Universe Today

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

Exploring Lava Tubes on Other Worlds Will Need Rovers That Can Work Together

Artist's rendition of autonomous rovers using the breadcrumb style communication network within a lava tube. They are exploring and collecting data, which is then relayed back to the mother rover at the tube's entrance, which then relays the data to an orbiter or a blimp. (Credit: John Fowler/Wikimedia Commons, Mark Tarbell and Wolfgang Fink/University of Arizona)

Planetary exploration, specifically within our own Solar System, has provided a lifetime of scientific knowledge about the many worlds beyond Earth. However, this exploration, thus far, has primarily been limited to orbiters and landers/rovers designed for surface exploration of the celestial bodies they visit. But what if we could explore subsurface environments just as easily as we’ve been able to explore the surface, and could some of these subsurface dwellings not only shelter future astronauts, but host life, as well?

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

JWST Sees So Many Galaxies, and It's Just Getting Started

The first of COSMOS-Web NIRCam observations obtained on Jan. 5-6, 2023 cover six visits or pointings of the James Webb Space Telescope. This shows the total area observed as well as specific galaxies selected from the first data. Credit: COSMOS-Web/Kartaltepe, Casey, Franco, Larson, et al./RIT/UT Austin/IAP/CANDIDE

Hubble Space Telescope’s Deep Field revealed thousands of galaxies in a seemingly empty spot in the sky. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope has taken deep field observations to the next level with its COSMOS-Web survey, revealing 25,000 galaxies in just six pictures, the first from this new survey.

“It’s incredibly exciting to get the first data from the telescope for COSMOS-Web,” said principal investigator Jeyhan Kartaltepe, from the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Physics and Astronomy, in press release. “Everything worked beautifully and the data are even better than we expected. We’ve been working really hard to produce science quality images to use for our analysis and this is just a drop in the bucket of what’s to come.”

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Finding Life in the Solar System Means Crunching a Lot of Data. The Perfect Job for Machine Learning

There are plenty of places for life to hide. Even on our blue planet, where we know there is abundant life, it is sometimes difficult to predict all the different environments it might crop up in. Exploring worlds other than our own for life would make it exponentially more difficult to detect it because, realistically, we don’t really know what we’re looking for. But life will probably present itself with some sort of pattern. And there is one new technology that is exceptional at detecting patterns: machine learning. Researchers at the SETI Institute have started working on a machine-learning-based AI system that will do just that.

March 13, 2023May 7, 2023 by Alan Boyle

Don’t Panic Over the Risk of an Asteroid Smashup in 2046

NASA visualization of asteroid 2023 DW — A visualization from NASA's "Eyes on Asteroids" app shows asteroid 2023 DW's location in space. (Credit: NASA)

A newly discovered asteroid called 2023 DW has generated quite a buzz over the past week, due to an estimated 1-in-670 chance of impact on Valentine’s Day 2046. But despite a NASA advisory and the resulting scary headlines, there’s no need to put an asteroid doomsday on your day planner for that date.

The risk assessment doesn’t have as much to do with the probabilistic roll of the cosmic dice than it does with the uncertainty that’s associated with a limited set of astronomical observations. If the case of 2023 DW plays out the way all previous asteroid scares have gone over the course of nearly 20 years, further observations will reduce the risk to zero. (Update: After further observations, 2023 DW was removed from the list of potential impacts on March 20.)

The hubbub over a space rock that could be as wide as 165 feet (50 meters) highlights a couple of trends to watch for: We’re likely to get more of these asteroid alerts in the years to come, and NASA is likely to devote more attention to heading off potentially dangerous near-Earth objects, or NEOs.

March 13, 2023March 13, 2023 by Matt Williams

A Distant Galaxy Ate All of its Friends. Now It’s All Alone

Composite image of a lonely galaxy containing a supermassive black hole, two jets, and an X-ray hotspot, all surrounded by hot gas. Credit: NASA MSFC/SAO/Chandra

Over 13 billion years ago, the first galaxies in the Universe formed. They were elliptical, with intermediate black holes (IMBHs) at their centers surrounded by a halo of stars, gas, and dust. Over time, these galaxies evolved by flattening out into disks with a large bulge in the middle. They were then drawn together by mutual gravitational attraction to form galaxy clusters, massive collections that comprise the large-scale cosmic structure. This force of attraction also led to mergers, where galaxies and their central black holes came together to create larger spiral galaxies with central supermassive black holes (SMBHs).

This process of mergers and assimilation (and their role in galactic evolution) is still a mystery to astronomers today since much of it took place during the early Universe, which is still very difficult to observe with existing telescopes. Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the International Gemini Observatory, an international team of astronomers observed a lone distant galaxy that appears to have consumed all of its former companions. Their findings, which recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal, suggest galaxies in the early Universe grew faster than previously thought.

March 13, 2023March 13, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Researchers Build a Telescope with a Flat Lens

The picture of the Moon in the banner might not look all that spectacular, but it is absolutely astounding from a technical perspective. What makes it so unique is that it was taken via a telescope using a completely flat lens. This type of lens, called a metalens, has been around for a while, but a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) recently made the largest one ever. At eight cm in diameter, it was large enough to use in an actual telescope – and produce the above picture of the Moon, however, blurred it might be.

March 13, 2023March 13, 2023 by Matt Williams

A Human Migration to Space is NOT so Inevitable, says New Research

Artist's depiction of a pair of O'Neill cylinders. Credit: Rick Guidice/NASA Ames Research Center

“It is possible even with existing technology, if done in the most efficient ways. New methods are needed, but none goes beyond the range of present-day knowledge. The challenge is to bring the goal of space colonization into economic feasibility now, and the key is to treat the region beyond Earth not as a void but as a culture medium, rich in matter and energy. Then, in a time short enough to be useful, the exponential growth of colonies can reach the point at which the colonies can be of great benefit to the entire human race.”

-Gerard K. O’Neill, The Colonization of Space, 1974

During the 1960s and 70s, coinciding with the height of the Space Age, scientists pondered how human beings could one day live in space. Among the many benefits, the migration of humans and industry to other celestial bodies and orbiting habitats presented a possible solution to overpopulation and environmental degradation. As O’Neill suggested in his writings, the key was to make this migration an economically feasible venture. Given the renewed efforts to explore space that are now underway and the rise of commercial space (NewSpace), there is a growing sense that humanity’s migration to space is within reach – and even inevitable.

But to paraphrase famed British historian AJP Taylor, “nothing is inevitable until it happens.” In a new study, Cornell graduate researcher Morgan A. Irons and Norfolk Institute co-founder and executive director Lee G. Irons reviewed a century of scientific studies to develop the Pancosmorio (“World Limit”) theory. They concluded that specific life-sustaining conditions on Earth that are available nowhere else in the Solar System could be the very thing that inhibits our expansion into space. Without an Earth-like “self-restoring order, capacity, and organization,” they argue, space settlements would fail to be sustainable and collapse before long.

March 11, 2023March 11, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

Christiaan Huygens’ Telescope Lenses Tell Us He Was Nearsighted

A world-famous 17th-century astronomer credited with discovering Saturn’s moon Titan may have needed glasses, according to a recent paper in the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science.

In an era when telescope technology was less than a century old, and evolving rapidly through trial-and-error iterations, Christiaan Huygens was known for producing lenses of unparalleled quality. However, the telescopes he built with those lenses consistently underperformed. The cause, AIP researcher Alex Pietrow suggests, may have been myopia, or nearsightedness, which was a common condition in the Huygens family, though his case must have been mild enough not to notice.

March 11, 2023March 11, 2023 by Anton Pozdnyakov

China’s Giant Rocket, Dark Big Bang, Next Bright Comet

The official verdict on Artemis 1. Canadian kids discovered something NASA didn’t know. Was there a Dark Big Bang? The next bright comet for 2024.

March 10, 2023March 10, 2023 by Evan Gough

Water’s Epic Journey to Earth Began Before the Sun Formed

This artist’s impression shows the planet-forming disc around the star V883 Orionis. New research shows how water starts its journey in the gas cloud that forms the star, and eventually ends its journey on Earth. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

The origins of Earth’s water is a complicated mystery that scientists have been untangling for decades. Life is impossible without water, so the origin of Earth’s life-giving water is a foundational question. As the power of our telescopes grows, researchers have made meaningful headway on the question.

Previous research uncovered links between Earth’s water and the Solar System’s comets and icy planetesimals. But newer research follows the chain back even further in time to when the Sun itself had yet to form.