Science Archives

October 16, 2019October 16, 2019 by Evan Gough

Some Quasars Shine With the Light of Over a Trillion Stars

This artist's concept shows the most distant supermassive black hole ever discovered. It is part of a quasar from just 690 million years after the Big Bang. Credit: Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science

Quasars are some of the brightest objects in the Universe. The brightest ones are so luminous they outshine a trillion stars. But why? And what does their brightness tell us about the galaxies that host them?

To try to answer that question, a group of astronomers took another look at 28 of the brightest and nearest quasars. But to understand their work, we have to back track a little, starting with supermassive black holes.

October 15, 2019October 15, 2019 by Evan Gough

Planet Sizes Matter for Habitability Too.

In order to be considered habitable, a planet needs to have liquid water. Cells, the smallest unit of life, need water to carry out their functions. For liquid water to exist, the temperature of the planet needs to be right. But how about the size of the planet?

Without sufficient mass a planet won’t have enough gravity to hold onto its water. A new study tries to understand how size affects the ability of a planet to hold onto its water, and as a result, its habitability.

October 10, 2019October 10, 2019 by Evan Gough

This is What Moondust Looks Like When You Remove All the Oxygen. A Pile of Metal

On the left side of this before and after image is a pile of simulated lunar soil, or regolith; on the right is the same pile after essentially all the oxygen has been extracted from it, leaving a mixture of metal alloys. Both the oxygen and metal could be used in future by settlers on the Moon. Image Credit: Beth Lomax - University of Glasgow

The Moon has abundant oxygen and minerals, things that are indispensable to any space-faring civilization. The problem is they’re locked up together in the regolith. Separating the two will provide a wealth of critical resources, but separating them is a knotty problem.

October 9, 2019October 9, 2019 by Evan Gough

Power Grids and Satellites Are More at Risk from Extreme Solar Storms Than We Thought

This visualization depicts what a coronal mass ejection might look like like as it interacts with the interplanetary medium and magnetic forces. Credit: NASA / Steele Hill

Exactly how dangerous are solar storms? Scientists think the Carrington Event was one of the most powerful ones to ever hit Earth. They also think that storms that powerful only happen every couple centuries or so. But a new study says we can expect more storms equally as strong, and more often.

October 2, 2019October 2, 2019 by Evan Gough

China’s Lander Successfully Grew Some Cotton Plants on the Moon. Fruit Flies and Potatoes Didn’t Fare So Well

A 3D reconstruction based on image processing and data analysis shows two cotton leaves grown in the Chang’e-4 lander on the far side of the moon. Image Credit: Chongqing University.

When China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft landed on the lunar far side on January 3rd 2019, it made history. It was the first spacecraft to visit that part of the Moon, and among its payload was a 2.6 kg (5.7 lb) mini-biosphere called the Lunar Micro Ecosystem (LME).

The sealed, cylindrical biosphere is only 18 cm (7.1 in) long and 16 cm (6.3 in) in diameter. The LME carried six lifeforms, kept in mostly Earth-like conditions except for micro-gravity and lunar radiation.

October 1, 2019October 1, 2019 by Evan Gough

A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is

Artist's illustration of the newfound gas-giant planet GJ 3512b, which circles a red dwarf star. (Image credit: Guillem Anglada-Escude—IEEC/Science-wave, using SpaceEngine.org (CC BY 4.0))

Thanks to the Kepler mission and other efforts to find exoplanets, we’ve learned a lot about the exoplanet population. We know that we’re likely to find super-Earths and Neptune-mass exoplanets orbiting low-mass stars, while larger planets are found around more massive stars. This lines up well with the core accretion theory of planetary formation.

But not all of our observations comply with that theory. The discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a small red dwarf means our understanding of planetary formation might not be as clear as we thought. A second theory of planetary formation, called the disk instability theory, might explain this surprising discovery.

September 27, 2019September 27, 2019 by Evan Gough

Mice That Spend a Month in Space Were Able to Reproduce Once They Got Back to Earth

The International Space Station (ISS), seen here with Earth as a backdrop. Credit: NASA

A team of Japanese researchers have used sperm from mice that spent time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to fertilize female mice back on Earth. While previous research has shown that freeze-dried mouse sperm stored in space can experience radiation damage, these results show that the sperm from live mice may not suffer the same damage.

September 23, 2019September 23, 2019 by Evan Gough

Planet Mars, From Pole to Pole

Mars from pole to pole as imaged by the Mars Express orbiter. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A new image from the ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter shows exactly how different regions in Mars are from one another. From the cloudy northern polar region all the way to the Helles Planitia down in the south, Mars is a puzzle of different terrain types. At the heart of it all is what’s known as the Martian dichotomy.

September 23, 2019September 23, 2019 by Evan Gough

Elliptical Galaxy Messier 110 Has a Surprising Core of Hot Blue Stars

A new Hubble image of M 110 shows that these dwarf elliptical galaxies do contain some blue, hot young stars and that they may harbour areas of star formation after all. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Ferrarese et al.

Messier 110 (NGC 205) is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy. It’s a dwarf elliptical galaxy, a common type of galaxy often found in galaxy clusters and groups, and it contains about 10 billion stars. Like all dwarf ellipticals, it doesn’t have the characteristic shape of galaxies like Andromeda or the Milky Way, with their vast, spiral arms. It has a smooth, featureless shape.

Dwarf ellipticals lack the blazing bright areas of active star formation that other galaxies display. In fact, astronomers think that they’re too old to have any young stars at all. But M110 appears to be different.

September 18, 2019September 18, 2019 by Evan Gough

Io’s Largest Volcano, Loki, Erupts Every 500 Days. Any Day Now, It’ll Erupt Again.

This picture from Voyager 1 shows the volcano Loki on Jupiter’s moon Io. When this picture was taken, the main eruptive activity came from the lower left of the dark linear feature (perhaps a rift) in the center. Below is the "lava lake," a U-shaped dark area about 200 kilometers across. Credit: NASA/JPL

Jupiter’s moon Io is in stark contrast to the other three Galilean moons. While Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa all appear to have subsurface oceans, Io is a volcanic world, covered with more than 400 active volcanoes. In fact, Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.

Io’s largest volcano is named Loki, after a God in Norse mythology. It’s the most active and most powerful volcano in the Solar System. Since 1979, we’ve known that it’s active and that it’s both continuous and variable. And since 2002, thanks to a research paper in the Geophysical Research Letters, we’ve known that it erupts regularly.