Universe Today

July 6, 2021July 6, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

NASA is Testing out new Composite Materials for Building Lightweight Solar Sail Supports

Space exploration is driven by technology – sometimes literally in the case of propulsion technologies. Solar sails are one of those propulsion technologies that has been getting a lot of attention lately. They have some obvious advantages, such as not requiring fuel, and their ability to last almost indefinitely. But they have some disadvantages too, not the least of which is how difficult they are to deploy in space. Now, a team from NASA’s Langley Research Center has developed a novel time of composite boom that they believe can help solve that weakness of solar sails, and they have a technology demonstration mission coming up next year to prove it.

July 6, 2021July 6, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers see an Accretion Disk Where Planets are About to Form

Planet formation is notoriously difficult to study. Not only does the process take millions of years, making it impossible to observe in real time, there are myriad factors that play into it, making it difficult to distinguish cause and effect. What we do know is that planets form from features known as protoplanetary disks, which are made up of gas and dust surrounding young stars. And now a team using ALMA have found a star system that has a protoplanetary disk and enough variability to help them nail down some details of how exactly the process of planet formation works.

July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Hawking Made a Prediction About Black Holes, and Physicists Just Confirmed it

Computer simulation of plasma near a black hole. Credit: Hotaka Shiokawa / EHT

On its own, a black hole is remarkably easy to describe. The only observable properties a black hole has are its mass, its electric charge (usually zero), and its rotation, or spin. It doesn’t matter how a black hole forms. In the end, all black holes have the same general structure. Which is odd when you think about it. Throw enough iron and rock together and you get a planet. Throw together hydrogen and helium, and you can make a star. But you could throw together grass cuttings, bubble gum, and old Harry Potter books, and you would get the same kind of black hole that you’d get if you just used pure hydrogen.

July 4, 2021July 4, 2021 by Matt Williams

Unfortunately, There are Other Viable Explanations for the Subsurface Lakes on Mars

Mars’ south polar ice cap. Credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin /

Ever since 1971, when the Mariner 9 probe surveyed the surface of Mars, scientists have theorized that there might be subsurface ice beneath the southern polar ice cap on Mars. In 2004, the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter further confirmed this theory when its Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument detected what looked like water ice at a depth of 3.7 km (2.3 mi) beneath the surface.

These findings were very encouraging since they indicated that there could still be sources of liquid water on Mars where life could survive. Unfortunately, after reviewing the MARSIS data, a team of researchers led from Arizona State University (ASU) has proposed an alternative explanation. As they indicated in a recent study, the radar reflections could be the result of clays, metal-bearing minerals, or saline ice beneath the surface.

July 3, 2021July 3, 2021 by Matt Williams

Bad News, Life Probably can’t Exist on Venus. Good News, it Could be in Jupiter’s Clouds

Jupiter from Juno Perijove 29 - NASA/JPL/Kevin Gil

For decades, scientists engaged in the search for life in the Universe (aka. astrobiology) have focused on searching for life on other Earth-like planets. These included terrestrial (aka. rocky) planets beyond our Solar System (extrasolar planets) and ones here at home. Beyond Earth, Mars is considered to be the most habitable planet next to Earth, and scientists have also theorized that life could exist (in microbial form) in the cloud tops of Venus.

In all cases, a major focal point is whether or not planets have large bodies of water on their surfaces (or did in the past). However, a new study led by a research team from the UK and German (with support from NASA) has shown that the existence of life may have less to do with the quantity of water and more to with the presence of atmospheric water molecules. As a result, we may have better luck finding life on Jupiter’s turbulent cloud deck than Venus’.

July 3, 2021July 3, 2021 by Matthew Cimone

The Center of the Milky Way is the Most Likely Place to Find a Galactic Civilization

Composite image of the Milky Way's core created by Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra telescopes. Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/D.Wang et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC/S.Stolovy

Aim for the Center

The Milky Way is 13 BILLION years old. Some of our Galaxy’s oldest stars were born near the beginning of the Universe itself. During all these eons of time, we know at least one technological civilization has been born – US!

But if the Galaxy is so ancient, and we know it can create life, why haven’t we heard from anybody else? If another civilization was just 0.1% of the Galaxy’s age older than we are, they would be millions of years further along than us and presumably more advanced. If we are already on the cusp of sending life to other worlds, shouldn’t the Milky Way be teeming with alien ships and colonies by now?

Maybe. But it’s also possible that we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Recent computer simulations by Jason T. Wright et al suggest that the best place to look for ancient space-faring civilizations might be the core of the Galaxy, a relatively unexplored target in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

Animation showing the settlement of the galaxy. White points are unsettled stars, magenta spheres are settled stars, and white cubes represent a settlement ship in transit. The spiral structure formed is due to galactic shear as the settlement wave expands. Once the Galaxy’s center is reached, the rate of colonization increases dramatically. Credit: Wright et al

July 2, 2021July 2, 2021 by Matt Williams

NASA Continues to Try and Rescue Failing Hubble

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

Things are not looking very good for the Hubble Space Telescope right now. On Sunday, June 13^th, the telescope’s payload computer suddenly stopped working, prompting the main computer to put the telescope into safe mode. While the telescope itself and its science instruments remain in working order, science operations have been suspended until the operations team can figure out how to get the payload computer back online.

While attempting to restart the computer, the operations team has also tried to trace the issue to specific components in the payload computer and switch to their backup modules. As of June 30th, the team began looking into the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) and the Power Control Unit (PCU). Meanwhile, NASA is busy preparing and testing procedures to switch to backup hardware if either of these components are the culprit.

July 2, 2021July 2, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

A Small Satellite With a Solar Sail Could Catch up With an Interstellar Object

When Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever observed passing through the Solar System, was discovered in 2017, it exhibited some unexpected properties that left astronomers scratching their heads. Its elongated shape, lack of a coma, and the fact that it changed its trajectory were all surprising, leading to several competing theories about its origin: was it a hydrogen iceberg exhibiting outgassing, or maybe an extraterrestrial solar sail (sorry folks, not likely) on a deep-space journey? We may never know the answer, because Oumuamua was moving too fast, and was observed too late, to get a good look.

It may be too late for Oumuamua, but we could be ready for the next strange interstellar visitor if we wanted to. A spacecraft could be designed and built to catch such an object at a moment’s notice. The idea of an interstellar interceptor like this has been floated by various experts, and funding to study such a concept has even been granted through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. But how exactly would such an interceptor work?

July 1, 2021July 1, 2021 by Matt Williams

To Take the Best Direct Images of Exoplanets With Space Telescopes, we’re Going to Want Starshades

Between 2021 and 2024, the James Webb (JWST) and Nancy Grace Roman (RST) space telescopes will be launched to space. As the successors to multiple observatories (like Hubble, Kepler, Spitzer, and others), these missions will carry out some of the most ambitious astronomical surveys ever mounted. This will range from the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets to investigating the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

In addition to advanced imaging capabilities and high sensitivity, both instruments also carry coronagraphs – instruments that suppress obscuring starlight so exoplanets can be detected and observed directly. According to a selection of papers recently published by the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS), we’re going to need more of these instruments if we truly want to really study exoplanets in detail.

July 1, 2021July 1, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Detected a Black Hole-Neutron Star Merger, and Then Another Just 10 Days Later

An artistic image inspired by a black hole-neutron star merger event. Credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav/Swinburne

The interior of a neutron star is perhaps the strangest state of matter in the universe. The material is squeezed so tightly that atoms collapse into a sea of nuclear material. We still aren’t sure whether nucleons maintain their integrity in this state, or whether they dissolve into quark matter. To really understand neutron star matter we need to pull it apart to see how it works and to do that takes a black hole. This is why astronomers are excited about the recent discovery of not one, but two mergers between a neutron star and a black hole.