Carolyn Collins Petersen, Author at Universe Today

August 30, 2022August 30, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Science Fiction was an Inspiration for Many Professional Astronomers

Science fiction universe for Star Trek — The Star Trek universe occurs in the Milky Way Galaxy; this show and its memorable characters are cited, along with many other SF works as influences for scientists. Courtesy R.H. Hurt.

What do MINBAR, TARDIS, Cardassian Expansion, BoRG, DS9, Tatooines, and ACBAR all have in common? They’re names of astronomical surveys and software created by astronomers who say that science fiction (SF) influenced their careers. Those names are just one indicator of widespread interest in SF in the science community. It’s not surprising considering how many scientists (and science writers) grew up with the genre.

August 25, 2022August 25, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Carbon Monoxide is Plentiful in Nebulae, but Then Disappears When Planets Form. Now we Know Where it Goes!

carbon monoxide in protoplanetary disk — ALMA image of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star HD 163296 as seen in dust. New studies show there may be carbon monoxide ice there. Courtesy NRAO.

Protoplanetary disks—those nurseries around young stars where planets form—are filled with gas and dust. In particular, many show a lot of carbon monoxide gas. It’s a handy “tracer” to estimate the mass of a cloud, its composition, and even its temperature. It’s also easy to observe. However, astronomers think there should be more of it than they’re observing in many disks. And that prompted a question: where’s the rest of it?

August 24, 2022August 24, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

New Horizons Could Still Have More Adventures Ahead

Currently exploring the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons is just one of five spacecraft to reach beyond 50 astronomical units, on its way out of the solar system and, eventually, into interstellar space. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute)

Remember New Horizons? That plucky little spacecraft that gave us our first up-close looks at Pluto and Arrokoth? Of course, we do! Well, it’s still out there, traveling deeper into the Kuiper Belt. Just because it finished its primary mission doesn’t mean we’re done with it yet.

August 23, 2022August 23, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Samples From Asteroid Ryugu Contain Bits That Came From Outside the Solar System

Asteroid Ryugu, as imaged by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The red dot marks the sampling location. Image Credit: JAXA/Hayabusa2

Long before our Sun began to form, stars were dying in our part of the galaxy. One of them exploded as a supernova. The catastrophe created minute grains of dust and the force of the explosion blasted through a nearby cloud of gas and dust. That action seeded the cloud with “alien” materials from the dead star. The shock wave from the supernova also caused the cloud to collapse in on itself to create the Sun. The “leftovers” of the cloud became the planets, moons, rings, comets, and asteroids of our solar system.

August 18, 2022August 18, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Would We Have Continents Without Asteroid Impacts?

Early Earth was a wild and wooly place. In its first billion years, during a period called the Archean, our planet was still hot from its formation. Essentially, the surface was lava for millions of years. Asteroids bombarded the planet, and the place was still recovering from the impact that formed the Moon. Oceans were beginning to form as the surface solidified and water outgassed from the rock. The earliest atmosphere was actually rock vapor, followed quickly by the growth of a largely hot carbon dioxide and water vapor blanket. Earth was just starting land masses that later became continents. For decades, geologists have asked: what started continental formation?

August 16, 2022December 16, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Satellites are Tracking Rivers of Garbage Flowing Across the Oceans

garbage patches in Earth's oceans — A a computational model of ocean currents called ECCO-2 that shows how garbage can be distributed across Earth's oceans. Courtesy NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

There’s an ocean of human-made garbage floating through Earth’s seas. From plastic straws to beverage bottles and food wrappers, the ocean waters are this planet’s fastest-growing junkyard. Some of the plastic gets ground into little beads called microplastics, and ends up in the food chain, with humans at the top. For that reason, and many others, the European Space Agency is tracking ocean-bound plastics through the auspices of the MARLISAT project. It’s one of 25 efforts created to identify and trace marine litter as it moves through the world’s waterways. The ultimate goal is to help countries reduce ocean litter, particularly plastics.

August 13, 2022August 13, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

In Wildly Different Environments, Stars End Up Roughly the Same

When you look at a region of the sky where stars are born, you see a cloud of gas and dust and a bunch of stars. It’s really a beautiful sight. In most places, the stars all end up being about the same mass. That mass is probably the most important factor you want to know about it. It directs how long the star will live and what its future will be like. But, what determines its mass and the mass of its siblings in a stellar nursery? Is there some governing force that tells them how massive they’ll be? It turns out that the stars do it for themselves.

August 11, 2022August 12, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Here’s a Sneak Preview of What It’ll Look Like When the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Collide

When big spiral galaxies collide, they don’t end up as one really big spiral. Instead, they create a humongous elliptical galaxy. That’s the fate awaiting the Andromeda Galaxy and our Milky Way. They’ll tangle in a galactic dance starting in a few billion years. Want to know what it’s going to look like when the action starts? The Gemini North telescope in Hawai’i just released a stunning image of two galaxies like ours tangling it up. These are NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 and their interaction provides a sneak peek at our galactic neighborhood in the distant future.

August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

It’s Been 10 Years Since Curiosity Landed on Mars, and the Rover is Still Going Strong

Curiosity on Mars — NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to take this 360-degree panorama of at the “Avanavero” drill site. The panorama is made up of 127 individual images taken on June 20, 2022, the 3,509th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, and stitched together back on Earth. The color has been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would perceive them on Earth. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

For a spacecraft that’s traveled millions of kilometers across space and driven on the surface of Mars, Curiosity is holding up pretty darned well. That’s the assessment from the operations team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This week they celebrated ten years of the rover’s exploration across one of the more forbidding terrains in the solar system.

August 8, 2022August 8, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Astronomers List 88 Distant Galaxies They Want to Look at With JWST. Some Are Less Than 200 Million Years Old.

SMACS cluster from JWST shows evidence of dark matter — The galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as seen by NIRCam on JWST. It's gravitational lensing properties (from its mass and from the mass of dark matter) are helping astronomers identify 88 distant galaxies in this field of view for further study. Courtesy NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Way back in the earliest ages of the universe, the first galaxies were born. Astronomers want to know more about them. They’re especially interested to know exactly when these distant galaxies formed and what their stars were like. Now that JWST is a working observatory, astronomers are excited to use its data to explore those early epochs. They’re eager to see the most distant objects, and—as seems likely—do a rejiggering of the cosmic timeline after the Big Bang.