Space

Venus is similar to Earth in size and mass but does not have plate tectonics, which are the primary locations of volcanic activity. A lingering question has always been if there is volcanic activity anyway. A new paper says it has eruptions and lava flows; the evidence is a nearly one-square-mile volcanic vent in an area containing two of Venus’ largest volcanoes, Ozza and Maat Mons, that changed in shape and grew over eight months in 1991. Changes on such a scale on Earth are associated with volcanic activity, whether through an eruption at the vent or movement of magma beneath the vent…

Frontpage image: Illustration of spherical explosion (kilonova) of two neutron stars (AT2017gfo/GW170817) made by Albert Sneppen. STRONTIUM is one of those elements that get less coverage in chemistry courses all the way up to undergraduate level.  These days one is most likely to hear of it in the context of archaeology, for example looking to see if the strontium to calcium ratio in the teeth of Neolithic person X was different from that characteristic of the site of burial, suggesting that they might have grown up in a distant place before arriving at their final earthy…

Yesterday I profited of the kindness of Cesar Ocampo, the site manager of the Parque Astronomico near San Pedro de Atacama, in northern Chile, to visit a couple of places that the SWGO collaboration is considering as the site of a large array of particle detectors meant to study ultra-high-energy gamma rays from the sky.  SWGO and cosmic ray showers SWGO stands for "southern wide-field gamma observatory". It is an astrophysics experiment meant to detect and measure the shower of particles that are produced when very high-energy gamma rays impinge on the upper atmosphere and produce…

First for anyone who doesn't know, NASA’s perseverance rover is currently collecting small samples of rock and leaving them on the surface in tubes on Mars. NASA want to return them some time around 2033 and they plan to return its Mars samples of rock and some dust / soil to biosafety level 4 facilities (BSL-4). But the ESF in 2012 said we have to contain ultramicrobacteria from Mars and a BSL-4 can’t do that. See longer version of this post with extra graphics and explanations for non experts. As Carl Sagan said: The likelihood that such pathogens exist is probably small, but we cannot…

First for anyone who doesn't know, NASA’s perseverance rover is currently collecting small samples of rock and leaving them on the surface in tubes on Mars. NASA want to return them some time around 2033 and they plan to return its Mars samples of rock and some dust / soil to biosafety level 4 facilities (BSL-4). But the ESF in 2012 said we have to contain ultramicrobacteria from Mars and a BSL-4 can’t do that. [I have a shorter version for experts which leaves out most of the graphics and extra explanations here]. As Carl Sagan said: The likelihood that such pathogens exist is probably…

A faint white dwarf star as well as the remains of its orbiting planetary system are over ten billion years old, according to a new estimate. WDJ2147-4035 is the oldest dead star with an evolved planetary system found to-date. A white dwarf is a star that has burnt up all of its fuel and shed its outer layers and is now undergoing a process of shrinking and cooling. During this process, any orbiting planets will be disrupted and in some cases destroyed, with their debris left to accrete onto the surface of the white dwarf. Artistic creation of white dwarfs WDJ2147-4035 and WDJ1922+0233.…

Researchers from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory have been able to measure a change in the rotation period of the near-Earth asteroid, 3200 Phaethon. The “rock comet” is thought to be hazardous, and is the largest of 11 asteroids whose rotation period has been found to have changed. This is an important discovery as global efforts step up to mark out potentially hazardous asteroids and develop a planetary defense program. The announcement was made at the 54th Annual Meeting of The Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).…

New research, published in Nature Astronomy, reveals that there have been exciting new findings from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Data from IBEX shows that there may be “oblique and rippled heliosphere structures” in the termination shock and heliosphere.  What is IBEX? NASA satellite IBEX is in the Earth’s orbit, and uses energetic neutral atoms (ENAS) to create images of the interaction region between the solar system and interstellar space. It does so in pursuance of its goal, which is “to discover the global interaction at the boundary between interplanetary space --…

Scientists have confirmed the existence of lonsdaleite, a rare hexagonal form of diamond named after British crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale, in ureilite meteorites from the mantle of a planet in our solar system. According to the new findings, a large asteroid probably collided with the planet collided about 4.5 billion years ago, and the hexagonal structure of lonsdaleite’s atoms, making it harder than the cubic structure of terrestrial diamonds. The researchers say that means lonsdaleite exists in nature and the largest lonsdaleite crystals are up to a micron in size. It could even…

Scientists know very little about the matter that makes up the galaxies in the Universe. About 20% of the matter in galaxies is visible or baryonic: subatomic particles like protons, neutrons and electrons. The other 80%, referred to as “dark matter”, remains mysterious and unseen. In fact, it may not exist at all. “Dark matter” is just a hypothesis. Physicists and astronomers may be chasing a phantom – but that doesn’t stop us from looking. Why? Because if dark matter isn’t real, then the behaviour of the stars, planets and galaxies makes little sense. Today dark matter – and its cousin,…