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space

Is the Universe a Loop?

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andromeda - pixabay

Everything we think we know about the shape of the universe could be wrong. Instead of being flat like a bedsheet, our universe may be curved, like a massive, inflated balloon, according to a new study. That’s the upshot of a new paper published today (Nov. 4) in the journal Nature Astronomy, which looks at data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the faint echo of the Big Bang. But not everyone is convinced; the new findings, based on data released in 2018, contradict both years of conventional wisdom and another recent study based on that same CMB data set. … Read more

Listen to the Sounds of Mars

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Insight Lander - NASA

Mars is full of subtle sounds and thanks to NASA’s InSight mission, we’re finally able to hear them. The stationary probe’s seismometer, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, is sensitive enough to pick up the most gentle of vibrations.  The seismometer has been listening out for earthquakes on Mars. Seismic activity can paint a picture of the interior of a planet and how it was formed, which is one of InSight’s main objectives for Mars. InSight landed on Mars in November 2018 and placed the seismometer on the Martian surface in February. But the Red Planet didn’t produce any sounds until April. And … Read more

SPACE: Three Black Holes Are About to Collide

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black holes - deposit photos

A rare trio of supermassive black holes has been caught in the act of coming together. Three of the light-gobbling monsters nuzzle shoulder to shoulder in SDSS J084905.51+111447.2, a system of three merging galaxies about 1 billion light-years from Earth, a new study reports. “We were only looking for pairs of black holes at the time, and yet, through our selection technique, we stumbled upon this amazing system,” lead author Ryan Pfeifle, of George Mason University in Virginia, said in a statement. “This is the strongest evidence yet found for such a triple system of actively feeding supermassive black holes.” … Read more

SPACE: So What Made the Huge Crater on the Moon’s Dark Side?

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moon anomaly - NASA

Billions of years ago, something slammed into the dark side of the moon and carved out a very, very large hole. Stretching 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide and 8 miles (13 km) deep, the South Pole-Aitken basin, as the tremendous hole is known to Earthlings, is the oldest and deepest crater on the moon, and one of the largest craters in the entire solar system. For decades, researchers have suspected that the gargantuan basin was created by a head-on collision with a very large, very fast meteor. Such an impact would have ripped the moon’s crust apart and scattered chunks … Read more

SPACE: Where Do Black Holes Go?

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black hole - pixabay

So there you are, about to leap into a black hole. What could possibly await should — against all odds — you somehow survive? Where would you end up and what tantalizing tales would you be able to regale if you managed to clamor your way back? The simple answer to all of these questions is, as Professor Richard Massey explains, “Who knows?” As a Royal Society research fellow at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, Massey is fully aware that the mysteries of black holes run deep. “Falling through an event horizon is literally passing beyond the … Read more

SPACE: Black Holes are “Bald,” Not “Hairy”

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black hole - pixabay

Back in 2017, a gravitational wave rang across Earth like the clear tone of a bell. It stretched and squished every person, ant and scientific instrument on the planet as it passed through our region of space. Now, researchers have gone back and studied that wave, and found hidden data in it — data that help confirm a decades-old astrophysics idea. That 2017 wave was a big deal: For the first time, astronomers had a tool that could detect and record it as it passed, known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). That first wave was the result, they … Read more

space: Landing on the Moon is HARD!

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moon - pixabay

Space is hard. That was the takeaway on Sept. 7, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with its Vikram lunar lander during an attempt to touch down at the moon’s south pole. India was poised to become the fourth nation to ever successfully touch down softly on the lunar regolith, doing so in a place that no other country has previously reached. Though the space agency is still scrambling to revive communication with Vikram — which has been spotted from lunar orbit — the unhappy landing sequence seemed like a painful echo of the situation earlier this … Read more

How Big Is It?

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If you’ve ever dreamed of time traveling, just look out at the night sky; the glimmers you see are really snapshots of the distant past. That’s because those stars, planets and galaxies are so far away that the light from even the closest ones can take tens of thousands of years to reach Earth. The universe is undoubtedly a big place. But just how big is it? “That may be something that we actually never know,” Sarah Gallagher, an astrophysicist at Western University in Ontario, Canada, told Live Science. The size of the universe is one of the fundamental questions … Read more

SPACE: Are There Glowing Aliens?

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glowing alien - deposit photos

Alien life-forms could glow in spectacular reds, blues and greens to shield themselves from stellar bursts of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. And that glowing light could be how we find them, according to a new study. Most of the potentially habitable exoplanets we know of orbit red dwarfs — the most common type of star in our galaxy and the smallest, coolest stars in the universe. And thus red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri or TRAPPIST-1, are at the forefront of the search for life. But if extraterrestrial life does exist on these planets, they have a major problem. Red dwarfs … Read more

SPACE: Build Your Own Wormhole in Three Easy Steps

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Wormhole - Pixabay

Everybody wants a wormhole. I mean, who wants to bother traveling the long-and-slow routes throughout the universe, taking tens of thousands of years just to reach yet another boring star? Not when you can pop into the nearest wormhole opening, take a short stroll, and end up in some exotic far-flung corner of the universe. There’s a small technical difficulty, though: Wormholes, which are bends in space-time so extreme that a shortcut tunnel forms, are catastrophically unstable. As in, as soon as you send a single photon down the hole, it collapses faster than the speed of light. But a … Read more