Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime caused by violent processes in the Universe. They were predicted by Einstein back in 1916 as part of his General Theory of Relativity. It is thought the waves are generated by accelerating masses such as merging black holes, colliding neutron stars and the like. They are expected to...
Mention the Milky Way and most people will visualise a great big spiral galaxy billions of years old. It’s thought to be a galaxy that took shape billions of years after the Big Bang. Studies by astronomers have revealed that there are the echo’s of an earlier time around us. A team of astronomers from MIT have found three...
One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson Spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data....
Really important step towards expanding our research on the moon, is creating highly detailed maps of the entire surface....
The amount of detail in these pictures is amazing. You can really see the texture in the nebula, and the features are so crisp, it kind of looks 3d.
Pretty interesting topic, would be interesting if it could be used to move satellites to a “parking orbit” once they run out of fuel. It’s unclear just how much movement in an orbit that can be done, as it says it needs to be in the same energy level....
When giant planets move, everything else responds. Tiny asteroids are insignificant compared to Jupiter’s mass. Scientists think E-type asteroids were dispersed during the gas giants’ outward migration. They may even have been the impactors in the hypothetical Late Heavy Bombardment....
Resource, and Science Explorers (MARSE) mission concept and its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD), which offers a broader and cheaper method regarding the search for—past or present—life on the Red Planet, specifically by using four rovers at four different landing sites across Mars’ surface instead of...
If there’s a Holy Grail on Mars, it’s probably a specific type of rock: A rock so important that it holds convincing clues to Mars’ ancient habitability....
In a nutshell, the field of cosmochemistry, also known as chemical cosmology, perfectly sums up Carl Sagan’s famous quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” To understand cosmochemistry is to understand how the Earth got here, how we got here, and possibly how...
Two main findings from the paper will probably turn the most heads. The scientists found that there are close to 2 billion secondary impact craters larger than 10 meters caused by the ejecta from Corinto. And those secondary craters appear up to 1850 km away. That would make it, by far, the most impactful (pun intended) of the...
Astronomers used JWST to study molecules in a protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula to follow the destruction and replenishment of water. Planet-forming disks are places of chaotic activity. Not only do planetesimals slam together to form larger worlds, but it now appears that the process involves the destructive recycling of...
Planet Nine explains many things about orbits of objects in the outer solar system that would be otherwise unexplainable and would each need some sort of separate explanation. The cluster of the directions of the orbits is the best know, but there is also the large perihelion distances of many objects, existence of highly...
Living in space comes with risks. For astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), those risks occasionally make themselves intrusively apparent....
