Universe Today

December 24, 2022December 24, 2022 by Matt Williams

The Universe is Brighter Than we Thought

Artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/APL/SwRI and NASA/JPL-Caltech

Over seven years ago, the New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to conduct a flyby of Pluto. In the leadup to this encounter, the spacecraft provided updated data and images of many objects in the inner and outer Solar System. Once beyond the orbit of Pluto and its moons, it embarked on a new mission: to make the first encounter with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). This historic flyby occurred about four years ago (Dec. 31st, 2015) when New Horizons zipped past Arrokoth (aka. 2014 MU69).

Now that it is passing through the Kuiper Belt, away from the light pollution of the inner Solar System, it has another lucrative mission: measuring the brightness of the Universe. These measurements will allow astronomers to make more accurate estimates of how many galaxies there are, which is still the subject of debate. According to new measurements by New Horizons, the light coming from stars beyond the Milky Way is two to three times brighter than the light from known populations of galaxies – meaning that there are even more out there than we thought!

December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

Is the Milky Way… Normal?

Studying the large-scale structure of our galaxy isn’t easy. We don’t have a clear view of the Milky Way’s shape and features like we do of other galaxies, largely because we live within it. But we do have some advantages. From within, we’re able to carry out close-up surveys of the Milky Way’s stellar population and its chemical compositions. That gives researchers the tools they need to compare our own galaxy to the many millions of others in the Universe.

This week, an international team of researchers from the USA, UK, and Chile released a paper that does just that. They dug through a catalogue of ten thousand galaxies produced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, searching for galaxies with similar attributes to our own.

They discovered that the Milky Way has twins – many of them – but just as many that are only superficially similar, with fundamental differences buried in the data. What they discovered has implications for the future evolution of our own galaxy.

December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by Matt Williams

Anti-Helium Generated in the Large Hadron Collider can Help in the Search for Dark Matter

The ALICE detector on CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Credit: A Saba/CERN

For decades, astrophysicists have theorized that the majority of matter in our Universe is made up of a mysterious invisible mass known as “Dark Matter” (DM). While scientists have not yet found any direct evidence of this invisible mass or confirmed what it looks like, there are several possible ways we could search for it soon. One theory is that Dark Matter particles could collide and annihilate each other to produce cosmic rays that proliferate throughout our galaxy – similar to how cosmic ray collisions with the interstellar medium (ISM) do.

This theory could be tested soon, thanks to research conducted using the A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE), one of several detector experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ALICE is optimized to study the results from collisions between nuclei that travel very close to the speed of light (ultra-relativistic velocities). According to new research by the ALICE Collaboration, dedicated instruments could detect anti-helium-3 nuclei (the anti-matter counterpart to He₃) as they reach Earth’s atmosphere, thus providing evidence for DM.

December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by Evan Gough

Webb’s New Image Reveals a Galaxy Awash in Star Formation

This JWST image shows NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans

When a spiral galaxy presents itself just right, observations reveal more detail. That’s the case with NGC 7469, a spiral galaxy about 220 million light-years away. It’s face-on towards us, and the James Webb Space Telescope captured its revealing scientific portrait.

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

Scientists Investigate Potential Regolith Origin on Uranus’ Moon, Miranda

In a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal, a pair of researchers led by The Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in California investigated the potential origin for the thick regolith deposits on Uranus’ moon, Miranda. The purpose of this study was to determine Miranda’s internal structure, most notably its interior heat, which could help determine if Miranda harbors—or ever harbored—an internal ocean.

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 by Evan Gough

A Star Came too Close to a Black Hole. It Didn’t End Well

A disk of hot gas swirls around a black hole in this illustration. The stream of gas stretching to the right is what remains of a star that was pulled apart by the black hole. A cloud of hot plasma (gas atoms with their electrons stripped away) above the black hole is known as a corona. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Black holes are confounding objects that stretch physics to its limits. The most massive ones lurk in the centers of large galaxies like ours. They dominate the galactic center, and when a star gets too close, the black hole’s powerful gravitational force tears the star apart as they feed on it. Not even the most massive stars can resist.

But supermassive black holes (SMBHs) didn’t start out that massive. They attained their gargantuan mass by accreting material over vast spans of time and by merging with other black holes.

There are large voids in our understanding of how SMBHs grow and evolve, and one way astrophysicists fill those voids is by watching black holes as they consume stars.

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Perseverance Places its First Sample on the Surface of Mars. One Day This Will be in the Hands of Scientists on Earth

Perseverance drops a load of rock on Mars for pickup later. — The Mars Perseverance Rover deposited a tube filled with a chalk-size core of igneous rock, taken from a region of Mars’ Jezero Crater, for later pickup by the joint ESA-NASA Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

In the not-too-distant future, a planetary scientist will open up a tube of rocks that came from Mars. Thanks to the Perseverance rover, there are at least 17 of these rock and regolith samples, just waiting for analysis on Earth. To get them, the rover has covered about 13 kilometers on its Mars geology field trip.

December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by Matt Williams

NASA Just Tested a new Engine That Will Launch Artemis V and Beyond

NASA conducts an RS-25 hot fire on the Fred Haise Test Stand at Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi on Dec. 14. Credit: NASA/SSC

On November 16th, NASA launched the first mission of the Artemis Program (Artemis I), which splashed down three and a half weeks later. This uncrewed mission saw the Space Launch System (SLS) send an Orion spacecraft far beyond the orbit of the Moon, establishing a new record for distance traveled by a mission and the amount of time spent beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Powering the core stage of the SLS were four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25s, the same engines used by the Space Shuttle – known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME).

By the end of the decade, NASA plans to mount a total of six Artemis launches that will include crewed missions to the surface, the creation of the Artemis Basecamp, and the deployment of the Lunar Gateway. NASA also plans to upgrade key components in the mission architecture along the way, which include replacing the Space Shuttle Era engines with the newly-designed RS-25E. On December 14th, NASA tested this engine for the first time at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, completing a hot fire test that lasted for just under three and a half minutes (209.5 seconds).

December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by Evan Gough

This Will Probably Be InSight’s Last Picture Before it Runs Out of Power Forever

This image shows InSight's landing spot and its SEIS instrument, covered with its protective wind shield. The lander's been having trouble generating electricity and this could be its final image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

The InSight lander might have transmitted its last picture from the surface of Mars. It looks like the lander is succumbing to Mars’ dusty conditions, as its ability to generate energy from its solar panels has been declining in recent weeks.

It’s always sad and somehow poignant when a lander or a rover falls silent. Each of them has a personality that goes along with their mission. But we’ve known for months this day was coming.

December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by Evan Gough

Webb Stares Deeply Into the Universe, Showing How Galaxies Assemble

This image represents a portion of the full PEARLS field, which will be about four times larger. Thousands of galaxies over an enormous range in distance and time are seen in exquisite detail, many for the first time. Image Credit: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Rolf A. Jansen (ASU), Jake Summers (ASU), Rosalia O'Brien (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU), Aaron Robotham (UWA), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Christopher Willmer (University of Arizona), JWST PEARLS Team IMAGE PROCESSING: Rolf A. Jansen (ASU), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

The James Webb Space Telescope is delivering a deluge of images and data to eager scientists and other hungry-minded people. So far, the telescope has shown us the iconic Pillars of Creation like we’ve never seen them before, the details of very young stars as they grow inside their dense cloaks of gas, and a Deep Field that’s taken over from the Hubble’s ground-breaking Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field images. And it’s only getting started.

True to its main science objectives, the JWST has peered back in time to the Universe’s earliest galaxies looking for clues to how they assemble and evolve.