun’s days are numbered. In about 5 billion years the Sun will expand into a red giant, casting off its outer layers before settling down to become a white dwarf. It’s the inevitable fate of most sunlike stars, and the process is well understood. But as a recent study shows, there are still a few things we have to learn about dying Suns.

March 31, 2022March 31, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Supermassive Black Holes Shut Down Star Formation

The Cigar Galaxy (M82), which is a starburst galaxy with high star production. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

One of the key aspects of galactic evolution is star production. On a basic level, stars form within a galaxy’s gas and dust all the time, and where they form can help determine a galaxy’s shape and size. But there seems to be a sweet point when star production in a galaxy is particularly strong. Galaxies often have a period of rapid star production which then drops off. Astronomers are still trying to understand what causes this drop-off.

March 27, 2022March 27, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

NASA's Upcoming SPHEREx Mission Will map the Entire Universe in Infrared Every 6 Months

Illustration of the SPHEREx satellite. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The universe is cold and dark. And yet, within the dark, there is a faint glow of warmth. Across the sky, there are objects that emit infrared light, similar to the light that warms your hands near a campfire. By observing this light, astronomers can see the cosmos in a way that looks very different from that seen by our eyes.

March 25, 2022March 25, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

The Sun Didn't Have any Sunspots for 70 Years, now we Might Know why

The Sun as seen over the years. Credit: NASA

Sunspots are one of the ways we can measure the activity level of the Sun. Generally, the more sunspots we observe, the more active the Sun is. We’ve been tracking sunspots since the early 1600s, and we’ve long known that solar activity has an 11-year cycle of high and low activity. It’s an incredibly regular cycle. But from 1645 to 1715 that cycle was broken. During this time the Sun entered an extremely quiet period that has come to be known as the Maunder Minimum. In the deepest period of the minimum, only 50 sunspots were observed, when typically there would be tens of thousands. We’ve never observed such a long period of quiet since, and we have no idea why it occurred.

March 24, 2022March 24, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

New Radio Images of Bizarre “Odd Radio Circles” Which are Vastly Bigger Than the Milky Way

Artist depiction of an Odd Radio Circle. Credit: CSIRO

In radio astronomy, circle-shaped objects are fairly common. Since diffuse ionized gas often emits radio light, objects such as supernova remnants, planetary nebulae, and even star-forming regions can create circular arcs of diffuse gas. But in 2019 astronomers began to discover radio circles they couldn’t explain, in part because they are so large.

March 22, 2022March 22, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

It's Confirmed. We now Know of More Than 5,000 Exoplanets

An artist view of countless exoplanets. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This week the official count of known exoplanets crossed 5,000. On the one hand, there isn’t anything special about 5,000 vs 4,900 or 5,100, but on the other hand, crossing this threshold is an indication of how far we’ve come, and how quickly things will change in the future.

March 19, 2022March 19, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Could Detect Gravitational Waves by Tracking the Moon's Orbit Around the Earth

An artist view of primordial gravitational waves. Credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav/Swinburne University of Technology

Gravitational waves are notoriously difficult to detect. Although modern optical astronomy has been around for centuries, gravitational wave astronomy has only been around since 2015. Even now our ability to detect gravitational waves is limited. Observatories such as LIGO and Virgo can only detect powerful events such as the mergers of stellar black holes or neutron stars. And they can only detect waves with a narrow range of frequencies from tens of Hertz to a few hundred Hertz. Many gravitational waves are produced at much lower frequencies, but right now we can’t observe them. Imagine raising a telescope to the night sky and only being able to see light that is a few shades of purple.

March 18, 2022March 20, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

There are Deposits of ice at Mercury's Poles too

Although the Arecibo radio telescope is no more, it continues to deliver scientific discoveries. There is a wealth of Arecibo data astronomers continue to mine for new discoveries, and one of them is thanks to an astronomical technique known as planetary radar.