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Space

SPACE: Is the Universe Filled With Cobwebs?

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web in space - pixabay

What if I told you that our universe was flooded with hundreds of kinds of nearly invisible particles and that, long ago, these particles formed a network of universe-spanning strings? It sounds both trippy and awesome, but it’s actually a prediction of string theory, our best (but frustratingly incomplete) attempt at a theory of everything. These bizarre, albeit hypothetical, little particles are known as axions, and if they can be found, that would mean we all live in a vast “axiverse.” The best part of this theory is that it’s not just some physicist’s armchair hypothesis, with no possibility of … Read more

SPACE: Jupiter’s Red Spot Persists

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Jupiter - Yay Images

Despite the apparent shrinkage of clouds in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the storm itself is still going strong, new research suggests. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot represents the most powerful storm in the solar system. While earlier studies have suggested that the storm has been shrinking since at least the 1800s, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, argued Nov. 25 at a conference of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics that there is no evidence that the vortex that powers the cloud formation is changing. “I don’t think its fortunes were ever bad,” Philip Marcus, a professor of … Read more

SPACE: Earth-Like Planet Found “Nearby”

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Earthlike Planet - NASA

A few months ago, a group of NASA exoplanet astronomers, who are in the business of discovering planets around other stars, called me into a secret meeting to tell me about a planet that had captured their interest. Because my expertise lies in modeling the climate of exoplanets, they asked me to figure out whether this new planet was habitable — a place where liquid water might exist. These NASA colleagues, Josh Schlieder and his students Emily Gilbert, Tom Barclay and Elisa Quintana, had been studying data from TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) when they discovered what may be TESS’ … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Decade

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Cool cats, we’ve entered a new decade and I’m on the edge of my seat about it. The 2010’s were a circus for me, personally and publicly and politically, a roller coaster of wildness I’m hoping won’t be repeated. It wasn’t all bad. I started my writing career and had a son, got married and got divorced, made friends and lost friends and rekindled my zest for life. The last decade was something to behold, a time to look back and shake my head in wonder that I manage to knuckle under, survive it mostly on nothing by spite. The … Read more

SPACE: Hoag’s Object is the Turducken of Galaxies

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SPACE: Hoag's Object Is The Turducken Of Galaxies

Look closely at the serpent constellation slithering through the northern sky, and you might see a galaxy within a galaxy within a galaxy. This cosmic turducken is known as Hoag’s object, and it has befuddled stargazers since astronomer Arthur Hoag discovered it in 1950. The object in question is a rare, ring-shaped galaxy measuring some 100,000 light-years across (slightly larger than the Milky Way) and located 600 million light-years from Earth. In a recent image of the oddball object taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and processed by geophysicist Benoit Blanco, a bright ring of billions of blue stars forms … Read more

SPACE: The Decade in Astronomy

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As the 2010s come to a close, it’s time to revisit how some of the biggest space science stories shaped the decade. From the rise of TESS to flybys of Pluto and Cassini’s dramatic demise, the past ten years have produced some incredible science. Here are some of our favorite discoveries from the decade. 2010 Saw Cosmic Chases and Cosmic Rays The Deep Impact spacecraft proved to be an overachiever in 2010, chasing down a second comet after it had already observed one. After Deep Impact visited Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, NASA realized the spacecraft still had enough fuel … Read more

SPACE: Rogue Star Reaches Mind-Blowing Speeds

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super fast star

As humankind’s ancestors were learning to walk upright, a star was launched out of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy at a staggering 3.7 million mph (6 million km/h). Five million years after this dramatic ejection, a group of researchers, led by Sergey Koposov of Carnegie Mellon University’s McWilliams Center for Cosmology, has spotted the star, known as S5-HVS1, in the Crane-shaped constellation Grus. The star was spotted traveling relatively close to Earth (29,000 light-years away) at unprecedented, searing speeds — about 10 times faster than most stars in our galaxy. “The velocity of the discovered … Read more

SPACE: Milky Way’s Giant Black Hole May Have a Friend

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black holes - deposit photos

Do supermassive black holes have friends? The nature of galaxy formation suggests that the answer is yes, and in fact, pairs of supermassive black holes should be common in the universe. I am an astrophysicist and am interested in a wide range of theoretical problems in astrophysics, from the formation of the very first galaxies to the gravitational interactions of black holes, stars and even planets. Black holes are intriguing systems, and supermassive black holes and the dense stellar environments that surround them represent one of the most extreme places in our universe. The supermassive black hole that lurks at … Read more

SPACE: Russian Robots on the Moon to Track Asteroids

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robot - pixabay

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is planning to install a nuclear-powered observatory on its future moon base to held spot deadly Earth-threatening asteroids. Establishing a permanent presence near the lunar south pole has been a priority for Roscosmos ever since NASA announced plans to return to the moon earlier this year. The base’s telescopes will work in tandem with spacecraft placed in orbit around the Earth to help provide humanity with a space-rock early warning system. Full Story From Joe.My.God

SPACE: NASA Releases “Treasure Map” of Mars

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NASA’s wish to follow the water on Mars just got a helping hand. Scientists have released a new global map showing water ice that is as little as 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) below the Red Planet’s surface. With data in hand, the research team located at least one promising landing spot for future astronaut missions: a big zone in the northern hemisphere’s Arcadia Planitia. This area has a lot of water ice close to the surface and is in the ideal location for a human Mars mission, because it is in a temperate, midlatitude region with plenty of sunlight, the … Read more