Space and astronomy news
Webb is fully operational again, Rolls-Royce is building a nuclear reactor for the Moon, and the space debris worst-case scenario almost happened.
Continue reading “Rolls-Royce Space Reactor, Close Call in Orbit, Webb’s Back”
Over over 50% of high mass stars reside in multiple star systems. But due to their complex orbital interactions, physicists have a difficult time understanding just how stable and long-lived these systems are. Recently a team of astronomers applied machine learning techniques to simulations of multiple star systems and found a new way that stars in such systems can arrange themselves.
Continue reading “A.I. Finds a New Way to Build Multiple-Star Systems”
A team of astronomers have used a model of earthquakes to understand glitches in the timing of pulsars. Their results suggest that pulsars may have interiors that are far stranger than can be imagined.
Continue reading “Astronomers use Earthquakes to Understand Glitches on Neutron Stars”
Astronomers continue to hunt for the elusive kind of star known as Population III stars, the first stars to appear in the young universe. New research has revealed that the James Webb Space Telescope may be on the cusp of discovering them.
Continue reading “The James Webb May See the First Stars to Appear in the Universe”
MSL Curiosity is going about its business exploring Mars. The high-tech rover is currently exploring the sulphate-bearing unit on Mt. Sharp, the central peak in Mars’ Gale Crater. Serendipity placed a metal meteorite in its path.
Continue reading “Curiosity Finds Another Metal Meteorite on Mars”
Black holes swallow everything—including light—which explains why we can’t see them. But we can observe their immediate surroundings and learn about them. And when they’re on a feeding binge, their surroundings become even more luminous and observable.
This increased luminosity allowed astronomers to find a black hole that was feasting on material only 800 million years after the Universe began.
Continue reading “Hungry Black Hole was Already Feasting 800 Million Years After the Big Bang”
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Mars has a “dust problem.” The surface of the Red Planet is covered in particulate matter consisting of tiny bits of silica and oxidized minerals. During a Martian summer in the southern hemisphere, the planet experiences dust storms that can grow to encompass the entire planet. At other times of the year, dust devils and dusty skies are a persistent problem. This hazard has claimed robotic explorers that rely on solar panels to charge their batteries, like NASA’s Opportunity rover and the InSight lander, which ended their missions in 2018 and 2022, respectively.
Martian dust has also been a persistent challenge for the Ingenuity helicopter, the rotorcraft that has been exploring Mars alongside NASA’s Perseverance rover since February 2021. Luckily, the way it has kicked up dust has provided vital data that could prove invaluable for rotorcraft sent to explore other extraterrestrial environments in the future. Using this data, a team of researchers (with support from NASA) has completed the first real-world study of Martian dust dynamics, which will support missions to Mars and Titan (Saturn’s largest moon) in this and the next decade.
Continue reading “Mars Ingenuity Kicks up a Surprising Amount of Dust Every Time it Lands”
Kilonovae are extraordinarily rare. Astronomers think there are only about 10 of them in the Milky Way. But they’re extraordinarily powerful and produce heavy elements like uranium, thorium, and gold.
Usually, astronomers spot them after they’ve merged and emitted powerful gamma-ray bursts (GRBs.) But astronomers using the SMARTS telescope say they’ve spotted a kilonova progenitor for the first time.
Continue reading “This Binary System is Destined to Become a Kilonova”
The differences between Earth and Venus are obvious to us. One is radiant with life and adorned with glittering seas, and the other is a scorching, glowering hellhole, its volcanic surface shrouded by thick clouds and visible only with radar. But the difference wasn’t always clear. In fact, we used to call Venus Earth’s sister planet.
Can astronomers tell exo-Earths and exo-Venuses apart from a great distance?
Continue reading “How Can We Know if We’re Looking at Habitable exo-Earths or Hellish exo-Venuses?”
From the time of its writing in the 2nd century CE, Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest stood at the forefront of mathematical astronomy for nearly 1,500 years. This work included a catalog of 1,025 stars, listing their coordinates (in ecliptic longitude and latitude) and brightnesses. While astronomers within a few centuries realized that the models for the sun, moon, and planets all had issues (which we today recognize as being a result of them being incorrect, geocentric models relying on circles and epicycles instead of a heliocentric model with elliptical orbits), the catalog of stars was generally believed to be correct.
That was, until the end of the 16th century, when the renowned observational astronomer Tycho Brahe realized that there was a fundamental flaw with the catalog: the ecliptic longitudes were low by an average of 1 degree.
What’s more, Brahe proposed an explanation for why. He suggested that Ptolemy had stolen the data from the astronomer Hipparchus some 250 years earlier, and then incorrectly updated the coordinates.
The question of whether this was a cosmic coincidence or the oldest case of scientific plagiarism is a question that historians of astronomy have argued for over 400 years.
Continue reading “The Historic Discussion of Ptolemy’s Star Catalog”