Mark Thompson, Author at Universe Today

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Iron Winds are Blowing on WASP-76 b

WASP-76 b has been the subject of numerous studies since its discovery in 2013. The temperature there reaches 2,400 degrees Celsius. © Tania Cunha (Planetário do Porto - Centro Ciência Viva/Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço)

Exoplanets have been discovered with a wide range of environmental conditions. WASP-76b is one of the most extreme with a dayside temperature of over 2,000 degrees. A team of researchers have found that it’s even more bizarre than first thought! It’s tidally locked to its host star so intense winds encircle the planet. They contain high quantities of iron atoms that stream from the lower to upper layers around the atmosphere.

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024 by Mark Thompson

NASA’s Putting its Solar Sail Through its Paces

Those of you following the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System may have heard that its booms and sail are now deployed. It is receiving light pressure from the Sun to propel it through the Solar System. Like a test pilot in a new aircraft, NASA are now testing out just how it handles. Before deployment, the spacecraft was slowly tumbling and now the controllers will see if they can get it under control and under sail power. The reflectivity of the sail means its an easy spot in the night sky, just fire up the NASA app to find out where to look.

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Explaining Different Kinds of Meteor Showers. It’s the Way the Comet Crumbles

The Universe often puts on a good show for us down here on Earth but one of the best spectacles must be a meteor shower. We see them when particles, usually the remains of comets, fall through our atmosphere and cause the atmosphere to glow. We see them as a fast moving streak of light but a new paper has suggested that the meteor showers we see can explain the sizes of the particles that originally formed the comet from where they came.

September 4, 2024September 4, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Simulating the Accretion Disk Around a Black Hole

Supercomputer simulations reveals the nature of turbulence in black hole accretion disks

Black holes are by their very nature, challenging to observe and difficult to spot. It’s usually observations of the accretion disk that reveal properties of the hidden black hole. There is often enough material within the accretion disk to make them shine so brightly that they can often be among the brightest objects in space. A wonderful image has been released which shows the highest resolution simulation of a black hole accretion disk ever created.

September 4, 2024September 4, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Europe is Sending a Drill to the Moon to Search for Water

ESA's Prospect package, including drill and a miniaturised laboratory, will fly to the Moon’s South Polar region in search of volatiles, including water ice, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

The Moon has been a source of interest of late largely due to the focus on getting humans back to the Moon. Future human explorers though will likely be there to stay in permanent lunar bases. Making this a reality means it is of vital importance to harvest materials from the Moon and water is just one of them. Recently, ESA Announced they have secured a ride to the Moon for their Prospect package in 2027. It consists of a drill and tiny laboratory that will hunt for water and other volatiles, paving the way for human exploration.

August 31, 2024August 31, 2024 by Mark Thompson

By Watching the Sun, Astronomers are Learning More about Exoplanets

Illustration of the Sun seen from Mercury

Watching the Olympics recently and the amazing effort of the hammer throwers was a wonderful demonstration of the radial velocity method that astronomers use to detect exoplanets. As the hammer spins around the athlete, their body and head bobs back and forth as the weight from the hammer tugs upon them. In the same way we can detect the wobble of a star from the gravity of planets in orbit. Local variations in the stars can add noise to the data but a team of researchers have been studying the Sun to help next-generation telescopes detect more Earth-like planets.

August 31, 2024August 31, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Estimating the Basic Settings of the Universe

This snapshot compares the distribution of galaxies in a simulated universe used to train SimBIG (right) to the galaxy distribution seen in the real universe (left). Bruno Régaldo-Saint Blancard/SimBIG collaboration

The Standard Model describes how the Universe has evolved at large scale. There are six numbers that define the model and a team of researchers have used them to build simulations of the Universe. The results of these simulations were then fed to a machine learning algorithm to train it before it was set the task of estimating five of the cosmological constants, a task which it completed with incredible precision.

August 30, 2024August 30, 2024 by Mark Thompson

If Gravitons Exist, this Experiment Might Find Them

It’s thought that gravity consists of minute quantum building blocks called gravitons, but so far they have been too elusive to observe. A new result from Pikovski’s Research Group now shows that next-generation quantum sensors can catch a single one.

There are four fundamental forces in the Universe; strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravity. Quantum theory explains three of the four through the interaction of particles but science has yet to discover a corresponding particle for gravity. Known as the ‘graviton’, the hypothetical gravity particle is thought to constitute gravitational waves but it hasn’t been detected in gravity wave detector. A new experiment hopes to change that using an acoustic resonator to identify individual gravitons and confirm their existence.

August 30, 2024August 30, 2024 by Mark Thompson

New Limits on Dark Matter

LZ’s central detector, the time projection chamber, in a surface lab clean room before delivery underground. Credit: Matthew Kapust/Sanford Underground Research Facility

As it’s name suggests, dark matter is dark! That means it’s largely invisible to us and only detectable through its interaction with gravity. One of the leading theories to explain the stuff that makes up the majority of the matter in the Universe are WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. They are just theories though and none have been detected. An exciting new experiment called LUX-ZEPLIN has just completed 280 days of collecting data but still, no WIMPs have been detected above 9 Gev/c2. There are plans though to narrow the search.

August 29, 2024August 29, 2024 by Mark Thompson

For Their Next Trick, Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Collapsing Stars

After the death of a massive, spinning star, a disk of material forms around the central black hole. As the material cools and falls into the black hole, new research suggests that detectable gravitational waves are created. Ore Gottlieb

The merging of black holes and neutron stars are among the most energetic events in the universe. Not only do they emit colossal amounts of energy, they can also be detected through gravitational waves. Observatories like LIGO/Virgo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) and KAGRA (The Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) have detected their gravitational waves but new gravitational wave observatories are now thought to be able to detect the collapse of a massive rapidly spinning star before it becomes a black hole. According to new research, collapsing stars within 50 million light years should be detectable.