Space

Dec 6th, 2023 - Our sun actively produces solar flares that can impact Earth, with the strongest flares having the capacity to cause blackouts and disrupt communications—potentially on a global scale. While solar flares can be powerful, they are insignificant compared to the thousands of "super flares" observed by NASA's Kepler and TESS missions. "Super flares" are produced by stars that are 100–10,000 times brighter than those on the sun. The physics are thought to be the same between solar flares ... [Read More]

Dec 6th, 2023 - Supermassive black holes reside in some of the biggest galaxies in the universe. They tend to be billions of times more massive that our Sun, and not even light itself can escape a black hole once it gets too close. But it's not all darkness. Supermassive black holes power some of the most luminous celestial objects in the universe – active galactic nuclei, which shine across the spectrum of light, including radio waves. The active galactic nucleus in nearby galaxy Messier 87 is a ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - Eris has plenty of mysteries left for us to discover. Eris is the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System. It lies in the Kuiper belt, the circumstellar disc that extends beyond Neptune, at the edge of our Solar System. Researchers believe Eris has a solid rocky core and a layer of hard ice. But the ice may not be that impenetrable after all. Researchers have created a model that suggests Eris' surface may behave like soft cheese — or like a slushie. Pluto ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - In a first-of-its-kind discovery, the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) has detected water in the inner region of a disk of planet-forming gas and dust surrounding an infant star. The detection is significant because the water, along with other molecules needed to form worlds like Earth, were found close to several massive, young stars that generate extreme ultraviolet radiation. Such extreme environments were previously thought to be unfit for the formation of rocky planets, but this new ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - By subscribing, you agree to our and You may unsubscribe at any time. One of the building blocks of life has been discovered at the least expected place of our Milky Way Galaxy.  Two radio telescopes detected phosphorous on the fringes of the Milky Way galaxy. It plays a key role in the creation of DNA and RNA in living organisms. The observations led by the University of Arizona call into question current hypotheses concerning the formation of elements in the Milky Way's furthest ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - A giant hole in the atmosphere of the Sun more than five times larger than the diameter of Jupiter is unleashing a powerful solar wind that's blasting through the Solar System. It's called a coronal hole , and it's currently rotating away from Earth – but a few days ago, from its position straddling the equator, it was pointed right at us, directing a stream of particles in Earth's direction. The result was nothing to be alarmed about – a mild solar storm – but the hole does ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - It's the ultimate 'star-trekker,' boldly going where no star has gone before! When it comes to stars, we might think of the beautiful night sky or our favorite local fireball, the Sun. Whether closer to home or farther away in distant galaxies, stars look static and timeless from our vantage point. However, that's not at all true. Case in point, an intriguing new study sheds light on a remarkable cosmic traveler: a star that began its life somewhere outside of the Milky Way but which eventually ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - Astrobiologists suspect there could be alien life just out of reach in our solar system, in oceans hidden beneath icy crusts on moons circling Jupiter and Saturn. But unlike the surface of Mars, which can be explored by rovers and landers, these mysterious oceans are currently inaccessible to us. In an effort to change that, researchers convened this year to design a novel mission that could finally reveal what's in those distant water worlds. The proposed probe, called a cryobot, is a ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - Astrophysics and space research have long been intrigued by one persisting question: Is there life beyond Earth? Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, emerges as a prime candidate in this search. Enceladus is known as an ' ocean world ' and possesses all three key essential elements for life as we know it — water, energy, and organic material. Ice plumes on Saturn's moon Enceladus NASA's Cassini spacecraft , during its remarkable 20-year mission, uncovered that Enceladus ejects ice plumes at a ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2023 - The Milky Way galaxy in which our solar system lies may exist in a "giant void", where space is about a fifth as dense as the universal average. This is the conclusion of a team of researchers from the U.K. and Germany, who argue that such may explain a puzzle relating to how we measure the rate of the universe's expansion in the wake of the Big Bang. One can think of the universe as a balloon—with all the galaxies, for example, like little dots drawn on the outside with a marker pen. As ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2023 - A space telescope scanning the skies for gamma rays has added hundreds of new powerful dead stars to its catalog. The addition of 294 previously unidentified stars means that the Fermi catalog of gamma-ray pulsars now contains more than 340 objects – a significant step up since the Fermi Large Area Telescope started observing in 2008, when there were fewer than 10 known such pulsars. The newly released Third Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-Ray Pulsars is a real treasure trove ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2023 - NGC 2210 in the Large Magellanic Cloud is a notable globular cluster around 11.6 billion years old, offering insights into the age and formation of ancient stellar clusters. Its dense concentration of stars also makes it a visually striking astronomical phenomenon. This striking image shows the densely packed globular cluster known as NGC 2210, which is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC lies about 157,000 light-years from Earth, and is a so-called satellite galaxy of the ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2023 - A bizarre object that sometimes gets as close to the sun as  Saturn , and other times retreats as far out as  Uranus , has been discovered to have a transforming disk of dust around it that changes shape and can even mimic rings. Minor planet 2060 Chiron is what's known as a Centaur, which are captured cometary objects that travel around  the sun  on looping orbits between Jupiter and Neptune. Chiron is just 218 kilometers (135 miles) across and ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2023 - NASA 's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a high-speed jet stream in Jupiter 's atmosphere, moving at 320 miles per hour and situated 15 to 30 miles above the main cloud deck. This jet stream, over 3,000 miles wide, is much faster than the visible cloud layers below, revealing intricate details about Jupiter's atmospheric dynamics. Discovery of High-Speed Jet Stream on Jupiter NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a fast-moving jet stream in Jupiter's atmosphere that is ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2023 - One of the chemicals considered essential to life on Earth may have originated in outer space, researchers have found. Nitrogen compounds, including ammonium salts, may have made their way to Earth via tiny meteoroids from the outer solar system, congregating at Earth's birthplace and becoming part of our planet's final form, according to new research published in the journal Nature Astronomy . Nitrogen is one of the most important ingredients of life, as it is part of all amino acids, ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2023 - TOPICS: The satellites are part of the agency's SunRISE mission, which will study the physics behind explosions that the Sun generates. Most NASA missions feature one spacecraft or, occasionally, a few. The agency's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment ( SunRISE ) is using half a dozen. This month, mission members completed construction of the six identical cereal box-size satellites, which will now go into storage and await their final testing and ride to space. SunRISE will launch as a ... [Read More]