Space and astronomy news
For years cosmologists had thought that a strange feature appearing in the microwave sky, known as the CMB cold spot, was due to the light passing through a giant supervoid. But new research casts that conclusion into doubt.
Continue reading “Perhaps a Supervoid Doesn’t Explain the Mysterious CMB Cold Spot”
Black holes are gluttonous behemoths that lurk in the center of galaxies. Almost everybody knows that nothing can escape them, not even light. So when anything made of simple matter gets too close, whether a planet, a star or a gas cloud, it’s doomed.
But the black hole doesn’t eat it at once. It plays with its food like a fussy kid. Sometimes, it spews out light.
When the black hole is not only at the center of a galaxy but the center of a cluster of galaxies, these burps and jets carve massive cavities out of the hot gas at the center of the cluster called radio bubbles.
Continue reading “A Black Hole has been Burping for 100 Million Years”
The nearest known exoplanet to Earth, the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, experiences some pretty nasty space weather from its parent star. But previous work on the space weather of Proxima relied on a lot of assumptions. The bad news is that new research has confirmed the grim picture.
Continue reading “Life on Proxima b Is Not Having a Good Time”
The “Blue Marble” was one of the most iconic pictures of the Apollo era. Taken by the astronauts of Apollo 17 on their return trip from the moon, the first fully illuminated image of the Earth taken by a person captured how the world looked on December 7th, 1972, just over 50 years ago. Now, a team from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology has recreated that iconic image using a climate model.
Continue reading “A Supercomputer Climate Model is so Accurate it Predicted the Weather Patterns Seen in the Famous 1972 “Blue Marble” Image of Earth”
Asteroid impacts rank highest on the UN’s list of potentially species-ending calamities. They’ve been the subject of countless movies and books, some of which are accurate depictions of what would happen, and some of which are not. Now, if you’ve ever been interested to see what would happen if different sizes of asteroid impact different areas of the globe, the internet has a tool for you!
Continue reading “This Interactive Tool Lets you Simulate Asteroid Impacts Anywhere on Earth”
There’s an argument to be made that some astronomical pictures are better inspirational tools than all of the science that the missions that took them might have collected during their lifetimes. This author personally had his interest in space exploration sparked when he first saw the Ultra Deep Field and then had it permanently ingrained in his brain with the Pale Blue Dot and the associated book. The fact that they have individual names (Earth Rise, The Blue Marble, etc.) shows their importance to our collective understanding of our planet and our place in the Universe. Now, we might have a new one, as we’ve received a spectacular view of our Moon and a crescent Earth from the Artemis 1 mission.
Continue reading “Will This be the Iconic Picture From Artemis I?”
Can we build an enormous umbrella to dim the Sun? Such a feat would be a megaproject on a scale like no other. It would take at least 400 dedicated rocket launches a year, for ten years (There have been 172 rocket launches by all nations so far in 2022). The project would weigh in at 550,000 tons: at its lightest. And it would be an ecological experiment that puts us all – the entire planet – in the petri dish, with high risk and high reward. But could such a project actually reverse climate change and bring us back from the brink of global disaster?
The answer seems to be yes, it could work. But there are consequences, and with the planet at stake, it seems wise to examine them before committing to such a thing.
Continue reading “To Fight Climate Change, We Could Block the Sun. A Lightweight Solar Sail Could Make it Feasible”
The Mars Sample Return (MSR) part of Perseverance’s mission is picking up – literally. For the past few months, the rover has concentrated on picking up samples that will eventually be returned to Earth as part of the future Mars Sample Return mission. Back on Earth, plenty of advanced technologies can poke and prod the samples in ways that would never be feasible to launch with a spacecraft. However, if scientists decide to poke or prod Perseverance’s latest collections, they might have a hard time because they are made of regular regolith.
Continue reading “Perseverance’s Latest Sample is Just Crumbled Regolith. When Scientists get Their Hands on it, we’ll Learn so Much About how to Live on Mars”
Construction Begins on the Square Kilometer Array. Artemis I’s iconic crescent Earthrise picture. A gamma-ray burst that breaks all the rules. SpaceX launches a new service.
Continue reading “Iconic Earthrise By Artemis 1, Rule-Breaking GRB, SpaceX Launches Starshield”