Universe Today

March 18, 2021March 18, 2021 by Ralph Crewe

Oumuamua is Probably Very Similar to Pluto, Just From Another Star System

Artist's Concept of Oumuamua. Credit: William Hartmann

In 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) made history with the detection of a mysterious object called Oumuamua (Hawaiian for scout). Unlike countless other small objects that Pan-STARRS had detected before, Oumuamua seemed to originate from beyond the solar system. The first known interstellar object detected in the solar system, Oumuamua, with its odd trajectory, strange shape, and unusual acceleration, led to a flurry of activity in the astronomical community and an avalanche of wild claims of extraterrestrial space ships from various fringes of the media. A pair of papers published by Alan Jackson and Steven Desch of Arizona State University earlier this month reveals the best fit model for the identity of our extrasolar visitor. No, it isn’t aliens, but it’s pretty spectacular. Oumuamua seems to be a shard of a Pluto-like planet from another solar system!

March 18, 2021December 11, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Perseverance’s Landing Seen in Full Color, Thanks to Citizen Science

Incoming! Mars 2020 - Lander Vision System Camera shows the view of Jezero Crater from above. Colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

A month on, we’re all still buzzing about the Perseverance rover’s perfect landing in Jezero Crater on Mars, back on February 18, 2021. Over the past few weeks, NASA has released more stunning imagery and footage of the landing, and since then the world-wide cadre of citizen scientists and image editing enthusiasts have been springing into action to enhance and augment all the incredible scenes captured by Perseverance’s collection of high-resolution cameras.

March 18, 2021March 18, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Lightning Strikes Helped Life get an Early Start on Earth

So, you want to create life? You’re going to need some ingredients first. On Earth four billion years ago, you might find some of those ingredients in the impact craters of asteroid strikes (as long as you don’t get blown up in the blast yourself). A safer place to look, according to new research from the University of Leeds, might be in the sites of lightning strikes. Lightning is less destructive, more common, and creates equally useful minerals out of which you can build your early, single cellular life forms.

March 18, 2021March 18, 2021 by David Dickinson

Tracking Satellites Through GEOSat Eclipse Season

You can spot ‘GEOSat’ satellites in far-flung orbits… if you know exactly where and when to look.

Watch the sky long enough, and you’re bound to see one.

Seasoned observers are very familiar with seeing satellites in low Earth orbit, as these modern artificial sky apparitions lit by sunlight grace the dawn or dusk sky. Occasionally, you might even see a flare from a passing satellite, as a reflective solar panel catches the last rays of sunlight passing overhead just right…

March 17, 2021March 17, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Frosty Sand Dunes on Mars

Frosty dunes on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona.

Sand dunes on Mars are fascinating. They shift and move in different ways than they do on Earth, and they can grow to much more immense sizes than on our own planet. Several conditions contribute to the gigantic sand dunes and large fields of dunes that can form on the Red Planet, including its low gravity and air pressure.

Seasonal changes affect the Martian sand dunes, as well.

March 16, 2021March 16, 2021 by Matt Williams

A Titan Mission Could Refuel on Site and Return a Sample to Earth

Visualization of sample return launch from Titan. Credits: Katherine Miller

This decade promises to be an exciting time for space exploration! Already, the Perseverance rover landed on Mars and began conducting science operations. Later this year, the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), and Lucy spacecraft (the first mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids) will launch. Before the decade is out, missions will also be sent to Europa and Titan to extend the search for signs of life in our Solar System.

Currently, NASA’s plan for exploring Titan (Saturn’s largest moon) is to send a nuclear-powered quadcopter to explore the atmosphere and surface (named Dragonfly). However, another possibility that was presented this year as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program is to send a sample-return vehicle with Dragonfly that could fuel up using liquid methane harvested from Titan’s surface.

March 16, 2021March 16, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

It Turns Out That the World’s Oldest Impact Crater Isn’t an Impact Crater

In early 2012, an international research team surveying parts of southwestern Greenland announced that they had discovered the oldest impact crater ever discovered on Earth, estimated at 3.3 billion years old. Now, new research shows that the strange geological feature – known as the Maniitsoq structure – is probably the result of Earthly geological processes, rather than a meteorite impact.

March 16, 2021March 16, 2021 by Ralph Crewe

Do Supermassive Black Holes Come From Supermassive Stars?

Colors reveal complex interactions of oxygen abundance driving a supernova in a 55,000 solar mass star.

The gargantuan supermassive black holes at the center of seemingly every galaxy are among the most fascinating and extreme objects known to modern astronomy and cosmology. With masses well in excess of millions, and sometimes billions that of our Sun, it is nearly impossible to comprehend the extraordinary size of these celestial leviathans. One of the great mysteries of modern astrophysics is answering how such enormous objects got started. In a press release published on March 10th, researchers propose that the origins of supermassive black holes may lie with long since extinct, first-generation stars with masses far above the most massive stars in the modern Universe. Not only do they propose such giants existed, but also they suggest that they’ve found a way to detect a particular subset of these stars. This breakthrough is thanks to our old friend, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

March 15, 2021March 15, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Wormholes Could Allow Travel Across the Universe, as Long as Your Spacecraft is Microscopic

Artist rendering of a wormhole connecting two galaxies. Credit: Davide and Paolo Salucci

In my last post, I talked about the idea of warp drive and whether it might one day be possible. Today I’ll talk about another faster-than-light trick: wormholes.

March 14, 2021March 14, 2021 by Matt Williams

There Should be About 7 Interstellar Objects Passing Through the Inner Solar System Every Year

A Hubble image of Comet 2IBorisov from October 2019. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA) - https://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hvi/uploads/image_file/image_attachment/31897/STSCI-H-p1953a-f-1106x1106.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83146132

In October 19th, 2017, the first interstellar object ever detected flew past Earth on its way out of the Solar System. Less than two years later, a second object was detected, an easily-identified interstellar comet designated as 2I/Borisov. The appearance of these two objects verified earlier theoretical work that concluded that interstellar objects (ISOs) regularly enter our Solar System.

The question of how often this happens has been the subject of considerable research since then. According to a new study led by researchers from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is), roughly 7 ISOs enter our Solar System every year and follow predictable orbits while they are here. This research could allow us to send a spacecraft to rendezvous with one of these objects in the near future.