Posts by fraser@m.universetoday.com
(DIR) Post #At8kNWYaKUbzlS7o7U by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-04-15T22:39:08Z
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Researchers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to find an extreme form of a neutron star - a magnetar - which is blasting through the Milky Way at high speed. Magnetars are rare; only 30 have ever been found in our galaxy. Designated SGR 0501+4516, it's close to a supernova remnant and was thought to be part of the explosion. But its high speed reveals that it's moving too quickly to have been born in that particular supernova.https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-tracks-a-roaming-magnetar-of-unknown-origin/
(DIR) Post #At8kNpvyHlblrUDFi4 by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-04-15T22:53:03Z
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We still don't know where life came from. What was the series of events that turned a soup of organic molecules into the first self-replicating organism that could then go on to take over our planet? In a new paper, Dr. David Kipping uses Bayesian analysis to calculate the odds of life emerging quickly on a suitable planet versus it taking a long time (fast versus slow abiogenesis). David finds that several lines of evidence push the likelihood that life emerged quickly.https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.05993
(DIR) Post #At8kO7LlX7LHsPPam8 by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-04-15T22:30:05Z
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Astronomers are slowly learning about the atmosphere of Jupiter - that place is wild. The planet has storms, but they're made of rising plumes of ammonia gas, surrounded by hurricane-like vortices. Hailstones made of ammonia and water ice, dubbed "mushballs," rain down during thunderstorms, surrounded by intense flashes of lightning. And now, astronomers think this is common, not only with other giant planets in the Solar System but across the Universe.https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/04/15/on-jupiter-its-mushballs-all-the-way-down/
(DIR) Post #AtT7ElG14XWLOIscJU by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-04-25T23:15:15Z
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Astronomers theorize that there's a large object in the outer Solar System, influencing the orbits of various Kuiper Belt objects. Dubbed "Planet 9," it hasn't been directly detected yet, but people continue to search for it. In a new paper, researchers looked through two infrared sky surveys and found 13 objects that matched the estimated flux and orbital motion of Planet 9. After more inspections, they were left with a single object. Is this Planet 9?https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17288
(DIR) Post #Atr7N5XciowSd7JfpA by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-07T15:59:03Z
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On May 7th, the Japanese space exploration company ispace announced that its HAKUTO-R RESILIENCE lander entered lunar orbit after completing a 9-minute thruster burn. It's now in a stable lunar orbit, and operators will spend the next month testing and preparing for its landing attempt on June 5. This is the company's second attempt at landing on the Moon, after the first attempt crashed in 2023. It's carrying a micro-rover and several science experiments.https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=7327
(DIR) Post #Au8SczXcCP9BNY3Vjs by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-15T23:18:04Z
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Astronomers have found hundreds of protoplanetary disks around young stars, the birthplaces of new planets. It was assumed that the center of the galaxy was too hostile an environment for planets to form, but now astronomers have found evidence of protoplanetary disks there too. The observations were made with ALMA, peering into the dynamic and turbulent environment of the Central Molecular Zone near the center of the Milky Way. Planets find a way.https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1084027
(DIR) Post #Au8TXeFg1bA3rDgI0O by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-15T23:47:07Z
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Although you can never escape the event horizon of a black hole, the environment around a black hole can generate ultra-fast winds that carry gas and dust at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It was always assumed these winds would be smooth and continuous, but new research shows that some winds can resemble rapid-fire streams of gas bullets. Astronomers saw winds going 20-30% the speed of light, made up of 5 distinct gas components, ejected like a geyser.https://www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2025/05/space-mission-discovers-bullet-like-winds-shooting-from-a-supermassive-black-hole-/
(DIR) Post #AuGX9OHRaBGp6Lg3f6 by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-19T20:59:04Z
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Mars is the Solar System's habitable zone, and it could, in theory, support life. But it lacks a global magnetic field and lost most of its surface water long ago. In a new paper, researchers suggest that transforming Mars into a habitable world is an achievable goal and suggest there be more research into terraforming Mars. They propose several methods for warming Mars, releasing pioneer species to build an ecosystem, and improving its atmosphere.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02548-0
(DIR) Post #AuKS6GmXHbzRq0kifI by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-21T16:15:04Z
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JWST has done it again, finding the most distant galaxy ever seen. Designated MoM-z14, it was detected at a redshift of 14.44, which corresponds to 280 million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers used several techniques to confirm that it is actually at this distance, confirming the redshift with Webb's NIRSpec/prism spectroscopy. The galaxy shows rising star formation and a chemical signature reminiscent of globular clusters and ancient Milky Way stars.https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11263
(DIR) Post #AuOLdcb9GkhE0eDq8e by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-23T16:37:03Z
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Astronomers have discovered a total of 20 asteroids that share an orbit with Venus. Almost all of these asteroids are highly eccentric, discovered when they were at their closest to Earth, which suggests there are many more that haven't been found. These asteroids are often lost in the glare of the Sun and could be a source of significant collision hazards with Earth, releasing the energy of hundreds of megatons of TNT if they struck our planet.https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15968
(DIR) Post #Auak1inrJJG95VYYnQ by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-29T15:52:03Z
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The supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87 is one of the largest in our vicinity and was the ideal first target for the Event Horizon Telescope. Years later, astronomers continue to observe this 6.5 billion solar mass black hole and have measured two of its properties. First, there's the spin parameter, measured at 0.8 (where the maximum is 0.998); and second, the accretion rate, of 0.00004 to 0.4 solar masses per year.https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17035
(DIR) Post #AuakDCCEMsDbQzQYzo by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-05-29T15:23:04Z
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A Chinese rocket startup called Space Epoch just tested a reusable booster rocket called Yanxingzhe-1, soft landing in the ocean off the coast of Shandong Province in eastern China. The 26.8-meter rocket is made of stainless steel and has a diameter of 4.2 meters (Falcon 9 is about 41 meters with a 3.7-meter diameter). The prototype blasted off, completed a 125-second flight, reached an altitude of 2.5 km, and then descended, reignited, and soft landed in the ocean.https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-05-29/Chinese-commercial-rocket-completes-vertical-sea-recovery-test-1DMefpHW0qQ/p.html
(DIR) Post #AulfH8abMG6SNFRis4 by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-03T21:15:04Z
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Recently, astronomers have found that the expansion rate of the Universe at different eras hasn't matched. This is the Hubble Tension mystery, and new surveys have confirmed the discovery. But now, astronomers have taken some of the best data gathered by JWST and found that the perceived gap is starting to narrow again. In fact, the expansion rate measured by Cepheid variables versus the cosmic background has overlapping error bars again. Will the tension be resolved?https://news.uchicago.edu/story/new-measure-universes-expansion-suggests-resolution-conflict
(DIR) Post #Aullz6Fk0PNpau2DuC by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-03T23:29:03Z
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The Large Hadron Collider has changed particle physics, and now scientists are dreaming up even bigger supercolliders. But humanity can't match the raw particle-colliding power of a supermassive black hole. In a new paper, researchers describe how supermassive black holes create a dense environment where particles are spinning at relativistic speeds and crashing into each other, releasing other particles that could be detectable on Earth.https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1085703
(DIR) Post #Aum31WGRxtiS4E6dPc by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-03T22:53:03Z
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When the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, it revealed features on its surface for the first time. But it also directly measured the atmosphere of Pluto and detected particles like nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. New observations from Webb have revealed how these hazy particles control the energy balance of Pluto's atmosphere, rising and falling as they're heated and cooled. This phenomenon makes it very different from other worlds.https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/06/pluto-cooling-haze/
(DIR) Post #AuzhOBRk3OKNNqEEfg by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-10T17:19:03Z
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New data from JWST reveal icy dust in a galaxy far away, seen at a time when it was 5 billion years younger than it is now. This dust is surprisingly similar to dust we see in the Milky Way, which gives a tantalizing hint about what star and planetary formation could have been like much earlier in the Universe. When you consider that the Solar System started forming about 4.5 billion years ago, it indicates that similar planetary systems could be forming there too.https://now.tufts.edu/2025/06/06/peeking-through-space-dust-see-how-ancient-universe-formed
(DIR) Post #Auzpo5rmDpi7EvGvfU by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-10T18:43:03Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
Several hundred rockets are launched every year from around the world, and that number is increasing year after year. According to a new study, once rocket launch rates reach about 2,000 launches a year, the exhaust gases will start having a damaging effect on the ozone layer. At that point, ozone-depleting chemicals in rocket exhaust will thin the ozone layer by up to 3% per year. Good news, there's almost no damage at around 900 launches a year.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-025-01098-6
(DIR) Post #AuzpqgrfdOHyZDScM4 by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-10T18:33:03Z
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Cosmic rays are high-energy particles moving at close to the speed of light. They can strike our bodies with so much damage that they shatter DNA, especially when we're away from the Earth's protective magnetosphere. But their source has always been a mystery. Now, astronomers think they might have located where they're coming from: pulsar wind nebulae. These are expanding bubbles around neutron stars that have been energized with radiation from the dead star.https://phys.org/news/2025-06-cosmic-rays-astrophysicists-closer.html
(DIR) Post #Av6nngTXBGjCVa3N3Y by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-13T19:10:04Z
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Solar sails get their propulsion from the Sun, so they don't need to carry propellant, but they come with their own challenges. A sail has a large surface area but a low mass, which creates a huge moment of inertia and makes it difficult to control, especially with reaction wheels. A team of engineers has developed a reflectivity control device, where thin membranes on the sail change their reflectivity, producing less force and allowing the sail to change direction.https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19865
(DIR) Post #AxDNE1tbVfiUUaRG2S by fraser@m.universetoday.com
2025-06-10T17:08:04Z
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NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured this incredible image of the giant shield volcano Arsia Mons, poking through the cloud tops at Martian dawn. Arsia and the other megavolcanoes on Mars are so tall they're often surrounded by water ice clouds in the early morning. Odyssey is normally staring straight down, so to capture this unique angle, it had to rotate 90 degrees while in orbit so that it could capture a side perspective view of the volcano.https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-mars-orbiter-captures-volcano-peeking-above-morning-cloud-tops/