Universe Today

October 30, 2024October 30, 2024 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Have Found the Fastest Spinning Neutron Star

Illustration of a millisecond pulsar consuming material from a companion star. Pulsars that evaporate their companions rather than consuming them could serve as stellar engines. Credit: NASA / GSFC SVS / Dana Berry

Neutron stars are as dense as the nucleus of an atom. They contain a star’s worth of matter in a sphere only a dozen kilometers wide. And they are light-years away. So how can we possibly understand their interior structure? One way would be to simply spin it. Just spin it faster and faster until it reaches a maximum limit. That limit can tell us about how neutron stars hold together and even how they might form. Obviously, we can’t actually spin up a neutron star, but it can happen naturally, which is one of the reasons astronomers are interested in these maximally spinning stars. And recently a team has discovered a new one.

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by Matt Williams

Astronomers Discover Potential New Building Block of Organic Matter in Interstellar Space

A new study expands on the classical theory of panspermia, addressing whether or not life could be distributed on a galactic scale. Credit: NASA

Carbon is the building block for all life on Earth and accounts for approximately 45–50% of all dry biomass. When bonded with elements like hydrogen, it produces the organic molecules known as hydrocarbons. When bonded with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus, it produces pyrimidines and purines, the very basis for DNA. The carbon cycle, where carbon atoms continually travel from the atmosphere to the Earth and back again, is also integral to maintaining life on Earth over time.

As a result, scientists believe that carbon should be easy to find in space, but this is not always the case. While it has been observed in many places, astronomers have not found it in the volumes they would expect to. However, a new study by an international team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has revealed a new type of complex molecule in interstellar space. Known as 1-cyanoprene, this discovery could reveal where the building blocks of life can be found and how they evolve.

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by Evan Gough

There’s Another Ocean Moon Candidate: Uranus’ Tiny Moon Miranda

Uranus' fifth-largest moon is Miranda. It's known for its surface features, and new research suggests that a subsurface ocean could be shaping the moon's surface. Image Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech

The Solar System’s hundreds of moons are like puzzle pieces. Together, they make a picture of all the forces that can create and modify them and the forces that shape our Solar System. One of them is Miranda, one of 28 known moons that orbit the ice giant Uranus. Miranda is its smallest major moon, at 471 km in diameter.

New research shows that this relatively small, distant moon may be hiding something: a subsurface ocean.

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by Evan Gough

Titan May Have a Methane Crust 10 Km Thick

Color-composite image of Titan and Saturn. There are few confirmed craters on Titan, and the ones that have been spotted are much shallower than expected. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major

Saturn’s moon, Titan, is an anomaly among moons. No other moons have surface liquids, and aside from Earth, it’s the only other Solar System object with liquids on its surface. However, since Titan is so cold, the liquids are hydrocarbons, not water. Titan’s water is all frozen into a surface layer of ice.

New research suggests that under the surface, Titan is hiding another anomaly: a thick crust of methane.

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by David Dickinson

Death of a Comet: S1 Didn’t Survive its Sungrazing Plummet

Jaeger Comet — Comet S1 ATLAS from October 19th. Credit: Michael Jaeger and Gerald Rhemann.

Sungrazer C/2024 S1 ATLAS broke apart at perihelion.

Alas, a ‘Great Halloween Comet’ was not to be. The Universe teased us just a bit this month, with the potential promise of a second naked eye comet in October: C/2024 S1 ATLAS. Discovered on the night of September 27th by the Asteroid Terrestrial Last-alert impact System (ATLAS) all-sky survey, this inbound comet was surprisingly bright and active for its relative distance from the Sun at the time of discovery. This gave the comet the potential to do what few sungrazers have done: survive a blisteringly close perihelion passage near the Sun.

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Matt Williams

Remember that “Alien Signal” Sent by the ExoMars Orbiter Last Year? It’s Just Been Decoded

The Sign in Space message has finally been decoded. Credit: A Sign in Space

In May 2023, the ESA’s Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), currently in orbit around Mars, sent a signal to Earth to simulate a possible extraterrestrial transmission. As part of the multidisciplinary art project “A Sign in Space,” the purpose was to engage citizen scientists in helping to decode it. The campaign was inspired by Cosmicomics by Italian writer/journalist Italo Calvino, a series of short stories exploring various scientific principles. The project is partnered with the SETI Institute, the Green Bank Observatory, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF).

After three radio astronomy observatories on Earth intercepted the message, the challenge was to extract the message from the raw data of the radio signal and then decode it. After ten days, more than 5000 citizen scientists worldwide gathered online and used their combined resources to extract the signal. After a year of attempts, two U.S. citizens – the father-daughter team of Ken and Keli Chaffin – managed to crack the code after days of simulations. They discovered that the message consisted of five clusters of white dots and lattices against a black background, suggesting cellular formation and life!

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Evan Gough

Add Astronaut Nutrition to the List of Barriers to Long-Duration Spaceflight

NASA Astronauts Kjell Lindgren (center) and Scott Kelly (right) and Kimiya Yui (left) of Japan consume space grown food for the first time ever, from the Veggie plant growth system on the International Space Station in August 2015. Credit: NASA TV

Though there are no firm plans for a crewed mission to Mars, we all know one’s coming. Astronauts routinely spend months at a time on the ISS, and we’ve learned a lot about the hazards astronauts face on long missions. However, Mars missions can take years, which presents a whole host of problems, including astronaut nutrition.

Nutrition can help astronauts manage spaceflight risks in the ISS, but long-duration missions to Mars are different. There can be no resupply.

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Evan Gough

This Ancient Supernova Remnant Looks Like a Stellar Dandelion

An artist’s concept of a supernova remnant called Pa 30—the leftover remains of a supernova explosion that was witnessed from Earth in the year 1181. Unusual filaments of sulfur protrude beyond a dusty shell of ejected material. The remains of the original star that exploded, now a hot inflated star which may cool to become a white dwarf, are seen at the center of the remnant. The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawai‘i has mapped the strange filaments in 3-D and shown that they are flying outward at approximately 1,000 kilometers per second. Image Credit: W.M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

In 1181, Japanese and Chinese astronomers saw a bright light appear in the constellation Cassiopeia. It shone for six months, and those ancient observers couldn’t have known it was an exploding star. To them, it looked like some type of temporary star that shone for 185 days.

In the modern astronomical age, we’ve learned a lot more about the object. It was a supernova called SN 1181 AD, and we know that it left behind a remnant “zombie” star. New research examines the supernova’s aftermath and the strange filaments of gas it left behind.

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Astronauts Could Take an Asteroid Ferry from Earth to Mars

This idea really is quite a fascinating one. Currently a trip to Mars would require large amounts of air, water and other resources to sustain human life but would also expose travellers to harmful levels of radiation. A wonderful solution has been proposed in a new paper recently published by researchers from Ukraine. They propose that asteroids which already travel relatively close by Earth, Mars and even Venus already could be used to hop between the planets. They are already making the journey anyway and so perhaps the cosmos already provides the solution to interplanetary travel.

October 26, 2024October 26, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Webb Scans Vega for Planets

To northern sky watchers, Vega is a familiar sight in the summer sky. It’s one of the brightest stars in the sky and in 2013, astronomers detected a large ring of rocky debris surrounding the planet. The prospect of planets suddenly became a real possibility so astronomers turned the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on the star. The hunt achieved 10 times the sensitivity of previous ground based searches but alas no planets were discovered.