Universe Today

July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Starliner Successfully Fires its Thrusters, Preparing to Return to Earth

Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule docked to the Harmony module’s forward port at the International Space Station on July 6, 2024. Photo credit: NASA

Being trapped in space sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Astronauts on board the International Space Station have on occasion, had their return delayed by weather or equipment malfunction. We find ourselves again, watching and waiting as two astronauts; Juni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stuck for months instead of their week long mission. The delays came as the Starliner system required fixes to be implemented. NASA successfully fired up 27 of its 28 thrusters in a hot-firing test and now, ground teams are preparing finally, to bring them home.

July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Uncover New Details in the Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Detected

Artist's depiction of a powerful gamma ray burst. Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Kornmesser

In October 2022, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected an extraordinarily powerful Gamma Ray Burst (GRB). It still stands as the Brightest Of All Time (BOAT), and astronomers have been curious about it ever since.

New research has uncovered more details in the burst. What do they tell us about these forceful explosions?

July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Predicting Solar Storms Before They Leave the Sun

Solar storms called coronal mass ejections erupt from the Sun. Scientists now think they can predict the speed of these storms. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

When giant solar storms hit Earth, they trigger beautiful auroral displays high in Earth’s atmosphere. There’s a dark side to this solar activity, though. The “space weather” it sets off also threatens our technology. The potential for damage is why we need highly accurate predictions of just when these storms will impact our planet’s magnetosphere.

July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

How to SUPPPPRESS Light From a Star That Is Ten Billion Times Brighter Than Its Habitable Exoplanet

This artist’s concept features one of multiple initial possible design options for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

Searching for Earth 2.0 has been an obsession of almost all exoplanet hunters since the discipline’s dawn a few decades ago. Since then, they’ve had plenty of technological breakthroughs help them in their quest, but so far, none of them have been capable of providing the clear-cut image needed to prove the existence of an exo-Earth. However, some of those technologies are undoubtedly getting closer, and one of the most interesting is utilizing a system called a multi-grated vector vortex coronagraph (mgVVC). Researchers funded by ESA think it may hold the optical properties to enable space-based telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) to finally capture the holy grail of exoplanet hunting – and it may be ready for prime time as early as next year.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Space Debris From Every Angle

Images from the "Fly-around Observation" on July 15 conducted by Astroscale's ADRAS-J demonstration satellite. The idea was to image this space debris. Courtesy Astroscale/JAXA.

Near-Earth space is an orbiting junkyard of space debris. Everything from old rocket parts and pieces of dead satellites to cameras and tools floats in orbit. None of it serves a useful function any longer, but it does threaten other spacecraft. In fact, some missions have been damaged by this orbital debris and the problem will get worse as we launch more missions to space.

So, it makes sense to remove the existing space junk, but how to do that? A company in Japan called Astroscale is working with the Japan Aerospace Agency (JAXA) to figure that out.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 by Mark Thompson

A Surprising Source of Oxygen in the Deep Sea

Manganese nodules from the seafloor are often rich in metals like manganese, iron, nickel, copper, and cobalt.

I have always found Mariana’s Trench fascinating, it’s like an alien world right on our doorstep. Any visitor to the oceans or seas of our planet will hopefully get to see fish flitting around and whilst they can survive in this alien underwater world they still need oxygen to survive. Breathing in oxygen is a familiar experience to us, we inflate our lungs and suck air into them to keep us topped up with life giving oxygen. Fish are different, they get their oxygen as water flows over their gills. Water is full of oxygen which at the surface comes from the atmosphere or plants. But deep down, thousands of meters beneath the surface, it is not so easy. Now a team of scientists think that potato-sized chunks of metal called nodules act like natural batteries, interacting with the water and putting oxygen into the deep water of the ocean.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 by Mark Thompson

When Earth Danced with Polar Moons

The origins of the Moon have been the cause of many a scientific debate over the years but more recently we seem to have settled on a consensus. That a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth billions of years ago, with the debris coalescing into the Moon. The newly formed Moon drifted slowly away from Earth over the following eons but a new study suggests some surprising nuances to the accepted model.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 by Evan Gough

No Merger Needed: A Rotating Ring of Gas Creates A Hyperluminous Galaxy

This is a distant Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxy named PJ0116-24. These galaxies experience rapid star formation that astronomers think is triggered by mergers. But this one suggests otherwise. Warm gas is shown in red and cold gas is shown in blue. Image Credit: PJ0116-24

Some galaxies experience rapid star formation hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the Milky Way. Astronomers think that mergers are behind these special galaxies, which were more abundant in the earlier Universe. But new results suggest no mergers are needed.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 by Evan Gough

Can Geoengineering Protect Earth’s Icesheets?

This image shows the change in Greenland ice thickness in just one year, 2015. Almost ten years have passed, Greenland is still melting, and our GHG emissions are still rising. Is it time to use geoengineering to stall the melting? Image Credit: ESA/Planetary Visions.

It’s time to take a thorough, more serious look at using geoengineering to protect the planet’s icesheets, according to a group of scientists who have released a new report examining the issue. Glacial geoengineering is an emerging field of study that holds some hope for Earth’s diminishing glaciers and ice sheets.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

Finally! Astronomers Find the Missing Link Between Stellar and Supermassive Black Holes

Image of a black hole candidate, and potential intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), within the globular cluster known as Omega Centauri. (Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle)

While black holes are known as the most destructive objects in the universe, their evolution is largely shrouded in mystery. This is because while astronomers are familiar with supermassive black holes that exist at the center of galaxies like our own and black holes whose masses are less than 100 times the size of our Sun, the notion of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) have largely eluded discovery. However, this might change with the recent discovery of a black hole candidate that could exist within the globular cluster, Omega Centauri, and holds the potential to be the “missing link” in scientists better understanding black hole evolution.