Space

Telescopes and inference told scientists that the asteroid Bennu was covered in large swaths of fine regolith, smaller than a few centimeters. What they found when OSIRIS-REx arrived at Bennu was something else: A surface covered in boulders. The surprise lack of fine regolith became even more interesting when mission scientists observed evidence of processes capable of grinding boulders into fine regolith. Yet they had not. Machine learning and surface temperature data to the rescue. The team concluded that Bennu's highly porous rocks are responsible for the surface's lack of fine regolith…

We launch space telescopes to gather data about the heavens not to serve as job programs or to honor members of the LGBT community. In an age of light pollution even from satellites like Space X ‘s Starlink space telescopes will be the next step. The spectrum that matters for the spectra that they will record. The name of the object is an irrelevancy the fact that it has been delayed, and cost overran again, and again, and again IS the problem. JWST has become the Super Conducting Super Collider of astronomy and astrophysics. Whatever needs to be done to get it ready to launch needs to get…

This video which appeared two weeks ago greatly surprised me, making me realize how little I know of what is known about these objects. From textbooks and similar, I understood that when sufficient mass is added to a white dwarf, (theoretically or by accretion in a binary system), electrons are being pressured to occupy quantum states beyond those permissible by the theory of relativity.  In such circumstances, the electrons can be forced together with the protons, and the star collapses to form a neutron star.  However, neutron stars are much more complicated than that simple…

In 2019, astronomers spotted a snowball in space moving at over 110,000 miles per hour. They quickly realized they had never seen it before. It was not even from our solar system. Now named Borisov, it was the first interstellar comet ever detected by humans. That doesn't make it rare. A new computer estimate instead believes that in the Oort Cloud—a shell of debris in the farthest reaches of our solar system—interstellar objects outnumber objects belonging to our solar system. Borisov comet. Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA) The calculations, made using conclusions drawn from…

What would happen if we could make Jupiter many times more massive but not make it so massive that it became a star?  This is a question that in a certain ideal view of science could only be answered by an experiment.  Since we can’t add several Jupiter’s of mass Astronomers must observe the sky and see if such objects exist.  They do and they are known as Brown Dwarfs.  Objects discovered relatively recently which are the smallest objects that might fairly be called a type of star and or the largest objects that could be called a planet.   The paper “Revealing…

Light that goes into that black hole doesn’t come out, so we shouldn’t be able to see anything behind one, but if a black hole is warping space, bending light and twisting magnetic fields around itself, then according to Einstein's theory of general relativity direct observation of light from behind a black hole should be possible. Now it has happened.  Material falling into a supermassive black hole powers the brightest continuous sources of light in the universe, and as it does so, forms a corona around the black hole. This light – which is X-ray light – can be analyzed to map and…

I’m puzzled as to why the planets, stars and moons are all round (when) other large and small objects such as asteroids and meteorites are irregular shapes? — Lionel Young, age 74, Launceston, Tasmania This is a fantastic question Lionel, and a really good observation! When we look out at the Solar System, we see objects of all sizes — from tiny grains of dust, to giant planets and the Sun. A common theme among those objects is the big ones are (more or less) round, while the small ones are irregular. But why? Click for full size. A variety of the Solar System’s small bodies,…

New Shepard will carry Jeff Bezos over the Karman Line 100 km or higher into the internationally recognized boundary of space. The Virgin Galactic Spaceship 2 was a beautiful, innovative, and inspired Scaled Composites design from the mind of the legendary Burt Rutan. The kind of aeronautical engineer, no, the kind of problem solver we just do not get in this very computer heavy age. New Shepard on the other hand has a very functional aesthetic Blue Origin New Shepard NS-10 Ignition January 23, 2019: NS-10 Platform: New Shepard Location: West Texas Launch Site Photographer: Blue Origin…

Two new gravitational-wave events, dubbed GW200105 and GW200115, were detected on Jan. 5, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2020, but they happened 900,000,000 years ago. It took that long for the gravitational waves from two black holes gobbling up their neutron star companions to finally hit Earth. This first-ever detection of a black hole merging with a neutron star occurred during the second half of the LIGO and Virgo detectors third observing run, called O3b. Although multiple observatories carried out several follow-up observations, none observed light from either event, consistent with the measured…

Let us take seriously that UFOs are real, but they do not make contact because we are too far removed from them technologically to be worth the trouble.  Scientists discuss alien intelligence in various ways one big way is using the Kardashev scale. This uses the energy utilization of a species that lives in a civilization, broadly defined, to discuss their capabilities and scientific advancement. On this scale us humans might not be worth talking to and should not expect to be. Kardashev Scale A 1 on this scale is a civilization that utilizes all the energy resources of its home planet…