When stars die, they spread the elements they’ve created in their cores out to space. But, other objects and processes in space also create elements. Eventually, that “star stuff” scatters across the galaxy in giant debris clouds. Later on—sometimes millions of years later—it settles onto planets. What’s the missing link between element creation and deposition on some distant world?
Continue reading “Some Elements Arrived on Earth by Surfing Supernova Shock Waves”Follow Perseverance on Its Mars Journey With This Two-Year Timelapse
Hard to believe, but the Perseverance Rover has begun its third year exploring Mars. On Feb. 18, 2021, Perseverance rover survived the harrowing landing at Jezero Crater, and almost immediately, began an expedition to collect a geologically diverse set of rock samples, ones that could help answer the question if Mars once had ancient microbial life.
JPL and NASA put together a wonderful two-year animation of images from the rover’s Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera to celebrate Percy’s landing anniversary.
Continue reading “Follow Perseverance on Its Mars Journey With This Two-Year Timelapse”If Planet 9 has Moons, Would That Help Us Find It?
Planet 9 continues to remain elusive. This potential super-Earth-sized object in the outer Solar System is only hypothetical, as something out there appears to be gravitationally influencing several Kuiper Belt Objects into unusual orbits. Whatever or wherever it may be, Planet 9 has yet to be found, despite several different hypotheses and numerous observational searches.
But what if Planet 9 has moons? Could they help us find it? A new paper speculates that any moons orbiting the theoretical planet could provide indirect clues to the location of Planet 9, while revealing some basic properties of this mysterious object.
Continue reading “If Planet 9 has Moons, Would That Help Us Find It?”Happy Presidents Day: George Washington’s Hair Set to Go to Deep Space
If it turns out that a future extraterrestrial invasion force is headed by a clone of George Washington, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.
Admittedly, that would be the unlikeliest outcome of a space shot that aims to send hair samples from America’s first president — and from Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan — into deep space.
The samples, which include bits of DNA, are to be included on Houston-based Celestis’ “Enterprise Flight,” a memorial space mission that will also carry DNA and cremated remains from the late astronaut Philip Chapman, Star Trek celebrities and scores of Celestis clients. The time capsule will be sent into space later this year as a secondary payload aboard United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, and eventually settle into stable orbit around the sun.
Continue reading “Happy Presidents Day: George Washington’s Hair Set to Go to Deep Space”Meteor Explodes Over English Channel, Moon Breakthrough, Dark Matter Galaxy
Blue Origin wants to build solar panels on the Moon, out of the Moon, SpaceX sold its floating landing pads, and another asteroid hits Earth exactly where and when astronomers predicted.
Continue reading “Meteor Explodes Over English Channel, Moon Breakthrough, Dark Matter Galaxy”ESA is Building an Early Warning System for Dangerous Asteroids
The European Space Agency is working on a new mission that would act as an early warning system for dangerous, hard-to-see asteroids. Called NEOMIR (Near-Earth Object Mission in the InfraRed), the spacecraft would orbit between the Earth and the Sun at the L1 Lagrange Point, finding space rocks that otherwise get lost in the glare of the Sun.
Continue reading “ESA is Building an Early Warning System for Dangerous Asteroids”Are Black Holes the Source of Dark Energy?
By the 1920s, astronomers learned that the Universe was expanding as Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity predicted. This led to a debate among astrophysicists between those who believed the Universe began with a Big Bang and those who believed the Universe existed in a Steady State. By the 1960s, the first measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) indicated that the former was the most likely scenario. And by the 1990s, the Hubble Deep Fields provided the deepest images of the Universe ever taken, revealing galaxies as they appeared just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Over time, these discoveries led to an astounding realization: the rate at which the Universe is expanding (aka. the Hubble Constant) has not been constant over time! This led to the theory of Dark Energy, an invisible force that counteracts gravity and causes this expansion to accelerate. In a series of papers, an international team of researchers led by the University of Hawaii reported that black holes in ancient and dormant galaxies were growing more than expected. This constitutes (they claim) the first evidence that black holes could be the source of Dark Energy.
Continue reading “Are Black Holes the Source of Dark Energy?”Galaxies Aren’t Just Stars. They’re Intricate Networks of Gas and Dust
Astronomers have studied the star formation process for decades. As we get more and more capable telescopes, the intricate details of one of nature’s most fascinating processes become clearer. The earliest stages of star formation happen inside a dense veil of gas and dust that stymies our observations.
But the James Webb Space Telescope sees right through the veil in its images of nearby galaxies.
Continue reading “Galaxies Aren’t Just Stars. They’re Intricate Networks of Gas and Dust”This is Your Brain on Spaceflight
When you go to space, it’s going to change your brain. Count on it. That’s because space travelers enter microgravity, and that challenges everything the brain knows about gravity. The experience alters their brain functions and “connectivity” between different regions. It’s all part of the ability of our brains and nervous systems to change in response to changes in the environment, or because of traumatic brain stress or injuries.
Continue reading “This is Your Brain on Spaceflight”When Neutron Stars Collide, the Explosion is Perfectly Spherical
Kilonovae are incredibly powerful explosions. Whereas regular supernovae occur when two white dwarfs collide, or the core of a massive star collapses into a neutron star, kilonovae occur when two neutron stars collide. You would think that neutron star collisions would produce explosions with all sorts of strange shapes depending on the angle and speed of the collisions, but new research shows kilonovae are very spherical, and this has some serious implications for cosmology.
Continue reading “When Neutron Stars Collide, the Explosion is Perfectly Spherical”