Universe Today

June 17, 2021June 17, 2021 by Matt Williams

The Lunar Lantern Could be a Beacon for Humanity on the Moon

In October of 2024, NASA’s Artemis Program will return astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. In the years and decades that follow, multiple space agencies and commercial partners plan to build the infrastructure that will allow for a long-term human presence on the Moon. An important part of these efforts involves building habitats that can ensure the astronauts’ health, safety, and comfort in the extreme lunar environment.

This challenge has inspired architects and designers from all over the world to create innovative and novel ideas for lunar living. One of these is the Lunar Lantern, a base concept developed by ICON (an advanced construction company based in Austin, Texas) as part of a NASA-supported project to build a sustainable outpost on the Moon. This proposal is currently being showcased as part of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the La Biennale di Venezia museum in Venice, Italy.

June 17, 2021June 21, 2021 by Evan Gough

The Largest Rotating Objects in the Universe: Galactic Filaments Hundreds of Millions of Light-Years Long

Artist’s impression of cosmic filaments: huge bridges of galaxies and dark matter connect clusters of galaxies to each other. Galaxies are funnelled on corkscrew like orbits towards and into large clusters that sit at their ends. Their light appears blue-shifted when they move towards us, and red-shifted when they move away. Credit: AIP/ A. Khalatyan/ J. Fohlmeister

We’ve known for a while about the large-scale structure of the Universe. Galaxies reside in filaments hundreds of millions of light-years long, on a backbone of dark matter. And, where those filaments meet, there are galaxy clusters. Between them are massive voids, where galaxies are sparse. Now a team of astronomers in Germany and their colleagues in China and Estonia have made an intriguing discovery.

These massive filaments are rotating, and this kind of rotation on such a massive scale has never been seen before.

June 16, 2021June 16, 2021 by David Dickinson

Catch New Galactic Nova Herculis 2021 in Hercules the Hero

Now’s the time to catch Nova Herculis 2021, before it fades from view.

…And then, there were two. Fresh off of the eruption of Nova Cassiopeiae 2021 early this year, another galactic nova made itself known earlier this past weekend, as a ‘new star’ or nova flirted with naked eye visibility in the constellation Hercules the Hero on its border with Aquila the Eagle.

June 16, 2021June 16, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Black Holes don't Just Destroy, They Also Help With Star Formation

A simulation of gas within the Milky Way. Credit: TNG Collaboration/Dylan Nelson

Black holes are the most powerful destructive forces in the universe. They can rip apart a star and scatter its ashes out of the galaxy at nearly the speed of light. But these engines of destruction can also pave the way for new stars to form, as a new study in Nature shows.

June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by Matt Williams

CHIME Detected Over 500 Fast Radio Burst in its First Year, Providing new Clues to What’s Causing Them

CHIME consists of four metal "half-pipes", each one 100 meters long. Image Credit: CHIME/Andre Renard, Dunlap Institute.

Much like Dark Matter and Dark Energy, Fast Radio Burst (FRBs) are one of those crazy cosmic phenomena that continue to mystify astronomers. These incredibly bright flashes register only in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum, occur suddenly, and last only a few milliseconds before vanishing without a trace. As a result, observing them with a radio telescope is rather challenging and requires extremely precise timing.

Hence why the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in British Columbia launched the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) in 2017. Along with their partners at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Perimeter Institute, and multiple universities, CHIME detected more than 500 FRBs in its first year of operation (and more than 1000 since it commenced operations)!

June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by Evan Gough

NASA has Approved a Space Telescope That Will Scan the Skies for Dangerous Near-Earth Asteroids

An artist's illustration of the NEO Surveyor, a space telescope designed to detect and catalogue NEOs. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

A lot of the threats humanity faces come from ourselves. If we were listing them, we’d include tribalism, greed, and the fact that we’re evolved primates, and our brains have a lot in common with animal brains. Our animalistic brains subject us to many of the same destructive emotions and impulses that animals are subject to. We wage war and become embroiled in intergenerational conflicts. There are genocides, pogroms, doomed boatloads of migrants, and horrible mashups of all three.

Isn’t humanity fun?

But not all of the threats we face are as intractable as our internal ones. Some threats are external, and we can leverage our technologies and our knowledge of nature in the struggle against them. Case in point: asteroids.

June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Rare Triple Galaxy Merger With at Least Two Supermassive Black Holes

One of the best things about that universe is that there is so much to it. If you look hard enough, you can most likely find any combination of astronomical events happening. Not long ago we reported on research that found 7 separate instances of three galaxies colliding with one another. Now, a team led by Jonathan Williams of the University of Maryland has found another triple galaxy merging cluster, but this one might potentially have two active supermassive black holes, allowing astronomers to peer into the system dynamics of two of the universe’s most extreme objects running into one another.

June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Iridescent Clouds on Mars Seen by Curiosity

Laying on a grassy field staring at the cloud formations in the sky and coming up with harebrained ideas about their shapes is a common feature in childhood summers – at least as they’re portrayed in media. Someday that image might translate to a child laying on a sandy or rocky outcropping, looking up at the sky seeing iridescent, shimmering clouds in the sky. The biggest differences would be that the child would be looking through a visor, and those clouds would be on Mars. And Curiosity recently released some stunning images of what they might look like.

June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by Matt Williams

Blue Origin Auction Ends With a Closing Bid of $28 million

On July 20^th,, Blue Origin will conduct the first crewed launch of their New Shepard rocket, the reusable launch vehicle that will send small payloads and customers to space. In addition to Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark, the company announced that one of the seats was being left open for auction. On Saturday, June 12^th, the company announced that the auction had closed with a winning bid of $28 million USD.

June 14, 2021June 14, 2021 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Have Found the Perfect Exoplanet to Study Another World’s Atmosphere

An artist's rendering of TOI-1231 b, a Neptune-like planet about 90 light years away from Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has found a new planet, and the discovery of this sub-Neptune exoplanet has scientists excited about atmospheres. The combination of the planet’s size, its thick atmosphere, and its orbit around a small M-class star close to Earth provides researchers with an opportunity to learn more about exoplanet atmospheres. We’re getting better and better at finding exoplanets, and studying their atmospheres is the next step in understanding them as a whole.