Universe Today

April 20, 2024April 20, 2024 by Mark Thompson

What’s the Most Effective Way to Explore our Nearest Stars?

Project Starshot, an initiative sponsored by the Breakthrough Foundation, is intended to be humanity's first interstellar voyage. Credit: breakthroughinitiatives.org

It was 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first successful self-propelled flight. Launching themselves to history, they set the foundations for transatlantic flights, supersonic flight and perhaps even the exploration of the Solar System. Now we are on the precipice of travel among the stars but among the many ideas and theories, what is the ultimate and most effective way to explore our nearest stellar neighbours? After all, there are 10,000 stars within a region of 110 light years from Earth so there are plenty to choose from.

April 19, 2024May 18, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

Radiating Exoplanet Discovered in “Perfect Tidal Storm”

Artist’s illustration of HD 104067 b, which is the outermost exoplanet in the HD 104067 system, and responsible for potentially causing massive tidal energy on the innermost exoplanet candidate, TOI-6713.01. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Can tidal forces cause an exoplanet’s surface to radiate heat? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of international researchers used data collected from ground-based instruments to confirm the existence of a second exoplanet residing within the exoplanetary system, HD 104067, along with using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission to identify an additional exoplanet candidate, as well. What’s unique about this exoplanet candidate, which orbits innermost compared to the other two, is that the tidal forces exhibited from the outer two exoplanets are potentially causing the candidates’ surface to radiate with its surface temperature reaching as high as 2,300 degrees Celsius (4,200 degrees Fahrenheit), which the researchers refer to as a “perfect tidal storm”.

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024 by Evan Gough

The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed

The migration of the giant planets had a hand in shaping our Solar System, including Earth. New research shows the migration happened much earlier than thought. Image Credit: NASA

Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging. Millions of objects of wildly different masses interacted for billions of years, seeking natural stability. But its history—including the migration of the giant planets—explains what we see today in our Solar System and maybe in other, distant solar systems.

New research shows that giant planet migration began shortly after the Solar System formed.

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Artemis Astronauts Will Deploy New Seismometers on the Moon

Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon, as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This young crater sports impact rays that may help scientists as they consider landing sties for future Artemis missions. Courtesy: NASA/LRO.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo astronauts set up a collection of lunar seismometers to detect possible Moon quakes. These instruments monitored lunar activity for eight years and gave planetary scientists an indirect glimpse into the Moon’s interior. Now, researchers are developing new methods for lunar quake detection techniques and technologies. If all goes well, the Artemis astronauts will deploy them when they return to the Moon.

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 by Evan Gough

Ice Deposits on Ceres Might Only Be a Few Thousand Years Old

NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured this approximately true-color image of Ceres in 2015 as it approached the dwarf planet. Dawn showed that some polar craters on Ceres hold ancient ice, but new research suggests the ice is much younger. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / Justin Cowart

The dwarf planet Ceres has some permanently dark craters that hold ice. Astronomers thought the ice was ancient when they were discovered, like in the moon’s permanently shadowed regions. But something was puzzling.

Why did some of these shadowed craters hold ice while others did not?

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 by Scott Alan Johnston

The Mystery of Cosmic Rays Deepens

The Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory’s 48-inch telescope captured this visible-light image of the Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 101) in June 2023. The location of supernova 2023ixf is circled. The observatory, located on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, is operated by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Hiramatsu et al. 2023/Sebastian Gomez (STScI)

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles accelerated to extreme velocities approaching the speed of light. It takes an extremely powerful event to send these bits of matter blazing through the Universe. Astronomers theorize that cosmic rays are ejected by supernova explosions that mark the death of supergiant stars. But recent data collected by the Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope casts doubt on this production method for cosmic rays, and has astronomers digging for an explanation.

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 by Evan Gough

NASA Confirms that a Piece of its Battery Pack Smashed into a Florida Home

This is the pallet loaded with disused batteries that was jettisoned from the International Space Station with the station's robotic arm. HTV9 is the signature of the Japanese resupply craft that carried new batteries to the ISS. The same pallet used during delivery was used to discard the batteries. Image Credit: NASA

NASA is in the business of launching things into orbit. But what goes up must come down, and if whatever is coming down doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere, it will strike Earth somewhere.

Even Florida isn’t safe.

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 by Allen Versfeld

Are Titan's Dunes Made of Comet Dust?

Two different dune fields on Titan: Belet and Fensal, as imaged by Cassini’s radar. It also shows two similar dune fields on Earth in Rub Al Khali, Saudi Arabia. CREDIT NASA/JPL–Caltech/ASI/ESA and USGS/ESA — Two different dune fields on Titan: Belet and Fensal, as imaged by Cassini’s radar. It also shows two similar dune fields on Earth in Rub Al Khali, Saudi Arabia. Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/ASI/ESA and USGS/ESA

A new theory suggests that Titan’s majestic dune fields may have come from outer space. Researchers had always assumed that the sand making up Titan’s dunes was locally made, through erosion or condensed from atmospheric hydrocarbons. But researchers from the University of Colorado want to know: Could it have come from comets?

April 17, 2024April 17, 2024 by Matt Williams

The Solar Wind is Stripping Oxygen and Carbon Away From Venus

Artist's impression of the European Space Agency/JAXA BepiColombo mission in operation around Mercury. Credit: Astrium

The BepiColombo mission, a joint effort between JAXA and the ESA, was only the second (and most advanced) mission to visit Mercury, the least explored planet in the Solar System. With two probes and an advanced suite of scientific instruments, the mission addressed several unresolved questions about Mercury, including the origin of its magnetic field, the depressions with bright material around them (“hollows”), and water ice around its poles. As it turns out, BepiColombo revealed some interesting things about Venus during its brief flyby.

Specifically, the two probes studied a previously unexplored region of Venus’ magnetic environment when they made their second pass on August 10th, 2021. In a recent study, an international team of scientists analyzed the data and found traces of carbon and oxygen being stripped from the upper layers of Venus’ atmosphere and accelerated to speeds where they can escape the planet’s gravitational pull. This data could provide new clues about atmospheric loss and how interactions between solar wind and planetary atmospheres influence planetary evolution.

April 17, 2024April 17, 2024 by Evan Gough

The Solar Eclipse Like We’ve Never Seen it Before

This image from the Inouye Solar Telescope shows the Moon blocking out part of the Sun during the April 8th solar eclipse. Image Credit: Credit: DKIST/NSO/NSF/AURA

You had to be in the right part of North America to get a great view of the recent solar eclipse. But a particular telescope may have had the most unique view of all. Even though that telescope is in Hawaii and only experienced a partial eclipse, its images are interesting.