Space and astronomy news
Antares, the angry red eye of the constellation Taurus the bull, is a red supergiant star near the end of its life. And astronomers with the VLA and ALMA have realized that it’s much, much bigger than we ever imagined.
Continue reading “Antares is a supergiant star that would fill the Solar System beyond Mars, but its atmosphere is 12 times bigger than that”
To date, astronomers have discovered 4,164 extrasolar planets in 3,085 star systems, with another 5,347 awaiting confirmation. With this many planets available for study, researchers have been able to apply new constraints on how likely habitable planets are. In fact, the latest estimates say there could be 6 billion in the Milky Way alone! Understandably, these discoveries have renewed interest in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
But whereas the search for habitable planets is focused on finding evidence of biological processes (aka. “biosignatures”), SETI has historically been focused on evidence of technological activity – aka. “technosignatures.” With a grant from NASA, researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the University of Rochester are gearing up for a new study that will look for different kinds of potential technosignatures.
Continue reading “A New Search for Evidence of Technological Civilizations in the Milky Way”
We puny humans think we can accelerate particles? Look how proud we are of the Large Hadron Collider. But any particle accelerator we build will pale in comparison to Quasars, nature’s champion accelerators.
Those things are beasts.
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On Sept. 15th, 2017, NASA’s Cassini Orbiter concluded its mission by diving into Saturn’s atmosphere. Over the course of the 13 years it spent studying the Saturn system, it revealed a great deal about this gas giant and its largest moon, Titan. In the coming years, scientists are eager to send another mission to Titan to follow up on Cassini and get a better look at its surface features, methane lakes, and other curious properties.
These include the morphological features in the northern polar region that are strikingly similar to volcanic features here on Earth. According to a recent study by the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), these features could be evidence of cryovolcanism that continues to this day. These findings are the latest evidence that Titan has an interior ocean and internal heating mechanisms, which could also mean the planet harbors life in his interior.
Continue reading “There are Features on Titan That Really Look Like Volcanic Craters”
Within our Solar Systems, there are several moons where astronomers believe life could be found. This includes Ceres, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, Titan, and maybe Dione, Mimas, Triton, and the dwarf planet Pluto. These “ocean worlds” are believed to have abundant liquid water in their interiors, as well as organic molecules and tidal heating – the basic ingredients for life.
Which raises the all-important question: are similar moons to be found in other star systems? This is the question NASA planetary scientist Dr. Lynnae C. Quick and her team from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center sought to address. In a recent study, Quick and her colleagues examined a sample of exoplanet systems and found that ocean worlds are likely to be very common in our galaxy.
Continue reading “Planets With Large Oceans are Probably Common in the Milky Way”
Six billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way? If true, that’s astounding. But the number needs some context.
The Milky Way has up 400 billion stars. So even if there are six billion Earth-like planets, they’re still spread far and wide throughout our vast galaxy.
Continue reading “Astronomers Estimate There Are 6 Billion Earth-Like Planets in the Milky Way”
Is it time to head back to Neptune and its moon Triton? It might be. After all, we have some unfinished business there.
It’s been 30 years since NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the gas giant and its largest moon, and that flyby posed more questions than it answered. Maybe we’ll get some answers in 2038, when the positions of Jupiter, Neptune, and Triton will be just right for a mission.
Continue reading “NASA Thinks it’s Time to Return to Neptune With its Trident Mission”
Dark matter is notoriously difficult to detect. So difficult that we haven’t detected it yet. Evidence for dark matter can be seen in everything from the warping of light near galaxies to the way galaxies cluster together. We are pretty sure dark matter is real, but we also know it can’t be made of any type of particle we currently know. But a new study has found some interesting data that could be evidence of dark matter, or not.
Continue reading “Japanese Dark Matter Detector is Seeing a “Surprising Excess of Events””
Solar power has become a focal point of the battle to mitigate climate change. The potential of solar power is massive – Earth receives as much solar energy in an hour as all of humanity uses in a year. Even with that much energy hitting the Earth, it is only a tiny fraction of the sun’s overall output. Some of that other solar energy hits other planets, but most is just lost to the void of deep space.
There are a number of groups that are leveraging various technologies to capture some of that lost energy. One of the most common technologies being pursued is the idea of the power satellite. Recently, one of those groups at America’s Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) hit a milestone in the development of power satellite technology by launching their Photovoltaic RF Antenna Module (PRAM) test satellite.
Continue reading “The Navy is Testing Beaming Solar Power in Space”This week we are joined by Dana Backman, an astrophysicist with a Ph.D. from the University of Hawai’i. He was an infrared astronomy researcher at Kitt Peak Observatory and NASA Ames, then a professor of physics & astronomy at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Dana has also taught introductory astronomy at Santa Clara U., in Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Continue reading “Weekly Space Hangout: June 17, 2020 — Dana Backman, Director of NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors”