Space
A "brown dwarf" star with the catchy name of WISE J085510.83-071442.5 appears to be the coldest of its kind.
When people think of stars, they think of hot fusion plasma bubbling and erupting. WISE J085510.83-071442.5, 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our sun, is instead as frosty as Earth's North Pole.
The locations of the star systems that are closest to the Sun. The year when each star was discovered to be a neighbor of the Sun is indicated. The brown dwarf WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is the fourth nearest system to the Sun. Credit:…
The southern hemisphere of Mars is home to a crater that contains very well-preserved gullies and debris flow deposits and he geomorphological attributes of these landforms provide evidence that they were formed by the action of liquid water in geologically recent time.
When sediment on a slope becomes saturated with water, the mixture may become too heavy to remain in place, leading to a flow of debris and water as a single-phase unit. This is called a debris flow.
Debris flows on Earth often cause significant material destruction and even human casualties, when they occur in built-up areas…
A meteor caught on film during its non-luminous free fall at terminal velocity ? Or an elaborate hoax ? Or something else ? I must admit that when I saw the video posted in the internet a few weeks ago I was intrigued, and operated a willful suppression of disbelief. The footage showed a free-falling black stone that really looked like a meteoroid, passing by the owner of the camera hanging on a parachute, on the skies of Norway. I wanted to believe!
Above: sum of frames from the video shot by the parachutersSome eyeballing of the apparent motion of the object seemed to show that it was…
What looked at first like a sort of upside-down planet in
the binary star system KOI-3278
has instead revealed a new method for studying binary star systems, according to a University of Washington team who writes of the first "self-lensing" binary star system — one in which the mass of the closer star can be measured by how powerfully it magnifies light from its more distant companion star.
Our sun stands alone but about 40 percent of similar stars are in binary (two-star) or multi-star systems, orbiting their companions in a gravitational dance.
The discovery confirms an astronomical…
A Star that seems Brighter when Eclipsed
This paradoxical phenomenon was brought to my attention by a recent article in Physics World. Quite an informative article, but like some bard of old, with legendary tales of kings and heroes, I would like to tell it as a story, in three episodes.
1: Variable Star
Let us start our journey in the Tate Gallery, London. The painting to right is the well-loved Dignity and Impudence by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–1873), featuring a bloodhound and a West Highland terrier (more detail here). Not being an…
Actually physically getting humans and their life support to Mars is likely to be feasible. But there is much more to it than that.
LANDING SAFELY
First - they have to land there safely. Landing on Mars is far harder than anywhere else in the inner solar system, if you need a soft landing.
The problem is - that the atmosphere is so thin, it's not enough to slow you down to a soft landing even with huge parachutes. But it is still enough so that as soon as you hit the Mars atmosphere you are totally committed.
This Hubble photograph of Mars shows the two polar caps, and clouds…
SETI Live's data on Kepler-186's solar system could be revealing evidence of extraterrestrial life. SETI may have seen ET's satellite signals already. Here is the data and my analysis. From my own expertise and experience in astronomy, specifically classifying signals for SETI Live... I say there is a better than 50/50 chance we have found that we are not alone.SETI Live, a program whereby anyone can take part in searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has already pointed it's telescope array at Kepler-186, also known as KIC 8120608. I have done some digging and found their…
Astronomers using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope report discovery of the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.
The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun. While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.
Notre Dame…
The habitable zone planet announced by NASA today is most probably Mars Like...at best a frozen snowball or slushball. I make this determination based on a sober reading of NASA'S press release. Kepler-186f is a star approximately 500 light years away in the Kepler 186 system. Kepler 186 is a red dwarf, and 186f is the fifth planet from it's star, and it is smaller than the other planets in it's system. This planet receives much less solar heat than Earth. If it is not Venus like or Mars like in it's atmosphere then it is habitable. Even then it is likely…
Most of us don't give much thought to the idea of escaping our problems on Earth by going into space. But those who want to colonize Mars often see it as an urgent need for humanity, to have a potential "second home" as they see it. It's also a common theme of science fiction, for instance in "If I forget thee, Oh Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke. In this case his young protagonist is on the Moon, looking towards the Earth.
It was beautiful, and it called to his heart across the abyss of space. There in that shining crescent were all the wonders that he had never known—the hues of sunset skies…