Universe Today

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

The Moons of Rogue Planets Could Have Liquid Surface Water and Thick Atmospheres. They Could be Habitable

Artist's rendering of an Earth-sized rogue planet approaching a star. Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA)

The search for life on exoplanets takes a fairly conservative approach. It focuses on life that is similar to that of Earth. Sure, it’s quite possible that life comes in many exotic forms, and scientists have speculated about all the strange forms life might take, but the simple fact is that Earth life is the only form we currently understand. So most research focuses on life forms that, like us, are carbon based with a biology that relies on liquid water. But even with that narrow view, life could still be hiding in places we don’t expect.

June 11, 2021June 8, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Supernova Observed by Astronomers in 1181 Could Have Been a Rare Type 1ax That Leaves Behind a “Zombie Star” Remnant

Artistic impression of a star going supernova, casting its chemically enriched contents into the universe. Credit: NASA/Swift/Skyworks Digital/Dana Berry

In 1181 CE, Chinese and Japanese astronomers noticed a “guest star” as bright as Saturn briefly appearing in their night sky. In the thousand years since, astronomers have not been able to pinpoint the origins of that event. New observations have revealed that the “guest star” was a supernova, and a strange one at that. It was a supernova that did not destroy the star, but left behind a zombie that is still shining.

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

China’s Mars Rover, Seen From Orbit … and From the Surface!

A wireless camera took this 'group photo' of China's Tianwen-1 lander and rover on Mars' surface. Credit: Chinese Space Agency

The Chinese Tianwen-1 lander and Zhurong rover are being watched, both from Mars’ orbit and from the surface! The Chinese Space Agency today released a series of photos, including a family portrait of the rover and lander taken by a wireless remote camera. And just look at that cute rover face!

June 10, 2021June 10, 2021 by Matt Williams

Sending a Spacecraft to Another Star Will Require a Million Lasers Working Together

An artist's illustration of a light-sail powered by a radio beam (red) generated on the surface of a planet. The leakage from such beams as they sweep across the sky would appear as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), similar to the new population of sources that was discovered recently at cosmological distances. Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

In 2016, Russian-American billionaire Yuri Milner founded Breakthrough Initiatives, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating some of the most enduring mysteries of the Universe. Chief among their scientific efforts is Breakthrough Starshot, a proof-of-concept prototype that combines a lightsail, a nanocraft, and directed energy (aka. laser) propulsion to create a spacecraft capable of reaching the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) in our lifetimes.

Naturally, this presents all sorts of technical and engineering challenges, not the least of which is the amount of power needed to accelerate the spacecraft to relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light). Luckily, scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) recently came up with a design for a directed-energy array made up of millions of individual lasers positioned across the Earth’s surface.

June 10, 2021March 9, 2022 by Evan Gough

Did Asteroid Impacts Provide Both the Heat and Raw Ingredients to Enable Life?

An artist's conception of an asteroid collision, which leads to how "families" of these space rocks are made in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — An artist's conception of an asteroid collision, in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is our Great Question: How did life begin on Earth? Anyone who says they have the answer is telling tall tales. We just don’t know yet.

While a definitive answer may be a long way off—or may never be found—there are some clever ways to nibble at the edges of that Great Question. A group of researchers at Kobe University in Japan are taking their own bites out of that compelling question with a question of their own: Did the heat from asteroid impacts help life get started?

June 10, 2021June 8, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomers Have Tracked Down the Source of High Energy Cosmic Rays to Regions Within the Milky Way Itself

This image of the supernova remnant SN 1987A was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in January 2017 using its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Since its launch in 1990 Hubble has observed the expanding dust cloud of SN 1987A several times has helped astronomers get a better understanding of these cosmic explosions. Supernova 1987A is located in the centre of the image amidst a backdrop of stars. The bright ring around the central region of the exploded star is material ejected by the star about 20 000 years before the actual explosion took place. The supernova is surrounded by gaseous clouds. The clouds’ red colour represents the glow of hydrogen gas. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation) and P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Using a new observatory, a team of Chinese astronomers have found over a dozen sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. And those sources aren’t from some distant, exotic corner of the cosmos. They come from our own backyard.

June 10, 2021June 11, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Partial Solar Eclipse Images from Around the World

Solar Eclipse June 10, 2021 with iPhone Single photo taken with iPhone 11 Pro through Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope from Ottawa, Canada. Credit: Andrew Symes.

People across the northern hemisphere looked up today – taking the correct precautions, of course – and were treated to a partial solar eclipse. The partial eclipse covered a region thousands of kilometres wide across most of Europe, northern Asia and north central and north eastern North America. An annular or “ring of fire” solar eclipse was visible to some parts of Greenland, Northern Russia, and Canada.

Our unique lead image comes from Andrew Symes from Ottawa, Canada, who took this photo with his iPhone 11 Pro through his Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope, providing a fun and interesting look at his view of the eclipse!

See more below from Universe Today’s Flickr group, as well as from Twitter.

June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by Matt Williams

Jeff Bezos Will be Flying to Space Aboard New Shepard Next Month

In recent years, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has watched his commercial space company, Blue Origin, lose ground to the competition. While SpaceX has progressed by leaps and bounds towards realizing regular launches to the Moon and Mars (with the fully-reusable Starship), Blue Origin has been stuck in development hell with its launch vehicles. For this reason, Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as CEO of Amazon to focus on his fledgling space company.

So far, this decision has borne fruit, with the successful suborbital flight test of the New Shepard rocket that took place this past April. Stepping things up a notch, Bezos recently announced that when the first crewed flight of the New Shepard happens later this summer, he will be among the passengers. Scheduled to take place on July 20^th, this mission will see Bezos and his younger brother Mark become the first billionaire space tycoon to launch to space.

June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by Matt Williams

Conceptual Design for a Lunar Habitat

Between now and the end of this decade, multiple space agencies plan to send astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. But whereas Apollo was a “footprints and flags” affair, the current proposals for lunar exploration call for the creation of infrastructure that allow for a sustained human presence there. In addition to NASA’s Artemis Program, the ESA is also working on a plan to create an “International Moon Village.”

For years, the ESA has released teasers as to what this “successor to the International Space Station” (ISS) might look like, the latest of which is on display at the La Biennale di Venezia museum in Venice. As part of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) showcased their design (with technical support from the ESA) for a semi-inflatable lunar habitat that could facilitate long-term lunar settlement.

June 9, 2021June 8, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

There are Particles of 4.5 Billion-Year-old Solar Wind Trapped Inside the Earth

Visualization of the solar wind encountering Earth's magnetic "defenses" known as the magnetosphere. Clouds of southward-pointing plasma are able to peel back layers of the Sun-facing bubble and stack them into layers on the planet's nightside (center, right). The layers can be squeezed tightly enough to reconnect and deliver solar electrons (yellow sparkles) directly into the upper atmosphere to create the aurora. Credit: JPL

Scientists have found the unmistakable presence of certain isotopes in an iron meteorite. Since these meteorites are thought to leftover bits of planetary cores, similar isotopes must be in the Earth’s own core. And the only place to get those isotopes is from the solar wind.