Matt Williams, Author at Universe Today

August 26, 2024August 26, 2024 by Matt Williams

JAXA Officially Wraps Up its SLIM Lander Mission

Illustration: SLIM lander on the moon — An artist's conception shows Japan's SLIM lander on the moon. Credit: ISAS/JAXA

On January 20th, 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) made history when its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made a soft landing on the Moon, becoming the first Japanese robotic mission to do so. This small-scale lander was designed to investigate the origins of the Moon and test technologies that are fundamental to exploring the low-gravity lunar environment. Unfortunately, mission controllers lost contact with the lander after April 28th, 2024, and have spent the last few months trying to reestablish communications.

August 24, 2024August 24, 2024 by Matt Williams

Chinese Researchers Devise New Strategy for Producing Water on the Moon

The strategy for in-situ water production on the Moon through the reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen. Credit: NIMTE)

In the coming years, China and Roscosmos plan to create the International Lunar Research PStation (ILRSP), a permanent base in the Moon’s southern polar region. Construction of the base will begin with the delivery of the first surface elements by 2030 and is expected to last until about 2040. This base will rival NASA’s Artemis Program, which will include the creation of the Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon and the various surface elements that make up the Artemis Base Camp. In addition to the cost of building these facilities, there are many considerable challenges that need to be addressed first.

Crews operating on the lunar surface for extended periods will require regular shipments of supplies. Unlike the International Space Station, which can be resupplied in a matter of hours, sending resupply spacecraft to the Moon will take about three days. As a result, NASA, China, and other space agencies are developing methods to harvest resources directly from the lunar environment – a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). In a recent paper, a research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced a new method for producing massive amounts of water through a reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen.

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 by Matt Williams

China Proposes Magnetic Launch System for Sending Resources Back to Earth

Distance Between the Earth and Moon — The Earth rising over the Moon's surface, as seen by the Apollo 8 mission. Credit: NASA

In his famous novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein describes a future lunar settlement where future lunar residents (“Loonies”) send payloads of wheat and water ice to Earth using an electromagnetic catapult. In this story, a group of Loonies conspire to take control of this catapult and threaten to “throw rocks at Earth” unless they recognize Luna as an independent world. Interestingly enough, scientists have explored this concept for decades as a means of transferring lunar resources to Earth someday.

Given that space agencies are planning on sending missions to the Moon to create permanent infrastructure, there is renewed interest in this concept. In a recent paper, a team of scientists from China’s Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering (SAST) detailed how a magnetic launcher on the lunar surface could provide a cost-effective means of sending resources back to Earth. This proposal could become part of China’s long-term vision for a lunar settlement known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) – a joint project they are pursuing with the Russian space agency (Roscosmos).

August 22, 2024August 22, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Study Proposes how a Black Hole in Orbit Around a Planet Could be a Sign of an Advanced Civilization.

Ray traced shadow of a spinning and charged black hole. Credit: Simon Tyran, CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1971, English mathematical physicist and Nobel-prize winner Roger Penrose proposed how energy could be extracted from a rotating black hole. He argued that this could be done by building a harness around the black hole’s accretion disk, where infalling matter is accelerated to close to the speed of light, triggering the release of energy in multiple wavelengths. Since then, multiple researchers have suggested that advanced civilizations could use this method (the Penrose Process) to power their civilization and that this represents a technosignature we should be on the lookout for.

Examples include John M. Smart’s Transcension Hypothesis, a proposed resolution to the Fermi Paradox where he suggested advanced intelligence may migrate to the region surrounding black holes to take advantage of the energy available. The latest comes from Harvard Professor Avi Loeb, who proposed in a recent paper how advanced civilizations could rely on a “Black Hole Moon” to provide their home planet with power indefinitely. The way this black hole would illuminate the planet it orbits, he argues, would constitute a potential technosignature for future SETI surveys.

August 21, 2024August 21, 2024 by Matt Williams

Debris from DART could Hit Earth and Mars Within a Decade

The asteroid Dimorphos was captured by NASA’s DART mission just two seconds before the spacecraft struck its surface on Sept. 26, 2022. Observations of the asteroid before and after impact suggest it is a loosely packed “rubble pile” object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

On Sept. 26th, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroids Redirect Test (DART) collided with Dimorphos, the small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. In so doing, the mission successfully demonstrated a proposed strategy for deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) – the kinetic impact method. By October 2026, the ESA’s Hera mission will rendezvous with the double-asteroid system and perform a detailed post-impact survey of Dimorphos to ensure that this method of planetary defense can be repeated in the future.

However, while the kinetic method could successfully deflect asteroids so they don’t threaten Earth, it could also create debris that might reach Earth and other celestial bodies. In a recent study, an international team of scientists explored how this impact test also presents an opportunity to observe how this debris could someday reach Earth and Mars as meteors. After conducting a series of dynamic simulations, they concluded that the asteroid ejecta could reach Mars and the Earth-Moon system within a decade.

August 14, 2024August 14, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Study Shows Mars Could be Terraformed Using Resources that are Already There

Artist's impression of the terraforming of Mars, from its current state to a livable world. Credit: Daein Ballard

The idea of terraforming Mars, making its atmosphere and environment more Earth-like for human settlement, goes back decades. During that time, many proposed methods have been considered and put aside as “too expensive” or requiring technology well in advance of what we have today. Nevertheless, the idea has persisted and is often considered a part of long-term plans for establishing a human presence on Mars. Given the many plans to establish human outposts on the Moon and then use that infrastructure to send missions to Mars, opportunities for terraforming may be closer than we think.

Unfortunately, any plans for terraforming Mars suffer from unresolved hurdles, not the least of which are the expense, distance, and the need for technologies that don’t currently exist. Triggering a greenhouse effect and warming the surface of Mars would take massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which would be very difficult and expensive to transport. However, a team of engineers and geophysicists led by the University of Chicago proposed a new method for terraforming Mars with nanoparticles. This method would take advantage of resources already present on the Martian surface and, according to their feasibility study, would be enough to start the terraforming process.

August 13, 2024August 13, 2024 by Matt Williams

NASA’s Says Goodbye to its Asteroid-Hunting NEOWISE Mission

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), launched in 2009, spent the next fourteen and half years studying the Universe in infrared wavelengths. During that time, it discovered thousands of minor planets, star clusters, and the first Brown Dwarf and Earth-Trojan asteroid. By 2013, the mission was reactivated by NASA as the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which was tasked with searching for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). For ten years, the NEOWISE mission faithfully cataloged comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth someday.

Unfortunately, NASA announced on July 1st that it would be decommissioning this planetary defense mission, which is expected to burn up in our atmosphere later this year. On Thursday, August 8th, the mission was decommissioned after the final command was sent from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and related to the spacecraft by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system. However, the scientific data NEOWISE collected during its ten years of operation will continue to inspire new discoveries!

August 11, 2024August 11, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Study Examines the Links Between Science Fiction and Astronomy

Dr. Kip Thorne made it clear that black is not the primary hue of Black Holes. His guidance offered to Nolan raised science fiction to a new level. Credit: Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros.

“Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.” This quote, attributed to Isaac Asimov, captures science’s intricate relationship with science fiction. And it is hardly a one-way relationship. Whereas science fiction is constantly evolving to reflect new scientific discoveries and theories, science itself has a long history of drawing inspiration from the works of visionary authors, filmmakers, and popular culture. And in some cases, where scientists themselves were the visionaries (like Asimov himself), you had an instance of both!

The relationship between the two was the subject of a recent study by Samuel Boissier, a researcher with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the director of research at the Laboratoire d’astrophysique de Marseille (LAM). In an age when misinformation, “deepfakes,” and deliberate attempts to obscure scientific truths are at an all-time high, examining the interconnection between science, art, and science fiction is very important. According to Boissier, doing so offers people in the scientific community a way to engage with the public in a way that is relatable and accessible.

August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Matt Williams

Scientists Develop a Novel Method for Detecting Supermassive Black Holes: Use Smaller Black Holes!

A simulation of two merging black holes. Credit: Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Project

In 1974, astronomers Bruce Balick and Robert L. Brown discovered a powerful radio source at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The source, Sagittarius A*, was subsequently revealed to be a supermassive black hole (SMBH) with a mass of over 4 million Suns. Since then, astronomers have determined that SMBHs reside at the center of all galaxies with highly active central regions known as active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or “quasars.” Despite all we’ve learned, the origin of these massive black holes remains one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy.

The most popular theories are that they may have formed when the Universe was still very young or have grown over time by consuming the matter around them (accretion) and through mergers with other black holes. In recent years, research has shown that when mergers between such massive objects occur, Gravitational Waves (GWs) are released. In a recent study, an international team of astrophysicists proposed a novel method for detecting pairs of SMBHs: analyzing gravitational waves generated by binaries of nearby small stellar black holes.

August 7, 2024August 9, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Study Suggests that Our Galaxy is Crowded or Empty. Both are Equally Terrifying!

Gaia's all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The colour representation is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the Galactic plane, the flattened disc that hosts most of the stars in our home Galaxy. In the middle of the image, the Galactic centre appears vivid and teeming with stars. More information on: http://sci.esa.int/gaia/60169-gaia-s-sky-in-colour/

Is there intelligent life in the Universe? And if so, just how common is it? Or perhaps the question should be, what are the odds that those engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) will encounter it someday? For decades, scientists have hotly debated this topic, and no shortage of ink has been spilled on the subject. From the many papers and studies that have been written on the subject, two main camps have emerged: those who believe life is common in our galaxy (aka. SETI Optimists) and those who maintain that extraterrestrial intelligence is either rare or non-existent (SETI Pessimists).

In a recent paper, David Kipping (Prof. “Cool Worlds” himself) and Geraint Lewis examined this debate more closely and offered a fresh take based on a form of probability analysis known as Jayne’s Experiment. By applying this method to astrobiology and the Drake Equation, they concluded that the existence of intelligent life in our galaxy may be an “all or nothing” proposition. To quote the late and great scientist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”