Way back in time, about 4.6 billion years ago, our Sun and planets were busily forming nestled inside a cloud of gas and dust. Not far away, a supernova exploded, threatening to tear everything apart. Luckily, a filament of molecular gas protected the infant Solar System from imminent destruction.
Continue reading “A Nearby Supernova Almost Destroyed the Solar System Before it Could Form”Supervillains Take Note. Here’s a New Way to Destroy a Star
If you’re an evil genius supervillain looking to freak out your enemy with a big messy space kablooie, here’s a novel way to do it. Smack a couple of ancient star remnants together right in front of your nemesis. The result will give you a gratifyingly huge, bright explosion plus a bonus gamma-ray burst visible across the Universe. And, it’ll scare everybody into doing your evil bidding.
Continue reading “Supervillains Take Note. Here’s a New Way to Destroy a Star”Mind-Blowing Animation Shows What the World Would Look Like If You Could See Carbon Dioxide Emissions
It’s a strange, eerie-looking place. Carbon dioxide gas appears… and disappears in cycles and bursts throughout the year. It’s how our planet would look if we could detect carbon dioxide (CO2) with our eyes. Scientists at NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office made computer animations of its presence in our atmosphere. Those videos show an almost-alien view of Earth under the influence of this gas.
The Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole had a Burst of Activity 200 Years Ago. We Just Saw the Echo.
We in the Milky Way Galaxy are pretty lucky to have a fairly quiet central supermassive black hole in Sgr A*. It’s not loud and bright like an active galactic nucleus. It appears to be active for brief periods before going to sleep. Two hundred years ago, it “woke up” for about a year and a half and had a bite to eat.
Continue reading “The Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole had a Burst of Activity 200 Years Ago. We Just Saw the Echo.”Astronomers Find a White Dwarf Pulsar
When astronomers talk about the “end states” of stellar evolution, several categories come to mind: black holes, neutron stars/pulsars, and white dwarfs. What happens if one star ends up in two of these states? That’s the case with a genre-breaking white dwarf pulsar called J191213.72-441045.1 (J1912-4410 for short). It’s part of a binary pair that includes a red dwarf star.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find a White Dwarf Pulsar”The Evidence is Building that Dark Matter is Made of Axions
There’s some potentially big news on the hunt for dark matter. Astronomers may have a handle on what makes this mysterious cosmic stuff: strange particles called “axions.”
Continue reading “The Evidence is Building that Dark Matter is Made of Axions”A Planet So Hot Its Atmosphere Contains the Raw Material for Rocks
In the annals of “strange new worlds”, the ultra-hot Jupiter planet WASP-76b ranks right up there as a very unusual place. There’s no surface, but it does have a massive, hot atmosphere. Temperatures average a raging 2000 C and rise up to 2400 C in one hemisphere. That’s hot enough for mineral and rock-forming elements like calcium, nickel, and magnesium to get vaporized and float around in that thick blanket of air. Not only that, but iron probably rains down through the clouds.
Continue reading “A Planet So Hot Its Atmosphere Contains the Raw Material for Rocks”An Element Critical for (Earth) Life is Spewing out of Enceladus
We really need to get back to Enceladus. Not to send people necessarily, although that would be nice. But, we need to get some more robotic missions out there. This moon is one of the most intriguing places in the solar system. Not only has it got oceans under that icy crust, but it’s spewing salty water out to space. Plus, that water seems to be rich in phosphates, which contain phosphorus, which is a building block of life.
Continue reading “An Element Critical for (Earth) Life is Spewing out of Enceladus”Curiosity Takes One Final Postcard Image of a Picturesque Valley Before Moving on to its Next Destination
The Mars rover Curiosity continues to make its way up the slopes of Mount Sharp on Mars. On April 8th, its navigation cameras snapped a pair of images—one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They show distinctly different lighting angles during a crisp Martian winter day. The images got combined with a color overlay to produce a fantastic “postcard” from the Red Planet.
Continue reading “Curiosity Takes One Final Postcard Image of a Picturesque Valley Before Moving on to its Next Destination”Astronomers Have Figured Out Clever Tricks to Reduce the Impact of Satellite Trails
A clear sky is a prerequisite for most astronomers imaging the cosmos. However, with the proliferation of satellite trails, astronomers see a lot more streaks in their images. That’s particularly true for people using professional ground-based and orbiting telescopes. When Hubble Space Telescope opened its eye on the sky, there were less than 500 satellites orbiting our planet. Now, there are nearly 8,000 of them, leaving their mark across the sky.
Continue reading “Astronomers Have Figured Out Clever Tricks to Reduce the Impact of Satellite Trails”