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space

SCIENCE: Space Shrinks Your Brain

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astronaut brains - pixabay

Going to space does more than change the way you look at the world — it also changes your brain. In a new small study, published today (Oct. 24) as a Letter to the Editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers from Germany, Belgium and Russia detailed changes in the brains of 10 cosmonauts before and after long-term missions to space, finding “extensive” changes to the brain’s white and gray matter. What these changes mean for the cosmonauts is still an open question. “However, whether or not the extensive alterations shown in the gray and … Read more

Space Pirates, Check Out The Skull and Crossbones Nebula!

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Skull and Crossbones nebula - ESO

Avast, mateys! Unsheathe your spyglasses and train them on the southern skies. There sails a star-forging nebula on the horizon, and it’s flying the Jolly Roger from its stellar sails! *Ahem* Enough of that. The point is, a cluster of stars out there called NGC 2467 looks like an awesome skeletal nightmare mask in the sky — hence its nickname, the “Skull and Crossbones Nebula.” Today, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a new photo of the nebula’s shrieking “mouth” spitting fresh stars across the cosmic sea. Keeping with the high-seas theme, the Skull and Crossbones nebula lives in the … Read more

SPACE: Extraterrestrial Life Could Be Purple

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purple planet - pixabay

Alien life might be purple. That’s the conclusion of a new research paper that suggests that the first life on Earth might have had a lavender hue. In the International Journal of Astrobiology, microbiologist Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and postdoctoral researcher Edward Schwieterman at the University of California, Riverside, argue that before green plants started harnessing the power of the sun for energy, tiny purple organisms figured out a way to do the same. Alien life could be thriving in the same way, DasSarma said. “Astronomers have discovered thousands of new extrasolar planets recently … Read more

SPACE: We’re Not Looking Hard Enough for Aliens. Really.

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radio telescope - pixabay

Where are all the aliens? For decades, humans have searched for artificial signals, yet the skies above remain silent. But new research suggests that researchers’ investigations have so far not been particularly exhaustive; if the total possible search space were equivalent to the all the water in Earth’s oceans, we have examined only a hot tub’s worth of volume. In many movies, the galaxy teems with intelligent life-forms who zip around on spaceships and produce other obvious signs of their existence. In reality, programs like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have encountered no noticeable transmissions from another species. That … Read more

SPACE: Are There Moonmoons Out There?

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Moonmoon - Pixabay

True to form, the internet has endeavored to name an unnamed thing, and the results are hilarious. From the people who brought you Boaty McBoatface— the Arctic research drone that has already returned some very interesting discoveriesfrom the world’s coldest abysses — here come moonmoons: moons that orbit other moons. Moonmoons — also known online as submoons, moonitos, grandmoons, moonettes and moooons — may not exist in our solar system or any other. However, according to a pair of astronomers writing in the preprint journal arXiv.org earlier this week, the concept of a moon hosting its own mini-moon is, at … Read more

SPACE: Jupiter Flies Its Bi Flag

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Bi Jupiter - NASA

Jupiter can be seen in a whole new light in a photo released by NASA showing the planet in the colours of the trans flag. The photo, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in February 2017 and posted on Tuesday (October 16) on the US government space agency’s Astronomy Picture of the Day page, shows the largest planet in our Solar System in near-ultraviolet light—leading to its white, pink and blue appearance.  “Jupiter appears different in near ultraviolet light, partly because the amount of sunlight reflected back is distinct, giving differing cloud heights and latitudes discrepant brightnesses,” NASA explains … Read more

SPACE: Fast Radio Bursts Could Be Signs of Alien Life. Or Not.

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radio telescope - pixabay

Earth is being bombarded with invisible light that nobody understands. Known as fast radio bursts (or FRBs), these ultrashort, ultrapowerful pulses of ancient energy are the universe’s brightest flashes you cannot see. They travel billions of light-years across time and space, shine with the intensity of nearly 100 suns and then blip out of existence mere milliseconds after reaching the range of Earthly telescopes. Because they are radio waves, they do all of this while remaining totally invisible to human eyes. Could these mystery pulses be the distant flashes of supermassive supernovas? The wild spin of the universe’s speediest neutron … Read more

Europa’s 50-Foot Ice Spikes – Live Science

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Europe - NASA

It’s almost as if Europa has something to protect, something that it doesn’t want us to see. The moon of Jupiter has a saltwater ocean that scientists have long proposed visiting, because at least some researchers think it might contain extraterrestrial life. But there could be a problem: Scientists now report that there’s a good chance 50-foot (15 meters) ice blades defend this fascinating place. In a new paper published yesterday (Oct. 8) in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers likened the environment at Europa to high altitudes on Earth. In those spots, when the sun blasts fields of ice, it … Read more

SPACE: The Hopping Landers of Ryugu

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Hoppy Laner - Ryugu - Live Science

The suspense is over: Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu — and they’ve even sent back some wild postcards from their new home. The tiny rovers are part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission. Engineers with the agency deployed the robots early Friday (Sept. 21), but JAXA waited until today (Sept. 22) to confirm the operation was successful and both rovers made the landing safely. The rovers are part of the MINERVA-II1 program, and are designed to hop along the asteroid’s surface, taking photographs and gathering data. In fact, one … Read more

SPACE: Going to Mars? You Might Glow in the Dark When You Return

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Mars - pixabay

There are plenty of challenges to putting people on Mars, whether you look at the rocket, the astronaut or the planet itself. New data from one of the many spacecraft at work around Mars confirm just how dangerous a round-trip human journey would be by measuring the amount of radiation an astronaut would experience. Cosmic radiation is made up of incredibly tiny particles moving incredibly fast, nearly at the speed of light — the sort of phenomenon a human body isn’t very well equipped to withstand. That radiation travels across all of space, but Earth’s atmosphere buffers us from the … Read more