Space and astronomy news
New Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS may put on a show at the end of next year.
Could this one be the next great comet? Though caution is always warranted when it comes to icy interlopers from the Oort Cloud, a recent discovery has given us pause, and a reason to take notice. We’re talking about the recent discovery of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, just announced last week.
Continue reading “2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS: a Bright Comet for the End of 2024?”
Can low-mass stars play host to giant, Jupiter-sized planets? Theories of planet formation suggest that it’s highly unlikely. But a team of scientists in the UK found that it’s possible, though rare.
Continue reading “TESS Shows That Even Small Stars Can Host Giant Planets”
In the 1930s, astrophysicists theorized that at the end of their life cycle, particularly massive stars would collapse, leaving behind remnants of infinite mass and density. As a proposed resolution to Einstein’s field equations (for his Theory of General Relativity), these objects came to be known as “black holes” because nothing (even light) could escape them. By the 1960s, astronomers began to infer the existence of these objects based on the observable effects they have on neighboring objects and their surrounding environment.
Despite improvements in instruments and interferometry (which led to the first images of M87 and Sagittarius A*), the study of black holes still relies on indirect methods. In a recent study, a team of Japanese researchers identified an unusual cloud of gas that appears to have been elongated by a massive, compact object that it orbits. Since there are no massive stars in its vicinity, they theorize that the cloud (nicknamed the “Tadpole” because of its shape) orbits a black hole roughly 27,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
Continue reading “A Tadpole-Shaped Cloud of Gas is Whirling Around a Black Hole”
Black holes and neutron stars are among the odder denizens of the cosmic zoo. They’re both dense collections of matter and, except for supermassive black holes, are the end states of massive stars. Fundamentally, they’re two different types of objects that are detectable via the activity in the accretion disks that form around them. Astronomers recently observed an object that acted like a black hole but turned out to be a neutron star. The clues lay in the accretion disk surrounding it.
Continue reading “The Neutron Star That Thinks It’s a Black Hole”
Mars is a long way from Earth, making it challenging to communicate with. That difficult communication is becoming ever more important as we launch more and more craft to the Red Planet. It will become absolutely critical when we send actual people there. So what can be done to increase the speed of communications between our solar system’s blue and red planets? A paper from researchers primarily based in Spain looks at different networking topologies that could help solve some of the communication problems.
Continue reading “Are There Better Ways to Communicate with Mars?”
A Japanese company has put out the call for passengers who’d be willing to pay more than $175,000 for an hours-long ride in a balloon-borne capsule that will rise as high as 15 miles (25 kilometers).
Technically, that’s nowhere near the boundary of outer space, but it’s high enough to get an astronaut’s-eye view of the curving Earth beneath a black sky.
“It’s safe, economical and gentle for people,” the CEO of a startup called Iwaya Giken, Keisuke Iwaya, told reporters in Tokyo. “The idea is to make space tourism for everyone.”
Other companies are planning similar stratospheric tourist ventures. But if Iwaya’s venture sticks to its announced timeline and begins flying customers around the end of this year, it would be the first to get to market.
Continue reading “Want to Soar to the Stratosphere? Japan Joins the Balloon Tourism Race”
Astronomy is poised for another leap. In the next several years, major ground-based telescopes will come online, including the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT,) the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT,) the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT,) and the Vera Rubin Observatory. The combined power of these telescopes will help drive discovery in the next couple of decades.
But something threatens to undermine astronomical observing in the coming years: Starlink and other internet satellite constellations.
Now a group of astronomers have shown that even the Hubble can’t escape the satellite problem.
Continue reading “Hubble’s Orbit Has Dropped So Far that Starlink Satellites are Photobombing its Images”
As tragic as it is, engulfment of a planetary object by its stellar parent is a common scenario throughout the universe. But it doesn’t have to end in doom. A team of astrophysicists have used computer simulations to discover that planets can not only survive when their star eats them, but they can also drive its future evolution.
Continue reading “Stars Can Eat Their Planets…and Spit Them Back Out Again”
Astronomers have detected a small, compact source embedded in a gap in the disk surrounding a young star. They believe it is a baby planet in the process of growing.
Continue reading “Watch a Baby Planet Carve Out a Home for Itself”
For generations, scientists have probed the structure and composition of the planet using seismic wave studies. This consists of measuring shock waves caused by Earthquakes as they penetrate and pass through the Earth’s core region. By noting differences in speed (a process known as anisotropy), scientists can determine which regions are denser than others. These studies have led to the predominant geological model that incorporates four distinct layers: a crust and a mantle (composed largely of silicate minerals) and an outer core and inner core composed of nickel-iron.
According to seismologists from The Australian National University (ANU), data obtained in a recent study has shed new light on the deepest parts of Earth’s inner core. In a paper that appeared in Nature Communications, the team reports finding evidence for another distinct layer (a solid metal ball) in the center of Earth’s inner core – an “innermost inner core.” These findings could shed new light on the evolution of our planet and lead to revised geological models of Earth that include five distinct layers instead of the traditional four.
Continue reading “The Earth has an Even More Inner Core, and it's a Ball of Solid Metal”