Universe Today

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Matt Williams

You’re Looking at Spiral Galaxies, Already Forming When the Universe was Just a Baby

Credit: Michele Ginolfi (ALPINE collaboration); ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

One of the most exciting developments in astronomy today is the way that advanced arrays and techniques are letting astronomers see farther back in time to the earliest periods of the Universe. In so doing, astronomers hope to get a closer at the earliest galaxies to learn more about how and when they first emerged – which can tell us a great deal more about their subsequent evolution.

This was the purpose of the ALMA Large Program to INvestigate C+ at Early times (ALPINE), a multiwavelength survey that examined galaxies that were around when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old. With funding provided by NASA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the ALPINE collaboration analyzed this data and learned some interesting things about the early evolution of galaxies.

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

Terrible Luck. The Only Person Ever Killed by a Meteorite – Back in 1888

The Chelyabinsk impactor vapor trail. — This image of a vapor trail was captured about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the Chelyabinsk meteor event, about one minute after the house-sized asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere. Credits: Alex Alishevskikh

What are your chances of getting smacked – and killed — by a meteorite? One astronomer put the odds of death by space rock at 1 in 700,000 in a lifetime, while others say it’s more like 1 in 1,600,000.

Computing the probability for such an untimely death is difficult because this type of event is so rare. In fact, even though thousands of meteorites are thought to hit the ground each year, in looking through the annals of meteorite history, there seemed to be no evidence that anyone had ever been killed by a meteorite. Until now.

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Evan Gough

China’s First Mars Lander is Going to be Called “Tianwen”

Picture released on Aug 23, 2016 by the lunar probe and space project center of Chinese State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence shows the concept portraying what the Mars rover and lander would look like. [Photo/Xinhua]

Friday April 24th was China’s “Space Day,” celebrated on the 50 year anniversary of their first satellite launch. This past Friday, China marked the occasion with the announcement of the name for their first Mars Lander: Tianwen.

According to China’s National Space Administration (CNSA), Tianwen translates to “Quest for Heavenly Truth.”

April 29, 2020April 30, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

How Do You Weigh The Universe?

How do you weigh everything in the cosmos? Credit: ESO/T. Preibisch

The weight of the universe (technically the mass of the universe) is a difficult thing to measure. To do it you need to count not just stars and galaxies, but dark matter, diffuse clouds of dust and even wisps of neutral hydrogen in intergalactic space. Astronomers have tried to weigh the universe for more than a century, and they are still finding ways to be more accurate.

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Evan Gough

There Might Be Dust Devils On Titan Too

Artist's concept of a dust storm on Titan. Credits: IPGP/Labex UnivEarthS/University Paris Diderot – C. Epitalon & S. Rodriguez

Saturn’s moon Titan is alone among the Solar System’s moons. It’s the only one with any atmosphere to speak of. Other moons may have thin, largely insignificant atmospheres, like Ganymede with its potential oxygen atmosphere. But Titan’s atmosphere is dense, and rich in nitrogen.

A new study shows that Titan’s atmosphere and winds might produce dust devils similar to Earth’s.

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

How Will Covid-19 affect the Future of Science?

The domes of the two first SPECULOOS telescopes, shortly after their installation in November 2016 at ESO's Paranal Observatory. The SPECULOOS Southern Observatory is designed to detect terrestrial exoplanets around nearby ultra cool stars and brown dwarfs. The VLT is visible in the background of this image.

The full ramifications of the recent novel coronavirus pandemic are not yet known, and probably won’t be known or even felt for quite some time. Entire industries have been shifted and shuttered over the course of only a few tumultuous weeks due to Covid-19. Some industries and professions have been able to adapt quickly, some have had to close down or to send their workers home, while others are faltering and collapsing.

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Can wormholes act like time machines?

Artist illustration of a spacecraft passing through a wormhole to a distant galaxy. Image credit: NASA.

Time travel into the past is a tricky thing. We know of no single law of physics that absolutely forbids it, and yet we can’t find a way to do it, and if we could do it, the possibility opens up all sorts of uncomfortable paradoxes (like what would happen if you killed your own grandfather).

But there could be a way to do it. We just need to find a wormhole first.

April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 by Matt Williams

Fomalhaut’s Planet Has Gone Missing, But it Might Have Been Something Even More Interesting

Planets don’t simply disappear. And yet, that appears to be what happened to Fomalhaut b (aka. Dagon), an exoplanet candidate located 25 light-years from Earth. Observed for the first time by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004, then confirmed by follow-up observations in 2008 and 2012, this exoplanet candidate was the first to be detected in visible wavelengths (i.e. the Direct Imaging Method.)

Over time, this candidate got fainter and wider until it disappeared from sight altogether. This led to all kinds of speculation, which included the possibility of a collision that reduced the planet to debris. Recently, a team of astronomers from the University of Arizona has suggested another possibility – Fomalhaut b was never a planet at all, but an expanding cloud of dust from two planetesimals that smashed together.

April 28, 2020June 17, 2020 by Susie Murph

Weekly Space Hangout: April 29, 2020 – Alcohol in Space with Chris Carberry

Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)

Dr. Brian Koberlein (BrianKoberlein.com / @BrianKoberlein)

Dave Dickinson (www.astroguyz.com / @astroguyz)

Alex Teachey (alexteachey.com /@alexteachey)

This week we are pleased to welcome Chris Carberry to the Weekly Space Hangout. Chris is CEO and Co-Founder of Explore Mars, Inc, and helped to turn that organization into one of the most influential space nonprofits in the world. Previous to his role with Explore Mars, Chris served as Executive Director of The Mars Society as well the Archivist of Modern Political Collections and Operations Manager at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Matt Williams

Now This is Progress! Starship Passes its Cryogenic Test and Doesn’t Explode

This weekend, SpaceX’s fourth Starship prototype (SN4) achieved a major milestone by passing the crucial cryogenic load test. This consisted of the prototype’s liquid oxygen and liquid methane tanks being filled with liquid nitrogen to see how they hold up when fully-pressurized. This test was vital since the three previous prototypes suffered structural failures and were lost during this exact same procedure.