Space

NASA claimed a few months ago that it had successfully created oxygen on Mars for the first time. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) can now manufacture oxygen dependably, according to comprehensive results from the experiment, which was tested seven times in diverse settings, night and day, and across two Martian seasons. According to Science Advances, the experiment was able to give 6 grammes (0.2 ounces) of oxygen every hour, which is around the rate of a tiny tree on Earth. This may appear minor, but it demonstrated that the technology is capable of tackling the challenging task ahead. “This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” MOXIE deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a statement . “It’s historic in that sense. MOXIE is one of several ins

The Slow Mo Guys are well-known for their slow-motion videos, but they travelled to Caltech this time to use the world's fastest camera. What exactly did they intend to film? The speed of light is 10 trillion frames per second. To put things in perspective, their regular cameras, while amazing, are still 20 million times slower than this one from Caltech. They worked together to try to slow down the speed of light. The measurements are in picoseconds and femtoseconds. We can see why the Slow Mo Guys are overjoyed with their new venture. View the video below:

In late June, researchers reported that Voyager 1 was sending data to Earth indicating that it had lost its orientation in space. In general, the probe's problems are not surprising given that it was originally sent on a five-year journey through the solar system. Meanwhile, 45 years have passed since the launch of the probe from the Earth's surface. Therefore, the defects should not surprise anyone. On the other hand, as long as the probe is working, everything should be done to keep it alive as long as possible. After all, Voyager 1 and its sister spacecraft Voyager 2 provide the Earth with information about interstellar space, where we will not soon have another probe. Solution Controllers analyzing the data sent by the probe have just announced that Voyager 1 is again transmitting correct telemetry data to Earth. It was known from the very beginning that the fault was related to the system responsible for ensuring that the probe's antenna was always directed towards the

According to astronomers, one of the most anticipated occurrences in modern astronomy may be upon us soon. Fluctuations in light measurements from the galaxy SDSS J1430+center 2303 lead to the likelihood of a large collision between two supermassive black holes with a combined mass of around 200 million Suns, according to research. Real-time collision of two supermassive black holes If the scientists' interpretation of the data is correct, the collision, along with the first black hole image captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, may rank among the biggest modern astronomical events. According to the scientists' data, the black holes in this condition will merge within the next three years, which is a very short period of time in the context of scientific investigations. The findings of the study can be found on the pre-print portal ArXiv and have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The event was detected in 2015 as a result of gravitati

An international team of scientists has discovered the first radio signal from a planet beyond our solar system, coming from an exoplanet system 51 light-years away. The previous article has been updated. The researchers discovered emission bursts from the Tau Bootes star-system, which hosts a massive giant planet very near to its own sun, using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope in the Netherlands. The team, lead by Cornell University academics, has discovered several potential exoplanetary radio-emission candidates in the Cancer and Upsilon Andromedae systems. The study, which was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, discovered that only the Tau Bootes exoplanet system has a strong radio signature, a unique potential window on the planet's magnetic field. "We present one of the first hints of detecting an exoplanet in the radio realm," said Cornell postdoctoral researcher Jake D. Turner. "The signal is from the Tau Bootes system, w

The oldest known star appears to be older than the cosmos itself, but a new study is helping to solve this apparent mystery. An earlier study estimated that the so-called " Methuselah star " in the Milky Way galaxy is up to 16 billion years old. This is a concern because most scientists think that the Big Bang that created the universe occurred approximately 13.8 billion years ago. A team of astronomers has now calculated a new, less absurd age for the Methuselah star by combining data on its distance, brightness, composition, and structure. "Put all of those constituents together, and you get an age of 14.5 billion years, with a remaining doubt that makes the star's age compatible with the age of the cosmos," said study lead author Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore in a statement. Bond refers to an uncertainty of 800 million years, which indicates the star may be 13.7 billion years old – younger

Scientists have warned that if Neptune's orbit is disrupted by a passing star by just 0.1 percent, the planets in our solar system might collide. The research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that a "stellar flyby" - a relatively common occurrence in the universe - could be enough to cause planets to collide. If Mercury and Jupiter's perihelion — the point at which the planets are closest to the Sun — occur at the same time, two scenarios are possible. Mercury's orbit could be disrupted, forcing it to leave the Solar System or collide with Venus, the Sun, or the Earth. These changes will take millions of years to occur, but the researchers recreated the circumstance roughly three thousand times. Over 2,000 of them ended with planets colliding or Uranus, Neptune, or Mercury being completely evacuated from the Solar System. "The full role that stellar flybys play in the evolution of planetary systems is still being r

The James Webb Space Telescope just published photographs of the magnificently spiral M74 Phantom Galaxy, demonstrating why it is humanity's best space telescope to date. The European Space Agency made the images public. Because it is named after one of NASA's administrators, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may appear to be a NASA project. What gets lost in the jargon is that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) also contribute to the programme. For example, the ESA contributed to the NIRSpec, the MIRI Instrument, and the launch of the telescope last year. The ESA's contributions are rewarded with a promise of at least 15% of JWST observation time, a policy that was also maintained for the Hubble Space Telescope. Taking Down the Phantom Galaxy The Phantom Galaxy is 32 million light years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces, facing our planet. This makes it easy to see it as a study object. Furthermore, the galaxy's spatial ar

A team of astronomers from Hungary has proven that the Earth has three moons. According to the Hungarian scientists, these moons are totally formed of dust, and these mystery clouds orbit the earth 250,000 miles distant, nearly the same distance as the moon. Surprisingly, a controversy regarding the existence of these two celestial bodies began in 1961, when Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski found two mystery clouds that became known as Kordylewski dust clouds. The Polish scientist further speculated that these dust clouds could be orbiting the Earth near the Lagrange points L4 and L5. Further examination of these celestial bodies has revealed that these dust clouds are essentially fake satellites orbiting the Earth. "The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and though they are as close to Earth as the moon, are largely overlooked by researchers in astronomy. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our

A strange cataclysm in a nearby galaxy was observed in the sky above Hawaii last week, leaving astronomers all around the world baffled as to what caused the tremendously bright flash. " I've never seen anything like this before in the local universe ," astrophysicist Stephen Smartt of Queen's University in Hawaii stated. The discovery was first reported on June 16 in Astronomer's Telegram, an internet service for astronomers to immediately report new and noteworthy discoveries. AT2018cow, or " cow " for short, was given to the object. Smartt saw it right away since it was so distinct from a typical explosive star. Most of these events take many weeks to reach their peak, but the object has gotten nearly ten times brighter than a typical supernova in just three days. Other astronomers were quickly drawn to the item. The ATLAS sighting was followed the following week by nearly two dozen teams of astronomers using telescopes on at least four continents and

VENUS has been chosen as the destination for two new NASA missions to investigate the planet's atmosphere and geological features, following the discovery of " enough water to support plentiful life " by NASA. The space agency has announced it will send two robotic missions to the planet by the end of the decade. NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the probes — named Davinci+ and Veritas — will offer the " chance to investigate a planet we haven't been to in more than 30 years ". The missions to Earth’s closest planetary neighbour were picked following a peer-review process and will explore how the once habitable world became a “ hot, hellish, unforgiving ” planet. It comes just months after astronomers from the UK controversially detected phosphine gas 30 miles up in Venus’ clouds, leading researchers to suggest it was a sign of alien life. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) also previously found that Venus may have once had a s

Irrationality in our thinking has long troubled psychology. When others inquire how we are, we normally say " fine " or " good ." However, if we are asked about a specific event — " How did you feel about the major meeting with your boss today? " — we instantly refine our " good " or " fine " comments on a scale from dreadful to great. We can contradict ourselves in a few sentences: we're " good, " but we're unhappy with how the meeting went. So, how can we be " good " in general? Bias, experience, knowledge, and context all interact consciously and unconsciously to drive every decision we make and emotion we exhibit. Human behaviour is difficult to predict, and probability theory frequently fails to do so. Enter quantum cognition: a group of researchers discovered that, while our choices and beliefs don't always make sense or match a pattern on a macro level, they can be predicted with startling precisio

Since the initial James Webb Space Telescope photographs were released in July, our feeds have been inundated with breathtaking images of space, ranging from amazingly detailed images of Jupiter to the furthest distant known star. Image Credits: A colourized representation of a faraway Einstein ring. Spaceguy44/Reddit; JWST/MAST. Webb has done it again, this time capturing an almost perfect Einstein ring from a distance of 12 billion light-years. And we can't take our eyes off them. The colourized image, which was uploaded on Reddit by astronomy graduate student Spaceguy44, is shown below. An Einstein ring happens when a distant galaxy is magnified and wrapped into an almost-perfect ring by a large galaxy in front of it, as Spaceguy44 describes on Reddit. SPT-S J041839-4751.8 is the name of the galaxy in question, and it is located 12 billion light-years away. Here's a closer look at it, also processed by Spaceguy44: (JWST/MAST; Spaceguy44/Reddit) Galaxy SPT-S J041839-4751.8 We

J1407b, has the largest ring system yet seen – around 200 times larger than Jupiter's (the largest in our solar system). Its host planet is likewise massive: we don't know whether it's a gas giant or a brown dwarf. So far, it's been classified as a super-Jupiter stellar body. If it resided in our solar system, the greatest planetary ring system we've discovered would dominate the sky. To put this ring system into perspective, if Saturn possessed the same rings, they would be several times greater in diameter than the moon in the night sky. It would not only be visible with the naked eye, but it would completely dominate the view. Overall, the exoplanet has over 30 layers of rings. Artistic rendering of the exoplanet and its impressive rings. Image via Wikimedia. “It’d be huge. You’d see the rings and the gaps in the rings quite easily from Earth,” said Matthew Kenworthy of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, one of the co-authors on the paper describing the f

Black holes are terrifying objects that never let anything escape them! Scientists just brought black holes to the human planet.

An astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon walked into a room. It may sound like the start of a horrible joke, but what a group of Italian academics came up with is a truly galaxy brain take: the structures of the observable universe, they claim, are startlingly similar to the neural networks of the human brain. In a recent research published in the journal Frontiers in Physics, University of Bologna astronomer Franco Vazza and University of Verona neurosurgeon Alberto Feletti reveal the unexpected similarities between the cosmic network of galaxies and the complex web of neurons in the human brain. According to the researchers, despite being nearly 27 orders of magnitude distant in scale, the human brain and the makeup of the cosmic web exhibit similar levels of complexity and self-organization. The brain contains an estimated 69 billion neurons, while the observable universe is composed of at least 100 billion galaxies, strung together loosely like a web. Both actual galaxies and neurons o

Dinosaur tracks from 113 million years ago were discovered at Dinosaur Valley State Park due to severe drought conditions. The extreme drought in Texas has exposed newly unknown dinosaur tracks, providing further evidence that the gigantic beasts lived and hunted in the state's north-central region. Dinosaur tracks at Valley State Park. Mike O'Brien/Dinosaur Valley State Park Dinosaur Valley State Park, which opened 50 years ago, is home to possibly hundreds of different dinosaur and prehistoric animal tracks dating back as long as 113 million years. The Paluxy River has receded within the park, revealing fresh sets of trails. These new ones, said park superintendent Jeff Davis, "either haven't been seen for decades, or you know, that maybe haven't been seen anybody in anyone's living memory. So that is what makes it kind of special, what's going on right now." The area where the dinosaur tracks have been revealed has historically been underwater and p

Ryan Chester of North Royalton, Ohio, submitted a film for the Breakthrough Junior Challenge (BTJC) , which encourages teenagers aged thirteen to eighteen (13-18) to share their interest and passion for math and science with the rest of the world. The video can be seen at the bottom. Ryan Chester not only authored the script for his video, but he also recorded, edited, and designed all of the visual effects and motion graphics. In total, he received $400,000, $250,000 of which will go toward a scholarship, $50,000 to his best teacher, Richard Nestoff, and $100,000 to his school to help construct a scientific lab. Cool! I'll let Ryan explain the highly complicated but beautiful link between the speed of light and time dilation in his excellent movie below, but all I can say is that you'll feel very, very smart after watching it.

Scientists believe a dark matter " storm " is making its way past the Sun and could be detected here on Earth. The study, conducted by Ciaran O'Hare of the University of Zaragoza in Spain, was published in Physical Review D and looked at the S1 stream, a cluster of neighbouring stars travelling in the same direction. According to APS Physics, these are "believed to be the remnants of a dwarf galaxy that was eaten by the Milky Way billions of years ago." The ESA's Gaia spacecraft, which is mapping a billion stars in our galaxy, discovered the S1 stream of 30,000 stars last year. In our galaxy, some 30 such streams have been discovered, each one the result of a previous collision. S1 is particularly intriguing because it is currently "blowing" by us at approximately 500 kilometres (310 miles) per second. According to the experts, this could have an impact on the dark matter surrounding us. "Current detectors probing for weakly interacting massiv

Scientists have uncovered a ' aqua planet ' that resembles Kevin Costner's post-apocalyptic action thriller Waterworld from 1995. They claim the world, which is 100 light-years away, is totally covered in water, comparable to some of Jupiter's and Saturn's moons. It is slightly larger and heavier than Earth, and it is far enough away from its star to host life. An multinational team of researchers discovered TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two tiny stars in a binary system in the Draco constellation. They were led by Charles Cadieux, a PhD student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx). It was NASA's space telescope TESS, which surveys the entire sky in search of planetary systems close to our own, that put the researchers on the trail of the exoplanet.  A signal from TESS showed a slight decrease in brightness every 11 days, allowing astronomers to predict the existence of a planet about 70 per cent

Japan deployed a ground-breaking black-hole tracking satellite, only to lose control of it nearly immediately due to unusual conditions. We can now see what Hitomi did before it died. When JAXA launched Hitomi in February of this year, scientists were ecstatic about what the black hole monitoring satellite would reveal about the universe's mysteries. It had barely been a month up there when something went wrong. The satellite spun out of control due to a succession of tragic occurrences caused by both human error and software problems. Despite repeated attempts to restore control, Hitomi continued to spin and launch debris into space. JAXA eventually declared that the $273 million satellite was irreparable. However, when Hitomi died, researchers also disclosed that they had scraped a small amount of data from the satellite and would be documenting it in subsequent studies. Some of that data is now available in a new report published in Nature, which includes Hitomi's final obse