Universe Today

January 14, 2024January 14, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Shhh, NASA Reveals its New Quiet Supersonic Aircraft

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the apron outside Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility at dawn in Palmdale, California. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to address one of the primary challenges to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works

The term space plane conjurs up all sorts of images and NASA, with their new X-59 (even the name sounds mysterious) they have definitely not dissapointed. Their new quiet supersonic aircraft has been designed to minimise the sonic boom it creates when it crosses the speed of sound. It will fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound and is set for its maiden flight later this year.

January 14, 2024January 14, 2024 by Mark Thompson

China Tests an All-Solid Rocket

The launch of Gravity-1 from a modified cargo ship. — The Gravity-1 rocket blasts off, Haiyang, east China's Shandong Province, January 11, 2024. /CFP

China has a rich history in rocketry. It’s even found its place into Chinese legends with the wonderful tale of Wang Tu, who allegedly strapped himself to a chair adorned with rockets to experiment with rocket flight. The story goes that he launched and was never seen again! More recently however, a Chinese company has claimed to have launched the ‘World’s most powerful solid rocket’ capable of producing 600 tonnes of thrust and carrying 6,500kg into low Earth orbit.

January 14, 2024January 14, 2024 by Matt Williams

Since Interstellar Objects Crashed Into Earth in the Past, Could They Have Brought Life?

Artist’s impression of the interstellar object, `Oumuamua, experiencing outgassing as it leaves our Solar System. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser

On October 19^th, 2017, astronomers with the Pan-STARRS survey detected an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our Solar System for the first time. The object, known as 1I/2017 U1 Oumuamua, stimulated significant scientific debate and is still controversial today. One thing that all could agree on was that the detection of this object indicated that ISOs regularly enter our Solar System. What’s more, subsequent research has revealed that, on occasion, some of these objects come to Earth as meteorites and impact the surface.

This raises a very important question: if ISOs have been coming to Earth for billions of years, could it be that they brought the ingredients for life with them? In a recent paper, a team of researchers considered the implications of ISOs being responsible for panspermia – the theory that the seeds of life exist throughout the Universe and are distributed by asteroids, comets, and other celestial objects. According to their results, ISOs can potentially seed hundreds of thousands (or possibly billions) of Earth-like planets throughout the Milky Way.

January 13, 2024January 13, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Black Holes and Neutron Stars are Finally Linked to Supernovae

A star in a binary system dies in a catastrophic explosion. Such supernovae often result in neutron stars or black holes. Courtesy ESO/L. Calçada — This artist’s impression is based on the aftermath of a supernova explosion as seen by two teams of astronomers with both ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The supernova observed, SN 2022jli, occurred when a massive star died in a fiery explosion, leaving behind a compact object — a neutron star or a black hole. This dying star, however, had a companion which was able to survive this violent event. The periodic interactions between the compact object and its companion left periodic signals in the data, which revealed that the supernova explosion had indeed resulted in a compact object.

Everybody knows that the explosive deaths of supermassive stars (called supernovae) lead to the creation of black holes or neutron stars, right? At least, that’s the evolutionary path that astronomers suggest happens. And, these compact objects exist throughout the Universe. But, no one’s ever seen the actual birth process of a neutron star or black hole in action before.

January 13, 2024January 14, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

Big Planets Don’t Necessarily Mean Big Moons

Artist's illustration of a large exomoon orbiting a large exoplanet. (Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Hustak)

Does the size of an exomoon help determine if life could form on an exoplanet it’s orbiting? This is something a February 2022 study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the potential for large exomoons to form around large exoplanets (Earth-sized and larger) like how our Moon was formed around the Earth. Despite this study being published almost two years ago, its findings still hold strong regarding the search for exomoons, as astronomers have yet to confirm the existence of any exomoons anywhere in the cosmos. But why is it so important to better understand the potential for large exomoons orbiting large exoplanets?

January 13, 2024January 13, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Gravitational Waves Could Show us the First Minute of the Universe

Astronomers routinely explore the universe using different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum from the familiar visible light to radio waves and infra-red to gamma rays. There is a problem with studying the Universe through the electromagnetic spectrum, we can only see light from a time when the Universe was only 380,000 years old. An alternate approach is to use gravitational waves which are thought to have been present in the early Universe and may allow us to probe back even further.

January 13, 2024January 13, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Microbes Can Survive in Saltier Water than Previously Believed

Scientists exploring brine ponds in California. — The Oceans Across Space and Time research team collected brine from South Bay Salt Works during an initial field trip in 2019. (Image credit: Anne Dekas)

On Earth, it seems to be true that life will find a way; in the deepest ocean, the saltiest ocean or the highest mountain, live seems to find a way to get a foothold. One of the key ingredients for life seems to be the necessity for water. Until now, it was thought that there was a limit to the level of salinity within which life could thrive. A team of biologists have found bacterial life thrives in salty ponds where the water evaporates leaving high levels of salt. This only serves to expand the likely envrionments across the Universe that life could evolve.

January 13, 2024January 13, 2024 by Scott Alan Johnston

Two Giant Structures Have Been Found Billions of Light-Years Away

Artistic impression of the Giant Arc and the Big Ring on the sky. Background image credit: Stellarium.

The early universe, according to the Standard Model of Cosmology, ought to be a fairly homogenous place, with little structure or arrangement. In 2021, however, astronomers discovered a large pattern of galaxies forming a giant arc 3.3 billion light years across. Now, a second large-scale pattern has emerged. This time, it’s an enormous circle of galaxies, nicknamed the Big Ring. Together, the Giant Arc and the Big Ring present a challenge to the Standard Model, and may send cosmologists back to the drawing board.

January 13, 2024January 13, 2024 by Evan Gough

This Alien Landscape is Actually a Microscopic View of an Atomic Clock

This looks like the landscape feature called penitentes that form in the icy cold on Pluto. But it's actually a glass surface that's part of an atomic clock. Image Credit: Safran/ESA

Navigation satellites couldn’t accomplish anything without extremely accurate clocks. But a regular clock won’t do. Only atomic clocks are accurate enough, and that’s because they tell time with electrons.

Those atomic clocks wear out over time, and that’s what the image shows.

January 12, 2024January 12, 2024 by Evan Gough

Half of this Exoplanet is Covered in Lava

Like Kepler-10 b, illustrated above, the exoplanet HD 63433 d is a small, rocky planet in a tight orbit of its star. HD 63433 d is the smallest confirmed exoplanet younger than 500 million years old. It's also the closest discovered Earth-sized planet this young, at about 400 million years old. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Astronomers working with TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) have discovered a planet that’s been left out in the Sun too long. Or at least half of it has. The newly discovered planet is tidally locked to its star, and one side is completely molten.