Space

In January 1992, two cosmic objects forever changed our galaxy. For the first time, we had concrete evidence of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, orbiting an alien star: two rocky worlds, whirling around a star 2,300 light-years away. Now, just over 30 years later, that number has exploded. The hugely significant milestone of over 5,000 exoplanets confirmed. To be precise, 5,005 exoplanets are now documented in the NASA exoplanet archive, every one with its own unique characteristics. Each and every one of these exoplanets has appeared in peer-reviewed research, and been observed using multiple detection techniques or methods of analysis. The pickings are rich for follow-up study to learn more about these worlds with new instruments, such as the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, and upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. “It’s not just a number,” says astronomer Jessie Christiansen of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. “Each one of them is a new world, a

"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency." style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7974853704" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> Scientists with the Breakthrough Listen initiative at the University of California (UOC), Berkeley, which is devoted to discovering signs of alien intelligent life, recorded 15 repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) from a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away. Since FRBs, which last only a few milliseconds, were discovered 15 years ago, over 20 have been recorded, and most don’t repeat, but few years ago one did; the scientists called it FRB 121102. More than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from FRB 121102. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7974853704" data-ad-format="au

We know there's water on the Moon, but questions remain about how it got there, where it's stored, and how it moves around. In a new study, scientists from China have identified tiny glass beads in the lunar soil as potential places where water could hide. And we're talking about a lot of water too, perhaps as much as 270 trillion kilograms (297.6 billion tons) of the stuff. The new findings are based on samples brought back from China's Chang'e 5 rover mission. The spacecraft spent a couple of weeks collecting material from the lunar surface in December 2020, and we've already seen exciting new discoveries from subsequent analysis. Impact glass beads under analysis. (He et al, Nature Geoscience, 2023) Microscopic glass beads typically form as bits of space rock smack into another object's surface, vaporizing minerals which can cool into vitreous particles barely a few tens or hundreds of micrometers across. Past studies on beads found in Apollo lunar sample

The Voyager probes started their journey to the edge of the unknown in 1977, and they're still going strong decades later. NASA began receiving garbled communications from Voyager 1 earlier this year, prompting concerns that the legendary spacecraft was on the verge of a major system failure. Fortunately, NASA today says that it was able to resolve the problem with the 45-year-old spacecraft, but solving this enigma has lead to another that may be more difficult to solve. Despite its name, Voyager 1 was the second of the probes to be launched. The " Grand Tour " of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune was made possible by a rare alignment of the outer planets. Voyager 1 travelled directly to Jupiter and Saturn before entering interstellar space and passing Voyager 2. Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to escape the solar system in 2012. This past May, NASA stated that something had gone wrong with the craft's attitude articulation and control system (AACS). Th

The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span. That’s a much broader view of the tricky calendar than anyone previously tried to take. In a study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica , two Tulane University scholars highlighted how researchers never could quite explain the 819-day count calendar until they broadened their view. “Although prior research has sought to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of visible planets,” the study authors write . “By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar.” That means the Mayans took a 45-year view of planetary alignment and coded it into a calendar that has left modern scholars scra

In August, physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) discovered that they may have finally crossed the barrier of " ignition " of inertial confinement fusion. They have now verified it. They experimented with extracting more energy from the fusion reactor than was originally required to fuse the material.    The event released 1.3 Megajoules of fusion energy – an eight-fold improvement on the test conducted this past spring, and 25 times better than the record-breaking experiments in 2018. The findings are published in the journal Nature.  “In these experiments we achieved, for the first time in any fusion research facility, a burning plasma state where more fusion energy is emitted from the fuel than was required to initiate the fusion reactions, or the amount of work done on the fuel,” co-lead author Annie Kritcher said in a statement.  The fusion approach at the NIF is known as Inertial Confinement Fusion. This is di

Whether you are a keen astrophotographer or general lover of all things outer-space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made 140,000 audio clips, videos, and images available for everyone to view and download – copyright free and for public use. Within the in-depth, searchable library, NASA has included the EXIF data with all images. This is particularly exciting as it provides an insight into how these photographs were created, whether that be with specialist equipment or more accessible DSLRs. The tip of the ‘ wing ’ of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this new view from NASA’s Great Observatories. The SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. The transparency of this information is a huge source of inspiration for every photographer, proving that stunning starscapes can be captured wherever you are, even in your own backyard. However, along with stunning images of the Milky Way and planets, there are a lot of b

Because our universe is so huge, it appears that nothing else could exist. Experts believe we may be in a 4-dimensional black hole. Our universe began at the singularity, an infinitely hot and dense point in space. According to CERN experts like James Beecham, black holes in our universe may be characterized in the same way as they are in science. What Causes A Black Hole To Form? When massive stars die and collapse into an unimaginably dense mass, they generate black holes from which no light can escape. The event horizon, according to NASA, is the boundary in space beyond which no light can leave or any object can return. The event horizon is not a new concept; it occurs in every visible universe. In the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe began expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. There was no such thing as an absolute speed restriction before this time because there was no such thing as outer space. The expansion of the cosmos slows with tim

Astronomers have found a nearby galaxy that's roughly the same mass as the Milky Way, but somehow contains less than 1 percent of its stars. The galaxy is so dim, it's evaded detention for decades, and now the team behind its discovery has figured out how its lack of stars hasn't ripped it apart - it's made from 99.99 percent dark matter. Dark matter is estimated to make up around 27 percent of all the mass and energy in the observable Universe, and while we can detect its gravitational force, it doesn't appear to emit any form of light or radiation that we can observe. Despite years of searching, we have no idea what dark matter actually is, but this invisible matter is crucial to the stability of the Universe.  Pieter van Dokkum, Roberto Abraham, Gemini, Sloan Digital Sky Survey Galaxies rotate at such speeds, they'd rip themselves apart if the only thing trying to hold them together was their own gravitational force. Something else has to be holding them and

Anyone looking at Rose Ferreira, an astronomy student at Arizona State University and a NASA intern, cannot imagine the road she has taken. As a child, the young woman grew up in the Dominican Republic and did not have access to education. She eventually relocated to New York, where she encountered an even harsher reality: she visited violent areas, had limited access to school, and was homeless in one of the major cities in the United States. But there was always something that piqued her interest: what could explain space? The doubts stem from her childhood, when she endured blackouts in her hometown. She was obliged to survive solely by the light of the moon throughout those times. “The Moon was a lot of what I used to see and I was always curious about it,” he said, in NASA news website interview. "That obsession is what made me start asking questions." It was the many unanswered questions that helped her through the storm. Before arriving at university, Rose worked as a

According to a new study, a “ anti-universe ” where time goes backwards could exist alongside ours. The idea is based on the fact that nature includes fundamental symmetries, which experts believe could apply to the entire cosmos. The hypothesis was discussed in the Annals of Physics publication. It goes over a common physics concept known as Charge, Parity, and Time (CPT) symmetry. CPT symmetry is recognized as one of the laws of physics and means things like charge and time can be inverted after a transformative process. Scientists think the Big Bang, which created the universe, was definitely transformational, and so the CPT theory could apply. The researchers believe that before the Big Bang, there was a ‘ backwards universe ,’ which was later inverted to form the cosmos we live in today. They explained: “We investigate the idea that the universe before the Big Bang is the CPT reflection of the universe after the bang, both classically and quantum mechanically.” And, added: “The un

Astronomers discovered a black hole concealed inside a huge star cluster, B023-G078, in the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighboring galaxy.  With a mass of one hundred thousand solar masses, this black hole is smaller than any other black hole yet larger than those developed when stars explode.This makes the black hole the only verified black hole with an intermediate-mass. B023-G078 was regarded as a massive star cluster. However, experts contend that the nucleus is empty. The nucleus of stripped galaxies is the relics of smaller galaxies that collided with larger ones and had their surrounding stars stripped away by gravitational forces. Senior author Anil Seth, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah and co-author of the study, said, “We have very good detections of the biggest, stellar-mass black holes up to 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies that are millions of times the size of our sun, but there aren’t any

The University of Canterbury (UC) astronomers discovered a magnificent new exoplanet near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. The planet is significant since it is one of just a few comparable exoplanets discovered so far. The super-Earth, according to the experts, is comparable to Earth in both size and orbit. Dr. Antonio Herrera Martin and Associate Professor Michael Albrow of the University of California's School of Physical and Chemical Sciences in the College of Science collaborated with worldwide researchers to discover the super-Earth. The planet is said to be an uncommon world in the universe. The super-Earth, according to the astronomers, is in orbit around a dim dwarf, possibly a brown dwarf or a failed star. The extraterrestrial world circles its star in around 617 Earth days, but its orbit would be halfway between Earth and Venus in our own solar system. According to UC, astronomers used the solar system as a reference point. The host star is around 10% the mass of our

Over 200 million Americans watched the total solar eclipse in August 2017, but no one had a better view than photographer Jon Carmichael . He spent years plotting how he could capture the total eclipse in a unique way, eventually combining his passions for photography, astronomy, and flight. “I wondered, if I got up high enough, could I actually see the moon's shadow move across the Earth's surface at 2,000 mph? That's what I really wanted to see,” Carmichael tells My Modern Met. “And as a photographer, I wondered, can I actually capture this beautiful fleeting moment in our country from a unique perspective? This was the most photographed moment in history, so as a professional photographer that's a lot of pressure.”  By studying the eclipse path carefully, the photographer realized that Southwest Airlines runs a flight from Portland to St. Louis that would put him in the perfect position to view the event. Taking a once in a lifetime chance, Carmichael purchased a tic

Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet outside of our solar system.  Because the exoplanet is a gas giant and lacks a rocky surface, it is unsuitable to life. The image, as seen through four different light filters, demonstrates how Webb's strong infrared vision can easily capture worlds outside of our solar system, paving the door for upcoming observations that will provide more data about exoplanets than has ever been available. HIP 65425 and four images of its planet " b ." The image has a dark backdrop and numerous white and blue stars; it is not from Webb and is titled " Digitized Sky Survey ."  In the upper centre is written " Star HIP 65425 ." It contains four telescope aberrations, or diffraction spikes, on the top, bottom, left, and right. Four inset boxes are highlighted by diagonal lines running from the star to the bottom of the image.  First is Webb's NIRCam view of the

The largest moon of Saturn is an unique habitat in our Solar System. It appears to be a world different from our own, with its methane-filled lakes, freezing volcanoes, and underground tunnels. However, Titan's first geomorphological map demonstrates that, while its landscape is spectacular and diverse, these elements actually make it surprisingly similar to Earth. Titan is the only other body in the Solar System known to have stable liquid on its surface except Earth. Titan's lakes, rivers, and seas, on the other hand, are made of the liquid methane and ethane that rains down from its clouds. Titan is also the only moon with a considerable atmosphere and dense enough air to allow a person to walk over its harsh terrain without a spacesuit (though you'd have some additional problems to cope with, what with the methane rain and lakes...). Titan's liquid is very exciting for another reason: the moon may harbour life in the layer of water that runs beneath its frozen surfa

An older meteorite was discovered in Algeria last year, according to a recent investigation, ScienceAlert says. The space rock is a remarkable wonder that might provide never-before-seen insights about the early years of our solar system, according to an international team of scientists who conducted the investigation. The rock asteroid was discovered in the Erg Check sand sea in May and was immediately recognized as remarkable because, unlike other meteorites, it had obviously been created by a volcano, suggesting that it may have been part of a planet's crust. However, an examination of the radioactive decay of the sample's isotopes revealed, as detailed in a recent report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that it originated roughly 4.566 billion years ago. Since it is a little longer than the Earth's age, it was presumably formerly a part of an other, possibly extinct globe. What protoplanet the asteroid may have come from is not immediate