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space

SPACE: Earth Kisses the Moon

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The wispy outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere extends much deeper into space than scientists realized — deep enough that the moon orbits through it. Earth’s geocorona is a sparse, little-understood collection of hydrogen atoms loosely bound by gravity to our planet. This atmospheric region is so thin that on Earth we’d call it a vacuum. But it’s important enough, and powerful enough, to mess with ultraviolet telescopes due to its habit of scattering solar radiation. And researchers, looking at old data from the 1990s, now know that it extends up to 400,000 miles (630,000 kilometers) above the planet’s surface. That’s … Read more

SPACE: A River of Stars

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river of stars - Live Science

One billion years ago, a cluster of stars formed in our galaxy. Since then, that cluster has whipped four long circles around the edge of the Milky Way. In that time, the Milky Way’s gravity has stretched that cluster out from a blob into a long stellar stream. Right now, the stars are passing relatively close to Earth, just about 330 light-years away. And scientists say that river of stars could help determine the mass of the entire Milky Way.. Astronomers have seen these stars before, mixed in with lots of stars all around them. But until now, they didn’t … Read more

SPACE: Are Black Holes the Lighthouses of the Universe?

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Stunning new images show how black holes produce tremendously bright jets millions of light-years long that can be seen across vast cosmic distances. The images were produced by a computer simulation and could help resolve an enduring mystery about how the jets form, the researchers behind the images said. Despite their moniker, black holes aren’t always black. As a black hole consumes an object, gas and dust spins around the maw of the gravitational behemoth, and friction can heat the material on the edges to searing temperatures. This violent process creates lighthouse-like beams of charged particles that travel outward at … Read more

SCIENCE: Why Are the Northern and Southern Auroras Different?

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Auroras paint the sky around the poles when the sun is particularly active, flinging highly charged particles at Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists once thought that the gorgeous events were mirror images, but to their surprise, displays at the north (the aurora borealis) and south (the aurora australis) don’t precisely match. Ever since scientists realized these two celestial displays don’t line up, they’ve been trying to sort out why. Now, a team of researchers thinks it has found the reason — asymmetry in Earth’s magnetic tail. But what’s stranger is that the asymmetry is caused by the precise inverse of what scientists … Read more

SPACE: Did Earth Eat Another Planet?

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The ancient collision that formed the moon may also have brought with it all the ingredients needed for life, a new study finds. Over 4.4 billion years ago, a Mars-size body smashed into a primitive Earth, launching our moon into permanent orbit around our planet. But a new study finds that this event could have had a much larger impact than previously thought. The collision could also have imbued our planet with the carbon, nitrogen and sulfur needed for life to form, scientists reported today (Jan. 23) in the journal Science Advances. Back then, Earth was a little like Mars … Read more

SPACE: Scientists Spot a Medium-Sized Black Hole Wandering the Galaxy

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black hole - pixabay

Scientists think that they’ve spotted a rare, Jupiter-size black hole casually strolling through the Milky Way galaxy. Of course, scientists can’t see any black holes directly — but new research tracking a celestial cloud structure saw strange behavior that may have been caused by just such an invisible object. That data came courtesy of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a set of 66 telescopes scattered across the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. “When I checked the ALMA data for the first time, I was really excited because the observed gas showed obvious orbital motions, which strongly suggest an invisible … Read more

SPACE: Steam-Powered Starships, Anyone?

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Come one, come all and behold the future of space travel: steam power! No, seriously; half a century after the world’s first manned space mission, it seems that interplanetary travel has finally entered the steam age. Scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have teamed up with Honeybee Robotics, a private space and mining tech company based in California, to develop a small, steam-powered spacecraft capable of sucking its fuel right out of the asteroids, planets and moons it’s exploring. By continuously turning extraterrestrial water into steam, this microwave-sized lander could, theoretically, power itself on an indefinite number of … Read more

SPACE: Could Nearby Exoplanet Harbor Life?

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exoplanet

There’s a rocky planet out there that’s very big and cold. Its sun, a red dwarf named “Barnard’s star” looks much larger in its sky than Earth’s. It bathes the planet in X-rays and ultraviolet light, likely enough radiation to strip away any atmosphere. But Barnard’s star is also much dimmer than Earth’s host star, so the planet’s surface is probably a frozen wasteland — the sort of place that likely wouldn’t have any liquid water, and that most scientists wouldn’t expect to support life. But a new analysis suggests that the planet, named Barnard B, might give rise to … Read more

Did We Just Witness the Birth of a Black Hole?

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Exploding Cow

On June 16, 2018, a stupendously bright explosion tore across the cosmos and lingered in the sky above Earth for several weeks. The mysterious blast traveled 200 million light-years from the gut of the Hercules constellation, shone with the light of nearly 100 supernovas and captured the attention of the world’s stargazers until, finally, it vanished from the sky as mysteriously at it appeared. Astronomers named it “The Cow.” From the moment of its discovery, scientists knew that The Cow (officially named AT2018cow, which is a procedurally generated name) was no typical supernova. Now, months later, a team of international … Read more

SPACE: Ultima Thule Looks Like a Snowman

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Ultima Thule, an icy world 4 billion miles from the sun, looks like a big snowman. At a news conference on Wednesday, scientists working with NASA’s New Horizons mission released several images that the spacecraft took as it flew by on Jan. 1. The scientists now say with confidence that Ultima Thule long ago was two bodies that got stuck together, what they call a contact binary. “Two completely separate objects that are now joined together,” said S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the mission. Full Story at the New York Times