Universe Today

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Mark Thompson

NASA is Looking for a Commercial Partner to Save VIPER

NASA VIPER rover in clean room — NASA’s VIPER rover sits assembled inside the clean room at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. (Credit: NASA)

Space exploration has led the world in that wonderful human ability to co-operate, alas history shows we don’t do it quite as much as we should! Recently NASA has put a request out to the wider community for ideas for their VIPER rover which was designed for lunar exploration. The exact purpose of VIPER was to hunt for volatile minerals in the polar regions of the Moon. The big question, will NASA get any takers?

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by David Dickinson

The Next Solar Cycle Has Started… But the Current One Hasn’t Finished Yet

We may be already seeing the makings of next solar cycle, peeking out through the current one.

It’s been a wild ride. Thus far, Solar Cycle Number 25 has been one of the strongest cycles in recent memory, producing several massive sunspot groups. The current large region turned Earthward (Active Region 3780) is now easily visible with eclipse glasses… no magnification needed. Cycle 25 started back in 2019.

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

Are Andromeda and the Milky Way Doomed to Collide? Maybe Not

Scientists discovered the Andromeda galaxy, known as M31, hundreds of years ago, and around a century ago, we realized that it had negative radial velocity toward the Milky Way. In other words, eventually, the two galaxies would merge spectacularly. That has been common knowledge for astronomers since then, but is it really true? A new paper from researchers at the University of Helsinki looks at several confounding factors, including the gravitational influence of other galaxies in our local group, and finds only a 50% chance that the Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy in the next 10 billion years.

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers Use Artificial Intelligence To Find Elusive Stars “Gobbling Up” Planets

We recently reported on how the mountains of data produced by astronomical instruments are “perfect for AI.” We’ve also started reporting on several use cases for different AI algorithms. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Texas has developed a new use case that focuses on discovering the interior makeup of exoplanets by looking at a specific type of star.

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Allen Versfeld

Rubin's Secondary Mirror is Installed

On July 24, 2024, Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 3.5-meter secondary mirror was installed onto the Simonyi Survey Telescope. Credit: NOIRLab (CC BY 4.0)

The construction of the Vera C. Rubin observatory has just crossed a major milestone with the successful installation of its 3.5 meter diameter secondary mirror. The observatory is now one step closer to first light in 2025, when it will begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST): a mission to repeatedly image the entire sky, at high resolution, to create a time-lapse record of the Universe.

August 11, 2024August 11, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Study Examines the Links Between Science Fiction and Astronomy

Dr. Kip Thorne made it clear that black is not the primary hue of Black Holes. His guidance offered to Nolan raised science fiction to a new level. Credit: Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros.

“Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.” This quote, attributed to Isaac Asimov, captures science’s intricate relationship with science fiction. And it is hardly a one-way relationship. Whereas science fiction is constantly evolving to reflect new scientific discoveries and theories, science itself has a long history of drawing inspiration from the works of visionary authors, filmmakers, and popular culture. And in some cases, where scientists themselves were the visionaries (like Asimov himself), you had an instance of both!

The relationship between the two was the subject of a recent study by Samuel Boissier, a researcher with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the director of research at the Laboratoire d’astrophysique de Marseille (LAM). In an age when misinformation, “deepfakes,” and deliberate attempts to obscure scientific truths are at an all-time high, examining the interconnection between science, art, and science fiction is very important. According to Boissier, doing so offers people in the scientific community a way to engage with the public in a way that is relatable and accessible.

August 10, 2024August 11, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

Good Thing We Found this Earth-Sized Planet Now. It’s About to Be Destroyed

Illustration of an Earth-sized world. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt)

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of exoplanets with extremely small orbits around their stars. But what about exoplanets that get close enough to be devoured by their star, and what if it’s an Earth-sized exoplanet? This is what a recent study accepted to AAS Journals hopes to address as an international team of more than 50 researchers investigated an Earth-sized exoplanet with an orbital period of only 5.7 hours, known as “ultra-short-period” (USP) exoplanets, that could eventually experience what’s known as tidal disruption, resulting in its devourment by its star. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the processes responsible for this, along with continuing to challenge our understanding of exoplanetary architectures, as well.

August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Matt Williams

Scientists Develop a Novel Method for Detecting Supermassive Black Holes: Use Smaller Black Holes!

A simulation of two merging black holes. Credit: Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Project

In 1974, astronomers Bruce Balick and Robert L. Brown discovered a powerful radio source at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The source, Sagittarius A*, was subsequently revealed to be a supermassive black hole (SMBH) with a mass of over 4 million Suns. Since then, astronomers have determined that SMBHs reside at the center of all galaxies with highly active central regions known as active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or “quasars.” Despite all we’ve learned, the origin of these massive black holes remains one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy.

The most popular theories are that they may have formed when the Universe was still very young or have grown over time by consuming the matter around them (accretion) and through mergers with other black holes. In recent years, research has shown that when mergers between such massive objects occur, Gravitational Waves (GWs) are released. In a recent study, an international team of astrophysicists proposed a novel method for detecting pairs of SMBHs: analyzing gravitational waves generated by binaries of nearby small stellar black holes.

August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Evan Gough

An Ancient Martian Lake Was Larger Than Any Lake on Earth

In January 2024, DLR's HRSC on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft captured the Caralis Chaos region, which has several interesting and sometimes puzzling landscape features – such as a field of small, light-coloured hills to the northeast (bottom-right of the image). The mounds are located in the remains of a depression that was once filled by a lake. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

The ESA’s Mars Express orbiter captured an image of the remains of a vast ancient lake on Mars. The remnant lake bed has been weathered and altered by the passing of billions of years. In the planet’s distant past, scientists say, it held enough water to fill Earth’s Caspian Sea almost three times over.

August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Gaia Finds Hundreds of Asteroid Moons

This illustrates the orbits of more than 150,000 asteroids seen by Gaia as part of its data release 3. The orbits shown here extend from the inner solar system to the orbit of Jupiter. Courtesy ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The amazing Gaia mission to chart stars in the Milky Way Galaxy is also an expert asteroid hunter. Now, astronomers are reporting its success at spotting more moons of asteroids in our solar system. Once the Gaia data from its release 3 are confirmed, those observations will add 352 more binary asteroids to the known count. That nearly doubles the known number of asteroids with moons and previous Gaia data releases also revealed asteroids in its survey.