This plant that could survive the harsh conditions on Mars, which could help future human missions to explore and terraform the red planet.
ICYMI, Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne (BS ’62) reached across history, physics, and astronomy to highlight characters and discoveries that changed humanity’s understanding of space and time.
His talk was the 100th in Caltech Astro’s Stargazing Lecture Series.
The neutron star PSR J0437 spins hundreds of times a second and has a mass equivalent to 1.4 suns.
Based on our experiments, the ‘safe’ sampling depth for amino acids on Europa is almost 8 inches (around 20 centimeters) at high latitudes of the trailing hemisphere (hemisphere opposite to the direction of Europa’s motion around Jupiter) in the area where the surface hasn’t been disturbed much by…
How deep will future landers to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and Saturn’s moon, Enceladus have to dig to find organic molecules aka the building blocks of life? This is what a recent study published in Astrobiology hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated whether near-surface organic molecules on Europa and Enceladus could survive the intense solar and cosmic radiation since neither moon has a magnetic field like the Earth to shield it. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for finding life beyond Earth and the methods for finding that life, as well.
Image of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, obtained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in September 2022. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY 3.0)
Continue reading “Life-Detection Potential on Europa and Enceladus: Amino Acid Insights” »
Discover your night sky this week, July 22–28, 2024, using just your naked eyes, no equipment necessary.
For the first time, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to directly image has been captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In this stunning image of the Serpens Nebula, the discovery lies in the northern area (seen at the upper left) of this young, nearby star-forming region.
Astronomers found an intriguing group of protostellar outflows, formed when jets of gas spewing from newborn stars collide with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. Typically these objects have varied orientations within one region. Here, however, they are slanted in the same direction, to the same degree, like sleet pouring down during a storm.
The discovery of these aligned objects, made possible due to Webb’s exquisite spatial resolution and sensitivity in near-infrared wavelengths, is providing information into the fundamentals of how stars are born.
A newly discovered neutron star, found by an international team using the ASKAP radio telescope, spins every 54 minutes, making it the slowest of its kind.
This discovery could alter scientific theories about neutron stars and white dwarfs, emphasizing the need for more research to understand their emission properties and evolutionary paths.
Astronomers have detected what they believe to be a neutron star spinning at an unprecedentedly slow rate — slower than any of the more than 3,000 radio-emitting neutron stars measured to date.
Space storms could soon be forecast with greater accuracy than ever before thanks to a big leap forward in our understanding of exactly when a violent solar eruption may hit Earth.
What happens when humanity begins living in space, building larger space stations, and creating a purely space based economy. Space drones will deliver goods between stations, farming stations will grow food, and space hotels will host celestial events and viewing parties for eclipses and welcoming parties for spaceships returning from Mars.
This sci-fi documentary takes a look at the future of space stations and space technology, starting with the retiring of the International Space Station, and ending with the construction of the largest rotating ring world space station, with its own atmosphere and lakes that evaporate creating clouds and rain.
Continue reading “TIMELAPSE of Future Space Stations (Sci-fi Documentary)” »
Researchers reported the discovery of a new cosmic conundrum. The new object, GPM J1839-10, operates similarly to a pulsar, emitting frequent bursts of radio radiation. However, the physics that drives pulsars dictates that they would cease generating if they slowed too much, and practically every pulsar we know of blinks at least once every minute.
GPM J1839-10 has a pulse interval of 22 minutes. We don’t know what type of physics or things can power it.
