Astronomy Archives

November 2, 2021November 2, 2021 by Matt Williams

Could our Universe be Someone’s Chemistry Project?

This is a rendering of gas velocity in a massive galaxy cluster in IllustrisTNG. Black areas are hardly moving, and white areas are moving at greater than 1000km/second. The black areas are calm cosmic filaments, the white areas are near super-massive black holes (SMBHs). The SMBHs are blowing away the gas and preventing star formation. Image: IllustrisTNG

It is a pivotal time for astrophysicists, cosmologists, and philosophers alike. In the coming years, next-generation space and ground-based telescopes will come online that will use cutting-edge technology and machine learning to probe the deepest depths of the cosmos. What they find there, with any luck, will allow scientists to address some of the most enduring questions about the origins of life and the Universe itself.

Alas, one question that we may never be able to answer is the most pressing of all: if the Universe was conceived in a Big Bang, what was here before that? According to a new op-ed by Prof. Abraham Loeb (which recently appeared in Scientific American), the answer may be stranger than even the most “exotic” explanations. As he argued, the cosmos as we know it may be a “baby Universe” that was created by an advanced technological civilization in a lab!

November 1, 2021November 5, 2021 by Evan Gough

Scientists Simulate the Climate of Arrakis. It Turns Out Dune is a Pretty Realistic Exoplanet

Is the planet Arrakis realistic? Image Credit: By The Central Intelligence Agency - The World Factbook - Algeria, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29196928

Science fiction author Frank Herbert is renowned for the richly-detailed worlds he created. None of his work is more well-known than “Dune,” which took him six years to complete. Like his other work, Dune is full of detail, including the description of planet Dune, or as the Fremen call it, Arrakis.

Dune is an unforgiving desert world that suffers powerful dust storms and has no rainfall. Scientists who specialize in modelling climates set out to see how realistic Dune is compared to exoplanets. Their conclusion?

Frank Herbert did a great job, considering he created Dune in the 1960s.

October 31, 2021October 31, 2021 by Matt Williams

Blue Origin Announces the “Orbital Reef,” the Space Station they Plan to Build in Orbit

The core module of Orbital Reef. Credit: Orbital Reef

Blue Origin has certainly stepped up its game of late! After stepping down as the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has made it his personal mission to take the company he founded in 2000 and turn it into a powerhouse of the commercial space sector. Between some high-profile missions involving the New Shepard – which included passengers like Wally Funk, William Shatner, and even himself and his brother – Bezos has also been outspoken about his long-term vision.

Bezos describes this vision as “building a road to space so our children can build the future.” In the latest step towards achieving this, Blue Origin announced a new partnership with Sierra Space to develop a commercial space station in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), known as “Orbital Reef.” This mixed-use space station, which is to be completed by the end of this decade, will facilitate commerce, research, tourism, and facilitate the commercialization of LEO.

October 30, 2021October 30, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Artemis 1 is Launching in February

It’s been a long time coming, but NASA’s next moon rocket is just months from liftoff on its first uncrewed test flight. The Space Launch System (SLS) is a super heavy-lift vehicle capable of delivering 95 tons to Low Earth Orbit, but its primary purpose will be to deliver humans to lunar orbit and, eventually, to the lunar surface. SLS has been in development since 2011, and it’s faced a series of delays, but launch day is finally within sight. Earlier this month, the rocket was fully stacked for the first time in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, and the Orion capsule (the spacecraft’s crew cabin) was attached to the top. The full stack stands an impressive 322 feet tall, just shy of the Saturn V’s 363 feet.

October 29, 2021October 29, 2021 by Evan Gough

Quick Action Let Hubble Watch the Earliest Stages of an Unfolding Supernova Detonation

Astronomers recently witnessed supernova SN 2020fqv explode inside the interacting Butterfly galaxies, located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Researchers quickly trained NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on the aftermath. Along with other space- and ground-based telescopes, Hubble delivered a ringside seat to the first moments of the ill-fated star's demise, giving a comprehensive view of a supernova in the very earliest stage of exploding. Hubble probed the material very close to the supernova that was ejected by the star in the last year of its life. These observations allowed researchers to understand what was happening to the star just before it died, and may provide astronomers with an early warning system for other stars on the brink of death. Credits: NASA, ESA, Ryan Foley (UC Santa Cruz); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

If it weren’t for supernova remnants we wouldn’t have much knowledge of supernovae themselves. If a supernova explosion is the end of a star’s life, then we can also thank forensic astrophysics for much of our knowledge. The massive exploding stars leave behind brilliant and mesmerizing evidence of their catastrophic ends, and much of what we know about supernovae comes from studying the remnants rather than the explosions themselves. Supernova remnants like the Crab Nebula and SN 1604 (Kepler’s Supernova) are some of our most-studied objects.

Observing an active supernova in the grip of its own destruction can be difficult. But it looks like the Hubble Space Telescope is up to the task.

October 29, 2021October 29, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

The Sun Blasted Out a Huge Flare and CME; We Could See Auroras on Halloween

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare — as seen in the bright flash at the Sun’s lower center — on Oct. 28, 2021. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized here in teal. Credit: NASA/SDO

Auroral fireworks for Halloween? It just might happen, depending on where you live.

October 28, 2021October 28, 2021 by David Dickinson

Proposed Centaur Mission Could Catch Comets in the Act of Formation

A recent plan would send a Centaur mission to Jupiter’s orbit and follow a comet through formation.

From Mercury to the depths of the distant Kuiper Belt, there aren’t many unexplored corners of the solar system out there. One class of object, however, remains to be visited: the transitional Centaurs out beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Now, a new study out from the the University of Chicago recently accepted in The Planetary Science Journal looks at the feasibility of sending a mission by mid-century to intercept, follow and watch a Centaur asteroid as it evolves into a mature inner solar system comet.

October 27, 2021October 27, 2021 by Evan Gough

This is How You Get Moons. An Earth-Sized World Just got Pummeled by Something Huge.

An MIT-led team has discovered evidence of a giant impact in the nearby HD 17255 star system, in which an Earth-sized terrestrial planet and a smaller impactor likely collided at least 200,000 years ago, stripping off part of one planet’s atmosphere. Credits:Image: Mark A. Garlick

Titanic collisions are the norm in young solar systems. Earth’s Moon was the result of one of those collisions when the protoplanet Theia collided with Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. The collision, or series of collisions, created a swirling mass of ejecta that eventually coalesced into the Moon. It’s called the Giant Impact Hypothesis.

Astronomers think that collisions of this sort are a common part of planet formation in young solar systems, where things haven’t settled down into predictability. But seeing any of these collisions around other stars has proved difficult.

October 25, 2021October 25, 2021 by Matt Williams

A new Climate Model Suggests That Venus Never had Oceans

Observations suggest Venus may have had water oceans in its distant past. A land-ocean pattern like that above was used in a climate model to show how storm clouds could have shielded ancient Venus from strong sunlight and made the planet habitable. Credits: NASA

Thanks to evidence provided by missions like NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, scientists have theorized that Venus likely experienced a catastrophic resurfacing event about 500 million years ago (give or take 200 Mya). This is believed to be the reason why Venus is such a hellish place today, with an atmosphere that is 92 times as dense as Earth’s, predominantly composed of carbon dioxide (CO₂), and temperatures hot enough to melt lead.

The question of what Venus was like before this event took place – particularly, whether or not it had oceans – has been the subject of debate ever since. While many believe that Venus’s surface was covered in large bodies of water, a recent study has contradicted this claim. Using a state-of-the-art climate model, a team of French researchers has developed an alternative scenario of how Venus evolved to become what it is today.

October 22, 2021October 22, 2021 by Evan Gough

The Early Solar System Had a Gap Where the Asteroid Belt is Today

An MIT study suggests that a mysterious gap existed within the solar system’s protoplanetary disk around 4.567 billion years ago, and likely shaped the composition of the solar system’s planets. This image shows an artist’s interpretation of a protoplanetary disk. Image Credit: National Science Foundation, A. Khan

Wind the cosmic clock back a few billion years and our Solar System looked much different than it does today. About 4.5 billion years ago, the young Sun shone much like it does now, though it was a little smaller. Instead of being surrounded by planets, it was ensconced in a swirling disk of gas and dust. That disk is called a protoplanetary disk and it’s where the planets eventually formed.

There was a conspicuous gap in the early Solar System’s protoplanetary disk, between where Mars and Jupiter are now, and where the modern-day asteroid belt sits. What exactly caused the gap is a mystery, but astronomers think it’s a sign of the processes that governed planet formation.