Universe Today

May 6, 2019May 6, 2019 by Nancy Atkinson

Climate Change Q & A with Bear Grylls

Bear Grylls isn’t a climate scientist, but in his travels around the world as an adventurer, survivalist and host of numerous nature shows, he has witnessed firsthand our planet’s changing climate.

This is especially true in a new series Grylls hosts and narrates on the National Geographic channel called “Hostile Planet.” While the show does not focus on climate change per se, it doesn’t shy away from portraying how our world is rapidly changing and how those changes affect various animal species.

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 by Matt Williams

Starlink’s Satellites Will be Orbiting at a Much Lower Altitude, Reducing the Risks of Space Junk

Still image from Hadley's simulation of the Starlink satellite constellation. Credit: Mark Hadley

Among Elon Musk’s many plans for the future, one of the more ambitious has been the creation of a constellation of satellites that will offer broadband internet access to the entire world. Known as “Starlink”, the company’s long-term plan is to deploy over 12,000 internet satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by the mid-2020s.

Despite criticism and dismissal, Musk and SpaceX have taken some major steps in recent years to get the ball rolling on this proposal. And according to a recently-released official statement from the company, mass production is well underway and the first batch of operational satellites are already in Florida awaiting their scheduled May 2019 launch.

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 by Matt Williams

16 Years of Hubble Images Come Together in this one Picture Containing 265,000 Galaxies

This Hubble Space Telescope image represents the largest, most comprehensive "history book" of galaxies in the universe.The image, a combination of nearly 7,500 separate Hubble exposures, represents 16 years' worth of observations.The ambitious endeavor, called the Hubble Legacy Field, includes several Hubble deep-field surveys, including the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the deepest view of the universe. The wavelength range stretches from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, capturing all the features of galaxy assembly over time.The image mosaic presents a wide portrait of the distant universe and contains roughly 265,000 galaxies. They stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the universe's birth in the big bang. The tiny, faint, most distant galaxies in the image are similar to the seedling villages from which today's great galaxy star-cities grew. The faintest and farthest galaxies are just one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.The wider view contains 100 times as many galaxies as in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, taken in 2004. The new portrait, a mosaic of multiple snapshots, covers almost the width of the full Moon. Lying in this region is the XDF, which penetrated deeper into space than this legacy field view. However, the XDF field covers less than one-tenth of the full Moon's diameter. Credits: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and D. Magee (University of California, Santa Cruz), K. Whitaker (University of Connecticut), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), P. Oesch (University of Geneva) and the Hubble Legacy Field team

Even after almost three decades of faithful service, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to operate and provide breathtaking images of the cosmos. As one of NASA’s Great Observatories, its observations of distant galaxies, exoplanets, and the expansion of the Universe have had a revolutionary impact on astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology.

Hubble’s latest contribution comes in the form of a deep-sky mosaic image that was constructed using 16 years’ worth of observations. Known as the “Hubble Legacy Field“, this mosaic is being described as the largest and most comprehensive “history book” of galaxies. All told, it contains roughly 265,000 galaxies that date back to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 by Evan Gough

The Global Dust Storm that Ended Opportunity Helped Teach us how Mars Lost its Water

Mars in 2001. On the left, no global dust storm. On the right, global dust storm. Image Credit: By Jim Secosky picked out this NASA image NASA/JPL/MSSS - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA03170_fig1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65809875

The enduring, and maybe endearing, mystery around Mars is what happened to its water? We can say with near-certainty now, thanks to the squad of Mars rovers and orbiters, that Mars was once much wetter. In fact that planet may have had an ocean that covered a third of the surface. But what happened to it all?

As it turns out, the global dust storms that envelop Mars, and in particular the most recent one that felled the Opportunity rover, may offer an explanation.

May 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by Evan Gough

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Flies Again, a Week Before Their Mysterious Announcement

Today’s breed of billionaire space entrepreneurs likes to keep us guessing, don’t they? Mr. Elon Musk is famous for announcing partial plans on Twitter, then leaving us to cajole the details out of him. Now, Jim Bezos, Amazon founder and Blue Origin visionary, is making us guess what an upcoming mysterious announcement might mean, all on the tails of another successful flight for New Shepard.

May 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by Matt Williams

When the Impact that Created the Moon Happened, the early Earth was still a ball of magma

The chemicals that made life possible on Earth may have come from another planet that collided with Earth, forming the Moon. Image Credit: Rice University

Since the late 19th century, scientists have struggled to explain the origin of the Moon. While scientists have long-theorized that it and the Earth have a common origin, the questions of how and when has proven to be elusive. For instance, the general consensus today is that an impact with a Mars-sized object (Theia) led to the formation of the Earth-Moon System shortly after the formation of the planets (aka. the Giant Impact Hypothesis).

However, simulations of this impact have shown that the Moon would have formed out of material primarily from the impacting object. This is not borne out by the evidence, though, which shows that the Moon is composed of the same material Earth is. Luckily, a new study by a team of scientists from Japan and the US has offered an explanation for the discrepancy: the collision took place when Earth was still composed of hot magma.

May 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by Matt Williams

Dark Matter Detector Finds the Rarest Event Ever Seen in the Universe

Since the 1960s, scientists have theorized that the Universe is filled with a mysterious, invisible mass. Known as “dark matter“, this mass is estimated to make up roughly 85% of the matter in the Universe and a quarter of its energy density. While this mass has been indirectly observed and studied, all attempts at determining its true nature have so far failed.

To address this, multiple experiments are being carried out that rely on immensely sophisticated instruments. One of these, called XENON, recently observed a process that had previously avoided multiple attempts at detection. These results could help scientists to improve their understanding of neutrinos, which some scientists believe is what dark matter is made up of.

May 2, 2019May 5, 2019 by Evan Gough

It Looks Like LIGO/Virgo Have Detected a Black Hole Eating a Neutron Star. For the First Time Ever

A new signal detected by LIGO/Virgo may be the so-called ‘holy grail’ of astrophysics: the merger of a neutron star and a black hole. They’ve discovered pairs of black holes merging, and pairs of neutron stars merging, but until now, not a neutron star-black hole pair.

May 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by David Dickinson

Keep an Eye Out for the Eta Aquarid Meteors This Weekend

Never heard of the Eta Aquarid meteors? 2019 offers a good chance to check out this normally obscure meteor shower.

May 1, 2019May 1, 2019 by Evan Gough

The World’s Space Agencies are Responding to a Hypothetical Asteroid Impact. You Can Watch it all Unfold Online.

One of the many PHOs (Potentially Hazardous Objects) that we're keeping an eye on. Image Credit: NASA

Remember when Orson Welles’ 1938 radio show called “The War of the Worlds” fooled people into thinking that Earth was actually being invaded? That was fun.

Now, the ESA (European Space Agency) is tempting fate by live-tweeting the hypothetical approach of the hypothetical asteroid 2019PDC and hypothetically planning a hypothetical response to this hypothetically destructive asteroid. In their hypothetical scenario, 2019 PDC has a 1 in 10 chance of striking Earth in 2029. And you can follow the action on Twitter.