Universe Today

February 9, 2022February 9, 2022 by Evan Gough

Asteroids are Dangerous, but They Might Also be the Key to Life on Earth

This artist's conception shows how families of asteroids are created. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Trying to piece together the appearance of life on Earth is a little like looking through a kaleidoscope. There are competing theories for where Earth’s water came from, and there’s incomplete evidence for how the Moon formed and what role it played in life’s emergence. There are a thousand other questions, each with competing answers. Sometimes, contradictory research is published within days of each other.

But that’s nature, and that’s part of the thrill of science. There’s rigorous determination behind all the evidence and inquiry, and the kaleidoscope calms down over time. Order emerges, and the picture becomes clearer.

February 9, 2022February 6, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomy Jargon 101: Event Horizon

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the centre of Messier 87 and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary — the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name — is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. While this may sound large, this ring is only about 40 microarcseconds across — equivalent to measuring the length of a credit card on the surface of the Moon. Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data – roughly 350 terabytes per day – which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You won’t ever stop reading about today’s topic: event horizons!

February 8, 2022February 8, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

We Finally Understand how Black Holes can Release Powerful Flares

While black holes might always be black, they do occasionally emit some intense bursts of light from just outside their event horizon. Previously, what exactly caused these flares had been a mystery to science. That mystery was solved recently by a team of researchers that used a series of supercomputers to model the details of black holes’ magnetic fields in far more detail than any previous effort. The simulations point to the breaking and remaking of super-strong magnetic fields as the source of the super-bright flares.

February 8, 2022February 8, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Why are Neptune and Uranus Different Colors?

A comparison of Uranus (left) and Neptune (right). Credit: Left: NASA/JPL-Caltech, Right: NASA

Uranus and Neptune are similar planets in many ways. Both are ice giant worlds, both have atmospheres rich in methane, and both have a bluish color. But while Uranus has a pale blue-green hue, Neptune has a deep blue color. But why? Why would two planets so similar in size and composition appear so different? According to a recent study, the answer lies in their aerosols.

February 8, 2022February 8, 2022 by Evan Gough

Massive Rocky Planets Probably Don’t Have big Moons

The Earth straddling the limb of the Moon, as seen from above Compton crater on the lunar farside, taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

The Moon has orbited Earth since the Solar System’s early days. Anyone who’s ever spent time at the ocean can’t fail to notice the Moon’s effect. The Moon drives the tides even in the world’s most remote inlets and bays. And tides may be vital to life’s emergence.

But if Earth were more massive, the Moon may never have become what it is now. Instead, it would be much smaller. Tides would be much weaker, and life may not have emerged the way it did.

February 8, 2022February 6, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomy Jargon 101: Eccentricity

This 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet called HD106906 b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and it may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System dubbed “Planet Nine.” This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disc. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll be sure to find your center with today’s topic: eccentricity!

February 8, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

New Startup Quantum Space is Planning to Build a Robotic Outpost Near the Moon

The Moon is sure to be a hotspot of economic activity as human commercial endeavors start to expand into space. Not only is it a ball of resources with a relatively small gravity well, but it also happens to be our nearest neighbor. But to unlock that potential, companies will have to build up an infrastructure that will allow for the exploitation of those resources. Enter Quantum Space, a new start-up from a group of heavy-hitting space experts looking to help make that potential a reality – by building a robotic spaceport around the moon.

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Matt Williams

Mars Could Have Been wet for Much Longer Than Previously Believed

Artist's impression of Mars during the Noachian Era. Credit: Ittiz/Wikipedia Commons

Billions of years ago, Mars was a much different place than it is today. During the same period when life was first emerging on Earth, Mars had a thicker atmosphere, warmer surface temperatures, and flowing water on its surface. Evidence of this warmer, wetter past is preserved on the planet’s surface today in the form of river channels, lakebeds, alluvial fans, and sedimentary deposits. When this period began, and how long it lasted, remains the subject of much debate for scientists.

Knowing how long this period lasted helps establish how big the window of opportunity was for life on Mars. But according to new NASA-funded research from the Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC), Mars may have been wetter longer than previously expected. According to recently published results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mars may have had a northern ocean as recent as three billion years ago.

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Simulation Predicts Where to Find 300,000 Meteorites Hidden in Antarctica

Collecting meteorites in Antarctica. Image courtesy of Delft University of Technology.

Although meteorites are known to fall all over the world, the environment and unique processes in Antarctica make them somewhat easier to find on the pristine, snowy landscape. Still, collecting meteorites in Antarctica is physically grueling and hazardous work.

But what if there was a “treasure map” which showed the most probable places to find meteorites in Antarctica, directing researchers where to look?

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

How Dark Matter Could Be Measured in the Solar System

Dark matter has long been a mystery to astronomers, in no small part because it is so hard to measure directly. Its influence is plain when looking at its gravitational effects on objects such as far away galaxies, but measuring that influence directly has proved much trickier. But now, a team of scientists thinks they have a way to measure the influence of dark matter directly – all it would require is a specialized probe that sits really far away from Earth for a while.