Posted on by John Williams

Dying Star Blows Surprising Spiral Bubble

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, astronomers found an unexpected spiral structure surrounding the red giant star R Sculptoris shown here in this visualization. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Sometimes what we can’t see is just as surprising as what lies directly in front of us. This especially holds true in a new finding from the astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/sumbillimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile. A surprising and strange spiral structure surrounding the old star R Sculptoris is likely being created by an unseen companion, say astronomers.

The team using ALMA, the most powerful millimeter/submillimeter telescope in the world, mapped the spiral structure in three-dimensions. The astronomers say this is the first time a spiral of material, with a surrounding shell, has been observed. They report their findings in the journal Nature this week.

“We’ve seen shells around this kind of star before,” says lead author Matthias Maercker of the European Southern Observatory and Argelander Institute for Astronomy, University of Bonn, Germany in a press release. “But this is the first time we’ve ever seen a spiral of material coming out from a star, together with a surrounding shell.”

Scientists, using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope found a similar spiral, but without a surrounding shell, while observing the star LL Pegasi. Unlike the new ALMA observations, however, the astronomers could not create a three-dimensional map of the structure. Hubble observations saw the dust while ALMA detected the molecular emission.

ALMA detects the warm glow of carbon monoxide molecules in the far infrared through the multimeter wavelengths allowing astronomers to map the gas emissions surrounding the star in high-resolution. The team believes the strangely shaped bubble of material was probably created by an invisible companion star orbiting the red giant.

As stars like our Sun reach the ends of their lives, they become red giants. Swollen and cool, the stars begin a short-lived helium burning phase. During this time, the stars slough off large amounts of their mass in a dense stellar wind forming an expanding glowing shell around the stellar core. The pulses occur about every 10,000 to 50,000 years and last just a few hundred years. New observations of R Sculptoris show a pulse event rocked the star about 1,800 years ago and lasted for about 200 years. Computer simulations following the evolution of a binary system fit the new ALMA observations, according to the astronomers.

“It’s a real challenge to describe theoretically all the observed details coming from ALMA,” says co-author Shazrene Mohamed, of Argelander Institute for Astronomy in Bonn, Germany and South African Astronomical Observatory. “But our computer models show that we really are on the right track. ALMA is giving us new insight into what’s happening in these stars and what might happen to the Sun in a few billion years from now.”

A wide field view of the red giant variable star R Sculptoris. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

R Sculptoris is considered by astronomers to be an asymptotic giant branch, or AGB, star. With masses between 0.8 and 8 solar masses, they are cool red giants with a tiny central core of carbon and oxygen surrounded by a burning shell of helium and hydrogen burning. Eventually, our Sun will evolve into an AGB star. The glowing shell is made up of gas and dust, material that will be used for making future stars with their retinue of planets and moons and even the building blocks of life.

“In the near future, observations of stars like R Sculptoris with ALMA will help us to understand how the elements we are made up of reached places like the Earth. They also give us a hint of what our own star’s far future might be like,” says Maercker.

This new video shows a series of slices through the data, each taken at a slightly different frequency. These reveal the shell around the star, appearing as a circular ring, that seems to gets bigger and then smaller, as well as a clear spiral structure in the inner material that it best seen about half-way through the video sequence.

Source: European Southern Observatory

Small image caption: What appears to be a thin spiral pattern winding away from a star is shown in this remarkable picture from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows one of the most perfect geometrical forms created in space. It captures the formation of an unusual pre-planetary nebula, known as IRAS 23166+1655, around the star LL Pegasi (also known as AFGL 3068) in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse). Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Dragon Successfully Captured and Berthed at Space Station

Dragon captured by the ISS’s CanadArm2. Via NASA TV.

Running ahead of time, the International Space Station Expedition 33 crew successfully captured and installed the SpaceX Dragon capsule onto the Earth-facing port of the ISS’s Harmony module. Commander Suni Williams and astronaut Akihiko Hoshide captured the commercial spacecraft with the station’s CanadArm2 robotic arm at 6:56 a.m. EDT, and Dragon was officially berthed at 9:03 am EDT.

“Looks like we’ve tamed the Dragon,” radioed Williams. “We’re happy she’s on board with us. Thanks to everybody at SpaceX and NASA for bringing her here to us. And the ice cream.”

“This is a big moment in the course of this mission and for commercial spaceflight,” said SpaceX CEO and Chief Technical Officer Elon Musk. “We are pleased that Dragon is now ready to deliver its cargo to the International Space Station.”

The hatch will be opened tomorrow was opened earlier than expected, today at 1:40 pm EDT and Dragon will be unloaded over the next several days. Later, they will be re-packing it full of items that will be coming back to Earth, as this spacecraft has the ability to return intact, instead of burning up in the atmosphere like the other resupply ships that come to the station. Dragon will spend 18 days attached to the ISS.

More images below.

The Dragon capsule berthed to the ISS’s Harmony node. Credit: NASA/SpaceX

Dragon approaches the ISS. Via NASA TV.

Dragon is carrying nearly 400 kg (882 pounds) of supplies to the orbiting laboratory, including 117 kg (260 pounds) of crew supplies, 176 kg (390 pounds) of scientific research, 102 kg (225 pounds) of hardware and several kg/pounds of other supplies, such as food, water and Space Station parts. There are also 23 student experiments from the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) involving 7,420 pre-college students engaged in formal microgravity experiment design, according to SSEP director Dr. Jeff Goldstein.

The special treat that Williams mentioned is on board a new freezer called GLACIER (General Laboratory Active Cryogenic ISS Experiment Refrigerator): Blue Bell ice cream, a brand that is a favorite of astronauts training at the Johnson Space Center. The freezer will hold experiments that need to be returned to Earth for further examination.

Dragon will return a total of 758 kg (1,673 pounds), including 74 kg (163 pounds) of crew supplies, 392 kg (866 pounds) of scientific research, and 235 kg (518 pounds) of vehicle hardware and other hardware.

The Dragon capsule hovers near the International Space Station. Via NASA TV

A close-up view of the CanadArm2’s end effector grabbing the Dragon capsule. Via NASA TV

Dragon in the “Ready To Latch” (RTL) position. Via NASA TV.

A NASA graphic showing the position of the Dragon capsule on the ISS. Via NASA TV.

Posted on by Evan Gough

Book Review: The Half-Life of Facts; why everything we know has an expiration date

Review by Evan Gough

Knowledge is changing all the time. New facts replace old facts, more precise measurements supersede previous measurements. What was once considered true is overturned daily in our quickly changing times. In “The Half-Life of Facts: why everything we know has an expiration date,” Samuel Arbesman brings some clarity to our constantly changing factual landscape.

It turns out that facts have a shelf-life, and that there is a mathematical predictability to that shelf-life. With an engaging style of storytelling, and just the right amount of graphs and tables, Arbesman walks us through the field of scientometrics, the scientific study of science itself. What do we learn?

We learn that scientific studies themselves have half-lives. For example, the half-life of a study on hepatitis and cirrhosis, both liver diseases, is about 45 years. After 45 years, half of that knowledge will be overturned or superseded. We also learn that differing sciences have different half-lives. The half-life of a physics paper is on average 13.07 years, in Math it’s 9.17 years, and in Psychology it’s 7.15.

“The Half-Life of Facts” is full of familiar examples of, and insights into, our changing knowledge. Universe Today readers will be familiar with the demotion of Pluto from planet to trans-Neptunian object. Other examples in Arbesman’s book will be unfamiliar. For instance, it may be surprising to find out that for many decades it was an established fact that humans had 48 chromosomes. (We have 46.) This was considered such an elementary truth, that other researchers who counted 46 sometimes shut down their research prematurely, thinking they were somehow in error. Eventually, however, the truth did win out.

How science gets us closer to the truth over time is the main thrust of this book. That, and the predictability of that progress towards greater accuracy. But there are chapters that cover how facts spread, how new knowledge is hidden in connections between previously published studies, and how improvements in technology can spur science on to more accurate truths.

Overall, “The Half-Life of Facts” is an engaging book. It moves along at a nice pace, and I think Universe Today readers will find it very interesting. My only beef with the book is its title. It’s about much more than the half-life of facts. It’s a vivid account of the surprising ways in which new facts are accumulated, and how old knowledge is overturned.

Find out more about this book and the author at this website.

Posted on by John Williams

Monster Black Holes Lurk at the Edge of Time

The reddish object in this infrared image is ULASJ1234+0907, located about 11 billion light-years from Earth. The red color comes from vast amounts of dust, which absorbs bluer light, and obscures the supermassive black hole from view in visible wavelengths. Credit: image created using data from UKIDSS and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) observatory.

As if staring toward the edge of the Universe weren’t fascinating enough, scientists at the University of Cambridge say they see enormous, rapidly growing supermassive black holes barely detectable near the edge of time.

Thick dust shrouds the monster black holes but they emit vast amounts of radiation through violent interactions and collisions with their host galaxies making them visible in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The team published their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The most remote object in the study lies at a whopping 11 billion light-years from Earth. Ancient light from the supermassive black hole, named ULASJ1234+0907 and located toward the constellation of Virgo, the Maiden, has traveled (at almost 10 trillion kilometers, or 6 million million miles, per year) across the cosmos for nearly the estimated age of the Universe. The monster black hole is more than 10 billion times the mass of our Sun and 10,000 times more massive than the black hole embedded in the Milky Way Galaxy; making it one of the most massive black holes ever seen. And it’s not alone. Researchers say that there may be as many as 400 giants black holes in the tiny sliver of the Universe that we can observe.

“These results could have a significant impact on studies of supermassive black holes” said Dr Manda Banerji, lead author of the paper, in a press release. “Most black holes of this kind are seen through the matter they drag in. As the neighbouring material spirals in towards the black holes, it heats up. Astronomers are able to see this radiation and observe these systems.”

The team from Cambridge used infrared surveys being carried out on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) to peer through the dust and locate the giant black holes for the first time.

“These results are particularly exciting because they show that our new infrared surveys are finding super massive black holes that are invisible in optical surveys,” says Richard McMahon, co-author of the study. “These new quasars are important because we may be catching them as they are being fed through collisions with other galaxies. Observations with the new Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile will allow us to directly test this picture by detecting the microwave frequency radiation emitted by the vast amounts of gas in the colliding galaxies.”

Huge black holes are known to reside at the centers of all galaxies. Astronomers predict the most massive of these cosmic phenomena grow through violent collisions with other galaxies. Galactic interactions trigger star formation which provides more fuel for black holes to devour. And it’s during this process that thick layers of dust hide the munching black holes.

“Although these black holes have been studied for some time,” says Banergi, “the new results indicate that some of the most massive ones may have so far been hidden from our view. The newly discovered black holes, devouring the equivalent of several hundred Suns every year, will shed light on the physical processes governing the growth of all supermassive black holes.”

Astronomers compare the extreme case of ULASJ1234+0907 with the relatively nearby and well-studied Markarian 231. Markarian 231, found just 600 million light-years away, appears to have recently undergone a violent collision with another galaxy producing an example of a dusty, growing black hole in the local Universe. By contrast, the more extreme example of ULASJ1234+0907, shows scientists that conditions in the early Universe were more turbulent and inhospitable than today.

Source: Royal Astronomical Society

Image Credit: Markarian 231, an example of a galaxy with a dusty rapidly growing supermassive black hole located 600 million light years from Earth. The bright source at the center of the galaxy marks the black hole while rings of gas and dust can be seen around it as well as “tidal tails” left over from a recent impact with another galaxy. Courtesy of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Shiny Object on Mars Update: Likely ‘Benign’ Plastic

Curiosity sol 62 ChemCam image detail. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Image processing courtesy 2di7 & titanio44 on Flickr.

Lost earring? Cigarette butt? Those were just a couple of ideas tossed around loosely by the public about what this unusual object could be, found laying near the Mars Curiosity rover. The rover team is still looking closely at the shiny object, seen in images of the sandy regolith near the rover, and they issued a report today saying their initial assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, and not Martian material. It appears to be a shred of plastic material, “likely benign,” they said, but it has not been definitively identified.

A loose piece of plastic or insulating tape may have jarred free during the rover’s shaking of the sample of Martian regolith it recently scooped up.

The team will proceed cautiously and will spend another day investigating new images before deciding whether to resume processing of the sample in the scoop. Plans include imaging of surroundings with the Mastcam, and perhaps looking at the rover itself, too, for any chips or loose parts.

One of the rover drivers, Scott Maxwell said on Twitter that the entire team was working hard to figure that out what could have possibly come loose from the rover and they are “crawling over rover model, tracking down testing records, etc. We simply don’t know yet.”

A sample of sand and dust scooped up on Sol 61 remains in the scoop, and plan to transfer it from the scoop into other chambers of the sample-processing device were postponed as a precaution during planning for Sol 62 after the small, bright object was detected.

Curiosity sol 62 ChemCam view of the bright object on the ground. Image: NASA/JPL -Caltech. Anaglyph processing courtesy 2di7 & titanio44 on Flickr.

The shaking being done by the rover is to clean it of any residual oils that may be left inside, which could skew any results from the two onboard chemical labs, known as Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), and the Chemical and Mineralogy experiment (CheMin.)

Daniel Limonadi, the Lead Systems Engineer for Curiosity’s Surface Sampling and science systems told reporters last week that the cleansing was required even though the hardware is “super-squeaky-clean when it’s delivered and assembled. By virtue of its just being on Earth, you get a kind of residual oily film that is impossible to avoid,” he said.

Once the soil has been shaken and stirred through the chambers, it’ll be ejected from the mechanism and ‘poop’ it back onto the Martian surface. “We effectively use it to rinse out our mouth three times and then kind of spit out,” Limonadi said.

The images here were sent in by Universe Today reader Elisabetta Bonora who zoomed in and created 3-D views of the images of the shiny piece. See more here.

Interesting to note, closeup views reveal more spherical “blueberries” similar to what the Opportunity rover found at its landing site in Meridiani Planum and at its current location near Endeavour Crater, too.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Searching for Life on Mars

Today, Mars is a barren desert. But millions of years ago could our planetary neighbor have been much more Earth-like – covered with rivers, oceans, and even life? A new video series called EPIPHANY, Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, NASA’s Deputy Project Scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory shares how the Mars Curiosity rover is going to shed new light on the ancient history of Mars and whether life could have ever existed there. While Curiosity is not equipped to look for life itself, it will look for “the ingredients of life,” the essential molecules and elements that go into living things. Already, at just 50 sols into the mission, the rover has found an ancient streambed and as Project Scientist John Grotzinger said, “We have already found our first potentially habitable environment.”

Continue reading “Searching for Life on Mars”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, Explained

This hot-off-the-press video from the science-explainer folks at Sixty Symbols does a great job of detailing the science of the work by Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland, which won them 2012 Nobel Prize in physics today. Their experiments on quantum particles have already resulted in ultra-precise clocks and may one day help lead to computers that can work faster than those in use today.

The video also shows how expectations were that the prize might go to the teams at the Large Hadron Collier for the discovery of what they called a “Higgs-like boson” — a particle that resembles the long sought-after Higgs.
Continue reading “The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, Explained”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Live: Felix Baumgartner’s Record Breaking Jump Attempt

UPDATE: The launch/jump attempt for Felix Baumgartner and the Red Bull Stratos mission on October 9 has been aborted due to winds at the launch site in Roswell, New Mexico. At first, there was a 5 hour weather delay, then a radio system malfunction which was fixed, and then the winds became too high. Winds have to relatively benign for the huge balloon to take off. The balloon used for this mission is three times larger than any other human balloon flight.

Felix Baumgartner will leap from nearly 37 km (23 miles, 120,000 feet), attempting to not only break the sound barrier with his body, but also break the record for the longest freefall

We’ll provide updates and post the live video feed for future attempts. The weather for the rest of the week remains “iffy,” however.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Last Night’s View: Skies Filled with Stunning Aurora

The Aurora Borealis fills nearly the entire sky in Cleary Summit, Alaska. Credit: Jason Ahrns on Flickr.

With just a glancing blow from a coronal mass ejection (CME) this week, skywatchers in the northern latitudes have been enjoying some beautiful views of the Aurora Borealis. Here are a few stunning views from last night (October 8-9, 2012), including this jaw-dropping aurora that filled the entire sky for Jason Ahrns in Cleary Summit, Alaska. “This lens has a near-180 degree field of view from corner to corner – this swirl covered the entire sky, and put off enough light to read the focus indicator on my lens,” Jason wrote on Flickr.

See more below:

This view is from Kilmany, Scotland. “You could see the rays moving left – so stunning,” said photographer Corinne Mills.

This view came from the AuroraMAX camera in Yellowknife, NWT taken at 00:53 MDT on October 9, 2012. Credit: AuroraMAX.

“I’ve been tracking aurora activity all day and it peaked again tonight,” writes photographer Gareth Paxton on Flickr. “There was a substantial glow in the sky – this was taken from Linlithgow (Scotland).”

Northern lights over Ottawa, Canada. Credit: FailedProtostar on Flickr.

Stunning view from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Credit: Colin Chatfield.

Another beauty by Jason Arhns in Alaska, which he calls a “ghost flame.” Credit: Jason Arhns

Green aurora over Ulverston, Cumbria, UK. Credit: Raymond Gilchrist on Flickr.

Posted on by Jason Major

Curiosity Finds…SOMETHING…on Martian Surface

While scooping its first samples of Martian soil, NASA’s Curiosity rover captured the image above, which shows what seems to be a small, seemingly metallic sliver or chip of… something… resting on the ground. Is it a piece of the rover? Or some other discarded fleck of the MSL descent mechanisms? Or perhaps an exotic Martian pebble of some sort? Nobody knows for sure yet, but needless to say the soil samples have taken a back seat to this new finding for the time being.

See a ChemCam image of the object below.

ChemCam shot of a recently spotted unknown object on Mars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The ChemCam image, although monochrome, reveals some interesting and curiously organic-looking edges on the object… although it could be a bit of something that came loose from the rover itself. Perhaps a bit of plastic wrap or tape from a cable? Or a flake of metal from the back shell?

Or, as MSNBC’s Alan Boyle jokingly (?) suggested, another piece of “Martian macaroni”?

The MSL mission page states:

Curiosity’s first scooping activity appeared to go well on Oct. 7. Subsequently, the rover team decided to refrain from using the rover’s robotic arm on Oct. 8 due to the detection of a bright object on the ground that might be a piece from the rover. Instead of arm activities during the 62nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, Curiosity is acquiring additional imaging of the object to aid the team in identifying the object and assessing possible impact, if any, to sampling activities.

Stay tuned for more info on this intriguing news as it’s available!

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

P.S. Of course, the now-famous “Sarcastic Rover” had something to say about it on Twitter: