Matt Williams, Author at Universe Today

August 24, 2023August 24, 2023 by Matt Williams

One of Neptune's Dark Spots Finally Seen From Earth

This image shows Neptune observed with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Credit: ESO/P. Irwin et al.

There’s no getting around it: our Solar System’s gas giants all have big, conspicuous spots on their faces. These include Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn’s Great White Spot, Uranus’ Great Dark Spot, and Neptune’s Great Dark Spot. Far from blemishes or features that tarnish the planets’ natural beauty, these “spots” are caused by massive storms or other processes in the planets’ atmospheres. While they are extremely large by Earth standards, they are difficult to study by anything other than robotic probes that can get close to the planet.

Neptune’s Great Dark Spot was not discovered until NASA’s Voyager 2 probe flew past the planet in 1989 on its way to the edge of the Solar System. Decades later, scientists are still unsure how this storm originated or what mechanisms drive it today. Using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), a team of astronomers was able to observe the Great Dark Spot for the first time using a ground-based telescope. Their results provided the most detailed data on the spot to date and some interesting insights into the nature and origin of this mysterious feature.

August 23, 2023August 23, 2023 by Matt Williams

NASA is Helping to Develop a Mach 4 Passenger Jet

Concept illustration of a Boeing high-supersonic commercial passenger aircraft. Credit: Boeing

The concept of supersonic transport (SST) has been a part of the commercial flight and aerospace sector since the 1970s. But as the Concorde demonstrated, the technology’s commercial viability has always been hampered by various challenges. For starters, supersonic planes must limit their speed to about 965 km/h (600 mph) over land to prevent damage caused by their sonic booms. Given the potential for flying from New York City to London in about 3.5 hours, which otherwise takes about 8 hours on average, aerospace engineers hope to overcome this problem.

Since 2006, the NASA Commercial Supersonic Technology Project (CSTP) has been researching SST as part of its QueSST mission and the X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft to reduce sonic booms, thus removing a crucial barrier to commercial development. Recently, NASA investigated whether commercial supersonic jets could theoretically travel from one major city to another at speeds between Mach 2 and 4 – 2,470 to 4,940 km/h (1,535 to 3,045 mph) at sea level. These studies concluded that there are potential passenger markets along 50 established routes, which could revolutionize air travel.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 by Matt Williams

The Most Compelling Places to Search for Life Will Look Like “Anomalies”

Will it be possible someday for astrobiologists to search for life "as we don't know it"? Credit: NASA/Jenny Mottar

In the past two and a half years, two next-generation telescopes have been sent to space: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ESA’s Euclid Observatory. Before the decade is over, they will be joined by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx), and the ESA’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) and ARIEL telescopes. These observatories will rely on advanced optics and instruments to aid in the search and characterization of exoplanets with the ultimate goal of finding habitable planets.

Along with still operational missions, these observatories will gather massive volumes of high-resolution spectroscopic data. Sorting through this data will require cutting-edge machine-learning techniques to look for indications of life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures). In a recent paper, a team of scientists from the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida (UF-IFL) recommended that future surveys use machine learning to look for anomalies in the spectra, which could reveal unusual chemical signatures and unknown biosignatures.

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023 by Matt Williams

Russia's Luna 25 Lander Crashed Into the Moon

The Luna-25 mission lifting off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on Aug. 11th. Credit: Roscosmos/Reuters

On August 10th, 2023, Roscosmos’ Luna-25 mission launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome atop a Soyuz-2 rocket. This mission was the first lunar mission to launch from Russia since the 1970s and would be the first Russian lander to touch down in the South-Pole Aitken basin. This mission was part of Roscosmos’ partnership with China to develop an International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in the region by 2030. Unfortunately, Russia announced on Saturday, August 19th, that the lander spun out of control and crashed into the surface.

August 19, 2023August 20, 2023 by Matt Williams

Universe Today Interviews Author, Engineer & Technologist Les Johnson About the 8th Interstellar Symposium

The 8th Interstellar Symposium was held from July 10th to 13th at McGill University. Credit: Interstellar Research Group (IRG)

This summer, experts in fields ranging from astronomy and astrophysics to astrobiology, astrogeology, and cosmology all convened at the University of McGill for the 8th Interstellar Symposium: In Light of Other Suns. In partnership with McGill, this event was hosted by the Interstellar Research Group (IRG), the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and Breakthrough Initiatives. Between July 10th and 13th, students, press, and space enthusiasts attended presentations and outreach events that addressed the big questions on interstellar spaceflight exploration.

To learn more, Universe Today sat down with NASA technologist, author, and engineer Les Johnson who attended the event and hosted many of its panel discussions. This included the public outreach event “Interstellar Travel: Are We Ready?” where he and a panel of experts (including Alan Stern, AJ Link, Prof. Philip Lubin, Erika Nesvold, and Trevor Kjorlien) discussed the technological, social, and ethical dimensions of traveling nearby stars. He was also a featured guest for the Science Fiction Author Panel, where he was joined by fellow SF authors Karl Schroeder, Eric Choi, and Sylvain Neuvel.

August 18, 2023August 22, 2023 by Matt Williams

Want to Find UFOs? That's a Job for Machine Learning

UFO encounter video — Cockpit video shows an anomalous aerial encounter in 2015. Credit: U.S Navy Video

In 2017, humanity got its first glimpse of an interstellar object (ISO), known as 1I/’Oumuamua, which buzzed our planet on its way out of the Solar System. Speculation abound as to what this object could be because, based on the limited data collected, it was clear that it was like nothing astronomers had ever seen. A controversial suggestion was that it might have been an extraterrestrial probe (or a piece of a derelict spacecraft) passing through our system. Public fascination with the possibility of “alien visitors” was also bolstered in 2021 with the release of the UFO Report by the ODNI.

This move effectively made the study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) a scientific pursuit rather than a clandestine affair overseen by government agencies. With one eye on the skies and the other on orbital objects, scientists are proposing how recent advances in computing, AI, and instrumentation can be used to assist in the detection of possible “visitors.” This includes a recent study by a team from the University of Strathclyde that proposes how hyperspectral imaging paired with machine learning could lead to an advanced data pipeline for characterizing UAP.

August 17, 2023August 17, 2023 by Matt Williams

This Sure Looks Like the Movements of a Glacier Across Ancient Mars

HiRISE image showing rough terrain possibly shaped by ancient glaciers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

It is a scientific certainty that Mars was once a much different place, with a denser atmosphere, warmer temperatures, and where water once flowed. Evidence of this past is preserved in countless surface features, ranging from river channels and alluvial deposits to lakebeds. However, roughly 4 billion years ago, the planet began to change into what we see today, an extremely cold and desiccated environment. Between all that, it is possible Mars experienced glacial and interglacial periods, which is evidenced by images like the one taken by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shown above.

August 16, 2023August 16, 2023 by Matt Williams

You’re Looking at One of the Farthest Confirmed Galaxies Found by JWST

Scientists with the CEERS Collaboration have identified an object (Maisie’s galaxy) that may be one of the earliest and farthest galaxies ever observed. Credit: NASA/STScI/CEERS/TACC/S. Finkelstein/M. Bagley/Z. Levay.

One of the main objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to use its powerful optics and advanced instruments to observe the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These galaxies formed about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, coinciding with the end of what is known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages.” This epoch is inaccessible for conventional optical telescopes because the only sources of photons were largely associated with the relic radiation of the Big Bang – visible today as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – or were the result of the reionization of neutral hydrogen (visible today the 21 cm line).

Thanks to its advanced optics and infrared imaging capabilities, Webb has pushed the boundaries of how far astronomers and cosmologists can see. One of the most interesting finds was Maisie’s galaxy, which appeared to have existed roughly 390 million years after the Big Bang. According to a new study by the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) that recently appeared in Nature, these results have since been confirmed. This makes Maisie’s galaxy one of the farthest (and earliest) confirmed galaxies ever observed by human eyes.

August 15, 2023August 21, 2023 by Matt Williams

The 2nd Annual Penn State SETI Symposium and the Search for Technosignatures!

Artist's impression of a Dyson Sphere, an proposed alien megastructure that is the target of SETI surveys. Finding one of these qualifies in a "first contact" scenario. Credit: Breakthrough Listen / Danielle Futselaar

From June 18th to 22nd, the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center (PSETI) held the second annual Penn State SETI Symposium. The event saw experts from many fields and backgrounds gathering to discuss the enduring questions about SETI, the technical challenges of looking for technosignatures, its ethical and moral dimensions, and what some of the latest experiments have revealed. Some very interesting presentations examined what will be possible in the near future and the likelihood that we will find evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Among them, there were some very interesting presentations by Adam Frank, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester; Ph.D. student Matias Suazo, an astrophysicist and member of Project Haephestos at the University of Uppsala; and Nicholas Siegler, the Chief Technologist of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP). These presentations addressed ongoing issues in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), technosignatures, the role of oxygen in the evolution of complex life, and what motivations extraterrestrial civilizations (ETC) might have for creating noticeable signatures.

August 14, 2023August 14, 2023 by Matt Williams

New Muon g-2 Result Improves the Measurement by a Factor of 2

First results from the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab have strengthened evidence of new physics. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab

At the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (aka. Fermilab), an international team of scientists is conducting some of the most sensitive tests of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The experiment, known as Muon g-2, measures the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of muons, a fundamental particle that is negatively charged (like electrons) but over 200 times as massive. In a recent breakthrough, scientists at Fermilab made the world’s most precise measurement of the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment, improving the precision of their previous measurements by a factor of 2.