Universe Today

July 23, 2021July 23, 2021 by Matt Williams

The Moon has Been Mildly Preventing Coastal Erosion, in the 2030s, That Protection Ends

High-tide flooding in Honolulu. Credit: Hawaii Sea Grant King Tides Project

Planet Earth is currently experiencing an unprecedented warming trend. Average global temperatures are rising at an accelerated rate in response to greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activity. These rising temperatures, in turn, result in the release of additional greenhouse gases (like methane), leading to positive feedback loops that threaten to compound the problem further.

This scientific consensus is based on multiple lines of evidence, all of which indicate the need for swift action. According to new research led by members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team (N-SLCT) at the University of Hawaii at Manao (UHM), a new Lunar cycle that will begin by the mid-2030s will amplify sea levels already rising due to climate change. This will mean even more coastal flooding during high tides and coastal storms in the near future.

July 23, 2021July 23, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Scientists Have a new way to Predict the Most Damaging Solar Storms

Space is full of hazards. The Earth, and it’s atmosphere, does a great job of shielding us from most of them. But sometimes those hazards are more powerful than even those protections can withstand, and potentially catastrophic events can result. Some of the most commonly known potential catastrophic events are solar flares. While normal solar activity can be deflected by the planet’s magnetic field, resulting in sometimes spectacular auroras, larger solar flares are a danger to look out for. So it’s worth celebrating a team of researchers from the International Space Science Institute which found a way to better track these potentially dangerous natural events.

July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 by Matt Williams

Micrometeorites Churn up the Surface of Europa. If you Want to Find Life, You’ll Need to dig Down a Meter or So

An artist's rendering of Europa and Jupiter based on images sent by visiting spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In the coming decade, NASA and the ESA will be sending two dedicated missions that will explore Jupiter’s moon Europa. These missions are known as the Europa Clipper and the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) missions, which will fulfill a dream that has been decades in the making – searching for possible evidence of life inside Europa. Since the 1970s, astronomers have theorized that this satellite contains a warm-water ocean that could support life.

The case for life in Europa has only been bolstered thanks to multiple flybys and observation campaigns that have been mounted since. According to new research led by the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the best way to look for potential signs of life (aka. biosignatures) would be to analyze small impact craters on Europa’s surface. These patches of exposed subsurface ice could point the way towards life that might exist deeper in the moon’s interior.

July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Neutron Stars Have Mountains, They’re Just a Fraction of a Millimeter High

The universe has some very extreme places in it – and there are few places more extreme than the surface of a neutron star. These ultradense objects form after a supergiant star collapses into a sphere about 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter. Their surface is extreme because of the gravity, which is about a billion times stronger than Earth. However, that gravity also forces the stellar remnant to be extraordinarily flat. Just how flat is the outcome of a new set of theoretical research by PhD student Fabian Gittins from the University of Southampton.

July 21, 2021July 22, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Here are the First New Pictures From the Fully Operational Hubble

Normal science observations were restarted on July 17, 2021 for the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/ StScI.

The astronomy community breathed a huge sigh of relief earlier this week when the Space Telescope Science Institute announced the Hubble Space Telescope’s major computer issues had been fixed. In a grueling month of recovery work, every expert – even retired Hubble engineers and scientists — was brought in for consultation. Their ultimate success is a tribute to the legacy of problem-solving and innovation NASA has been famous for over the years. And now, the telescope is back doing what it was built to do, taking incredible pictures of the cosmos and sending them down to Earth.

Here are the first images since the long-distance repair, two pictures of galaxies. One shows a galaxy with unusual extended spiral arms, and the other is the first high-resolution view of an intriguing pair of colliding galaxies.

July 21, 2021July 21, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Ions Surf Through Jupiter’s Magnetic Field, Triggering its Auroras

Auroras come in many shapes and sizes. Jupiter is well known for its spectacular complement of bright polar lights, which also have the distinction of appearing in the X-ray band. These auroras are also extreme power sources, emitting almost a gigawatt of energy in a few minutes. But what exactly causes them has been a mystery for the last 40 years. Now, a team used data from a combination of satellites to identify what is causing these powerful emissions. The answer appears to be charged ions surfing on a kind of wave.

July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

This is the View From Juno During its Flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter

Visualizations shape how we perceive space exploration. Whether it’s the Pale Blue Dot, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, Earthrise, or any other myriad images captured as part of this great endeavor, they all help inspire the next generation of explorers. Now, with advances in image capture and processing technology, we can finally start to take the next step in those visualizations – video. Ingenuity was recently captured on video during its first flight a few months ago. And this week, NASA released a breathtaking video of Juno’s view of Jupiter and Ganymede, one of its moons, as it flew past the gas giant.

July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 by Matt Williams

What’s Next for Blue Origin After Today’s Successful Flight?

Early this morning, from their Launch Site One facility in West Texas, Blue Origin made history as it conducted the first crewed flight of its New Shepard launch vehicle. The crew consisted of four commercial astronauts: Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aerospace pioneer Wally Funk, and 18-year old student from The Netherlands Oliver Daemon.

July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Blue Origin Successfully Launches the Oldest and Youngest Person to Ever go to Space (oh, and Jeff Bezos too)

Screenshot from Blue Origin live feed of their first human flight, showing Wally Funk emerging from the capsule.

On the anniversary of the first Moon landing, Blue Origin became the second commercial space company in just nine days to send people just past the edge of space. During the seemingly flawless 10 minute and 10 second flight, the four passengers on board the New Shepard rocket whooped with glee and exhilaration. The crew included Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, and the oldest and youngest people to ever fly to space.

Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pioneering female aviator and member of the so-called “Mercury 13” women astronaut-hopefuls made the flight, along with Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch physics student.

July 19, 2021July 19, 2021 by Matt Williams

Good News! NASA Announces that they have Fixed Hubble!

Will China's new space telescope out-perform the Hubble? Image: — The Hubble Space Telescope. Image: NASA

Update: Hubble took its first picture since it went into safe mode on June 13th! More info here.

On Sunday, June 13^th, the Hubble Space Telescope gave the astronomical community a fright when its payload computer suddenly stopped working. This prompted the main computer to put the telescope and its scientific instruments into safe mode. What followed was many tense weeks as the operations team for the HST tried to figure out what the source of the problem was and come up with a strategy for turning Hubble back on.

On Friday, July 17th, after more than a month of checking, re-checking, and attempted restarts, the operations team for Hubble identified the root of the problem and restored power to the telescope’s hardware and all of its instruments. Science operations can now resume, and the pioneering space telescope that gave us over thirty years of dedicated astronomy, cosmology, and astrophysics, still has some life in her!