Space and astronomy news
Landslides bringing you down?
Landslides can be found all across our own planet Earth, on all seven continents plus the ocean floors. Similar large mass movements have been spotted around the Solar System on rocky worlds, including our companion, the Moon.
This image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) shows an example of lunar landslides, with translational slides of regolith on the walls of Kepler Crater.
Continue reading “This is a Landslide… on the Moon”
The gravitational dance between massive bodies, tidal forces occur because the pull of gravity from an object depends upon your distance from it. So, for example, the side of Earth near the Moon is pulled a bit more than the side opposite the Moon. As a result, the Earth stretches and flattens a bit. On Earth, this effect is subtle but strong enough to give the oceans high and low tides. Near a black hole, however, tidal forces can be much stronger, creating an effect known as spaghettification.
Continue reading “Astronomers Watch a Star Get Spaghettified by a Black Hole”
The search for exoplanets has revealed types of planets that are nothing like the worlds in our own Solar System. One such type is the hot-Jupiter. They’re gas giants like Jupiter that orbit their host star very closely. That proximity raises their temperatures to extreme heights.
Hot-Jupiters can be hot enough to vaporize metals, making their atmospheres un-Earthlike. A team of astronomers examining one exoplanet has found 7 different gaseous metals in its atmosphere.
Continue reading “An Exoplanet So Hot There Are 7 Different Kinds of Gaseous Metals in its Atmosphere”
Comet P1 NEOWISE will make a brief dawn appearance for northern hemisphere observers in late October/early November.
So, how about Comet F3 NEOWISE this summer? 2020 saw the rapid appearance of one of the best northern hemisphere comets in recent memory, and the first good comet for us up north for the 21st century, as F3 NEOWISE graced early morning skies, and transitioned to a fine dusk apparition for an encore performance in the last half of July.
F3 NEOWISE reminded us that all comets are worth keeping tabs on… just in case. But wait, there’s more. The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) caught another intriguing object on August 2, 2020 as part of its extended sky survey mission: Comet C/2020 P1 NEOWISE is set to become a fine binocular object in late October and early November.
Continue reading “Comet P1 NEOWISE Makes a Brief Late October Appearance”
REMINDER: – Universe Today will be hosting an interview with Dr. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, co-author of the research featured in this article, on Thursday October 15th, 2020 at 8:30am PT. Click the video below to watch live or to see the recorded stream afterward
Out Earthing Earth
What planet is this?
If you said Hoth, that’s a good guess. But, it’s actually Earth depicted in one of two known “snowball” states. The entire planet’s surface was locked beneath glacial ice during the Cryogenian Period 650 million years ago and during the Huronian Glaciation 2 – 2.4 billion years ago.
Continue reading “The Search for Superhabitable Planets. Worlds Even More Habitable Than Earth”
Wormholes are incredibly fascinating objects, but also completely hypothetical. We simply don’t know if they can truly exist in our universe. But new theoretical insights are showing how we may be able to detect a wormhole – from a spray of high-energy particles emitted at the moment of its formation.
Continue reading “How to See What’s on the Other Side of a Wormhole Without Actually Traveling Through it”
Gravitational waves are produced by all moving masses, from the Earth’s wobble around the Sun to your motion as you go about your daily life. But at the moment, those gravitational waves are too small to be observed. Gravitational observatories such as LIGO and VIRGO can only see the strong gravitational waves produced by merging stellar-mass black holes.
In less than four years, NASA plans to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon as part of Project Artemis. This long-awaited return to the Moon is to be followed by the construction of the Lunar Gateway, the Artemis Base Camp, and a program of “sustainable lunar exploration.” The creation of an enduring human presence on the Moon will also create many opportunities for exciting scientific research.
For example, astronomers want to conduct radio astronomy on the far side of the Moon, where telescopes could probe the earliest period of the Universe free of terrestrial radio interference. Taking this a step further, a team of astronomers recently recommended that a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon (or in lunar orbit) could aid in another important area of research: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)!
Continue reading “The Moon is the Perfect Spot for SETI”
In the coming decades, multiple space agencies plan to return astronauts to the Moon (or to send them there for the first time) and mount the first crewed missions to Mars. Between that and the explosive growth we are seeing in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), there is no doubt that we live in an era of renewed space exploration. It’s therefore understandable that old and new concepts for interstellar travel are also being considered these days.
Right now, a considerable focus is on light sails that generate their own propulsion by radiation pressure or are accelerated by lasers. These concepts present all kinds of technical and engineering challenges. Luckily, Coryn Bailer-Jones of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) recently conducted a study where he argues for a “Sun Diver” light sail that will pick up all the speed it needs by diving close to the Sun.
Continue reading “Want the Fastest Solar Sail? Drop it Into the Sun First”
In the coming years, a number of next-generation observatories and arrays will become operational. These facilities will make major contributions to multiple fields of astronomy: exploring the mysteries of the early Universe, studying gravitational waves, determining the role of dark matter and dark energy in cosmic evolution, and directly image “Earth-like” exoplanets.
Unfortunately, this revolutionary development in astronomy may be going up against another major project: the creation of mega-constellations. Because of this, the SKA Organization (SKAO) – which oversees the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) – is insisting that corrective measures be taken so satellites won’t interfere with its radio observations once it’s operational.
Continue reading “Radio Astronomers are Worried About Mega-Constellations and the Square Kilometer Array”