Space

NASA's newest planetary scientific mission intends to land a flying robot on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, a top target in the search for extraterrestrial life. The Dragonfly project will be the first of its type. NASA's car-sized quadcopter, outfitted with instruments capable of recognising big organic compounds, is set to launch in 2026, land in 2034, and then fly to various places hundreds of miles apart. "The science is compelling... and the mission is audacious," said NASA's associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen. "I am convinced that now is the moment to accomplish this." What is Titan's significance? Titan is larger than Mercury and has the same geographical diversity as Earth. This big, chilly moon has a thick, methane-rich atmosphere, ice mountains, and the only surface oceans in the solar system other than those found on Earth. On Titan, however, the rivers and lakes are teeming with churning liquid hydrocarbons. If

Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system— they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars. One planet is 30 percent larger than Earth and orbits its star in less than three days. The other is 70 percent larger than Earth and might host a deep ocean. These two exoplanets are super-Earths—more massive than Earth but smaller than ice giants like Uranus and Neptune. I’m a professor of astronomy who studies galactic cores, distant galaxies, astrobiology, and exoplanets. I closely follow the search for planets that might host life. Earth is still the only place in the universe scientists know to be home to life. It would seem logical to focus the search for life on Earth clones—planets with properties close to Earth’s. But research has shown that the best chance astronomers have of finding

An ultra-precise test of a basic premise of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is the contemporary theory of gravity, was performed using a satellite circling the Earth. The question is whether two types of mass — gravitational and inertial — are equivalent. The scientists discovered that two objects aboard the spacecraft descended toward Earth at the same rate, with a one-part-in-a-quadrillion accuracy. This successful test of Einstein's theory has significant implications for present cosmic puzzles, such as the existence of dark matter and dark energy. Imitating the ancients Gravity is the force that keeps the Universe together, tying distant galaxies together and guiding them in an everlasting cosmic dance. The strength of gravity is determined in part by the distance between two objects, but also by their masses. Gravity increases when an object's mass increases. This form of mass is known scientifically as " gravitational mass ." Mass also has ano

We are aware of how skewed our perception of reality is. How we see the world is shaped by our senses, our societies, and our knowledge.  And you may want to rethink your belief that science will always provide you with objective reality. Physicists can now verify a hypothesis that Nobel Prize winner Eugen Wigner initially put out in 1961.  The setting of the experiment, dubbed "Wigner's Friend," is not too difficult. You begin with a quantum system that is in superposition, which implies that both of its states exist concurrently up to the point of measurement. In this example, the polarisation (the axis on which a photon spins) is both horizontal and vertical. When they measure it, the system will collapse and the photon will be stuck into one of those two states. Wigner's buddy is in the lab doing the experiment. However, the quantum system—which, crucially, also includes the lab—remains in superposition for Wigner, who is outside the lab and uninformed of the outc

The light of a star that lived during the first billion years after the universe's beginning in the big bang has been detected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope - the farthest individual star ever observed to date. The discovery represents a significant step back in time from the previous single-star record holder, which was discovered by Hubble in 2018. That star lived around 4 billion years ago, or 30 percent of the universe's present age. The newly discovered star is so far away that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, so we are viewing it when the cosmos was only 7% the age it is now. Clusters of stars nested within early galaxies are the tiniest things hitherto discovered at such a long distance. “We almost didn’t believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most-distant, highest redshift star,” said astronomer Brian Welch of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the paper describing the discovery in the journal Na

TWO Earth-like planets have been discovered in outer space, one of which may have the required circumstances for life to evolve. The planets are known as LP 890-9b and LP 890-9c, and they exhibit many of the important characteristics that astronomers look for when searching for life in the universe. Both are stony, terrestrial planets with a hard surface that are devoid of gases. Their host system is the second coldest star with planets in orbit, and Nasa refers to it as a " Goldilocks star " because its constant, relatively temperate emissions are suitable for lifeforms. The findings will be published in the scholarly journal Astronomy & Astrophysics as part of a future study. Finding a planet that has many of the similar circumstances as Earth is a momentous cosmic finding; one of the worlds meets even more exact specifications for producing and sustaining life. LP 890-9c is located in its host star's " habitable zone ." “The habitable zone is a concept u

Astronomers recently discovered the closest known black hole to our solar system. Scientists estimate that the black hole is 1,570 lightyears away and ten times the size of our sun. The research, known as Gaia BH1, was headed by Harvard Society Fellow astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry, in collaboration with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). El-Badry also collaborated with scientists from CfA, MPIA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA), the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Observatoire de Paris, MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and other institutions. Their study report, which summarizes their observations, will be published in the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Notices. According to El-Badry, these observations were part of a broader research project to identify dormant black hole companions to stars in the Milky Way gal

There aren't many ionic thrusters around these days. The high-voltage devices are fascinating pieces of technology, but they aren't really applicable to our everyday life. However, as Jay Bowles, the YouTuber behind the Plasma Channel, demonstrates what they can achieve, they are progressively becoming more common. He recently created an ionic thruster that not only looks cool in the dark, but actually generates a decent amount of thrust. When it comes to creating a large amount of thrust, ionic thrusters are not on par with ducted fans or jet engines. They do, however, have a few advantages, as demonstrated by Bowles. The first is their simplicity. Bowles' ionic thruster is really just a collection of wires held together by a frame. This is combined with certain electronics required to enable the extremely high voltages required to run the gadget. This simplicity makes them more reliable than anything like an electric motor driving a propeller. Despite their cool appearanc

This supercomputer simulation demonstrates one of the greatest powerful occasions in the universe: a pair of neutron stars striking, merging and creating a black hole. A neutron star is the dense core left behind when a star born with between eight and 30 times the sun's mass detonates as a supernova. Neutron stars have about 1.5 times the mass of the sun compressed into a ball just 12 miles across. As the simulation initiates, we view an inequitably matched pair of neutron stars balancing 1.4 and 1.7 solar masses. They are parted by only about 11 miles, faintly less distance than their own diameters. Redder colors indicated regions of increasingly lower density. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center As the stars spiral to each other, penetrating currents begin to collapse them, maybe cracking their layers. Neutron stars hold unbelievable density, but their outsides are moderately thin, with densities about a million times greater than gold. Their centers crush matter to a

According to Australian astronomers, a weird spinning object in the Milky Way has been identified that is unlike anything astronomers have ever seen. The object, which was first discovered by a university student working on his undergraduate thesis, emits a massive burst of radio waves three times each hour. The pulse occurs every 18.18 minutes, " like clockwork ," according to astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker, who headed the inquiry after the student was discovered using the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in Western Australia’s outback. While other things in the universe, such as pulsars, flicker on and off, Hurley-Walker claims that the frequency of 18.18 minutes has never been detected previously. Discovering this object was “kind of spooky for an astronomer,” Walker said. She added: “because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that.” The scientific community is now trying to figure out what they’ve discovered. They were able to establish a few facts after

So much of humanity's astronomical study is focused on finding something like us out there, whether it's looking for environments that potentially support life, ranking planets in terms of their potential habitability, or comparing faraway worlds to our own. But what if the odds are stacked against us ever discovering another planet that is even substantially similar to Earth? That's the idea behind a recent study by an international team of academics, who used a computer model to feed what we know about exoplanets outside our Solar System. Their calculations, which were designed to replicate how galaxies and planets evolved over 13.8 billion years, result in a " cosmic inventory " of terrestrial planets, with Earth appearing to be unique. "It's kind of mind-boggling that we're actually at a stage where we can start doing this," Carnegie Observatories' Andrew Benson told Shannon Hall of Scientific American . Nonetheless, the researchers admit

A Harvard University professor thinks that a meteorite that fell into the water near New Guinea in 2014 could have come from another solar system. This is supported by data from an American reconnaissance satellite. 2014 Meteorite According to Harvard professor Avi Loeb and his doctoral student Amir Siraj, the meteorite that slammed into the Earth near New Guinea in 2014 may have come from beyond the Solar System. They arrived at this conclusion after studying data from astronomical catalogues. The CNEOS 2014-01-08 object had a diameter of roughly 50 cm, according to estimates. And the researchers' measurements show that its speed was too high before entering the Earth's atmosphere for the Sun to keep it in orbit. Most scientists, however, do not share Loeb's enthusiasm. The principal estimations of CNEOS 2014-01-08's trajectory were acquired from an American military satellite. His measures' precision is a military secret. As a result, no one can say for certain wh

Chinese scientists have discovered a new lunar mineral through the investigation of samples returned from the Moon by the Chang'e-5 mission. This is the first new mineral discovered on the Moon by China and the sixth by mankind . The new finding makes China the third country in the world to have discovered a new mineral on the Moon, said Dong Baotong, deputy director of the CAEA ( China Atomic Energy Authority)  after the United States and Russia. Lunar samples from the Chang'e 5 mission in a display case at the National Museum of China in Beijing - CCTV The new mineral, which has been named Changesite-(Y), is a kind of transparent and colorless columnar crystal. It was discovered from an analysis of lunar basalt particles by a research team from the Beijing Uranium Geology Research Institute, a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation. Changesite-(Y) has already been officially approved as a new mineral by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classifica

A recent telescopic shot shows what will eventually happen to our own Milky Way. A stunning telescope image reveals two galaxies that are entangled and will eventually merge into one galaxy millions of years from now, forecasting the Milky Way's doom. The interacting spiral galaxies were discovered in the Virgo constellation, approximately 60 million light-years away, by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea's summit. The Butterfly galaxies, also known as NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, are two galaxies that are colliding owing to gravity right now. After 500 million years, the two cosmic systems will merge to form a single elliptical galaxy. At this early stage, the two galactic centres are 20,000 light-years apart, and each galaxy has retained its pinwheel configuration. The image depicts the brilliant remnants of a supernova SN 2020fqv (callout box) discovered in 2020. This view from Hawaii's Gemini North telescope shows two interacting spiral galaxies, NGC 4568 (bottom) and NGC

A star ballet is taking place somewhere in the depths of our universe. Three gigantic, brilliant stars are caught in a dance by their own gravitational forces and aglow in their shared radiance against the dark veil of space. Two fiery balls of gas are pirouetting closely around each other, completing their mutual orbit to the beat of an Earth day. At the same time, a third star steadily encircles the two, shining a light on their performance. Details on the cosmic predicament can be found in a study published in the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Notices in June. "As far as we know, it is the first of its kind ever found," Alejandro Vigna-Gomez, a co-author of the article and an astronomer at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement Monday .   According to Vigna-Gomez, we know of many secondary star systems, but they are not just far farther away than this sparkling trio, but they are also often less massive. By a long shot. The interior, close-quarter bin

In our galaxy, there is a " dark object " that is causing massive holes. It is intangible and may not be made of ordinary substance. It might be something that astronomers have never seen before. Despite the fact that we cannot see the massive object, astronomers have lately found its effects despite the fact that they have not seen the object itself. Ana Bonaca, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, described the enigmatic item as " a thick bullet of something ." Bonaca presented proof of the object's existence at an American Physical Society gathering in Denver. Evidence of the object that is generating holes has been discovered in our galaxy's longest star stream, GD-1. A stellar stream is a group of stars that circle a galaxy that was once a globular cluster or dwarf galaxy but has since been ripped apart and stretched along its orbit by tidal forces. Evidence of the object that is generating holes has been discovered in our g

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object, which they believe is a giant hot bubble of gas around the Milky Way's black hole every seventy minutes. This means that the object is moving at a mind-boggling 30% of the speed of light. Observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have revealed something unusual near the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. Astronomers believe there is a mystery object, a hot spot, that circles around Sagittarius A*. According to the researchers, the discovery will aid in our comprehension of the bizarre yet dynamic ecosystem. The object that circles the black hole is most likely a hot bubble of gas that swirled around Sagittarius A* in an orbit comparable to that of the planet Mercury, according to the experts. The only difference is that it completes one orbit in around seventy minutes. Orbits of the G objects at the center of our galaxy, with the supermassive black hole indicated with a white cross. Stars, gas and