Carbon Chemist

Tag: astronomy

  • We’ve Never Been Closer to Finding Life Outside Our Solar System

    We’ve Never Been Closer to Finding Life Outside Our Solar System

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    In 2025, we might detect the first signs of life outside our solar system.

    Crucial to this potential breakthrough is the 6.5-meter-diameter James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Launched aboard an Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou, a coastal town in French Guiana, in 2021, the JWST is our biggest space telescope to date. Since it began collecting data, this telescope has allowed astronomers to observe some of the dimmest objects in the cosmos, like ancient galaxies and black holes.

    Perhaps more importantly, in 2022, the telescope has also provided us with the first glimpses of rocky exoplanets inside what astronomers call the habitable zone. This is the area around a star where temperatures are just right for the existence of liquid water—one of the key ingredients of life as we know it—in the planet’s rocky surface. These Earth-sized planets were found orbiting a small red star called TRAPPIST-1, a star 40 light-years away with one-tenth of the mass of the sun. Red stars are cooler and smaller than our yellow sun, making it easier to detect Earth-sized planets orbiting around them. Nevertheless, the signal detected from exoplanets is typically weaker than the one emitted by the much brighter host star. Discovering these planets was an extremely difficult technical achievement.

    The next stage—detecting molecules in the planets’ atmosphere—will be an even more challenging astronomical feat. Every time a planet passes between us and its star—when it transits—the starlight gets filtered by the planet’s atmosphere and hits the molecules in its path, creating spectral absorption features we can search for. These features are very difficult to identify. To accomplish that, the JWST will need to collect enough data from several planetary transits to suppress the signal from the host star and amplify the molecular features in the incredibly thin atmosphere of the rocky exoplanets (if you’d shrink these planets to the size of an apple, for instance, at that scale their atmosphere would be thinner than the fruit’s peel). However, with a space telescope as powerful as the JWST, 2025 might just be the year when we can finally detect these molecular signatures.

    Detecting water in TRAPPIST-1’s exoplanets, however, is not our only chance to find life in faraway exoplanets. In 2024, for instance, the JWST also revealed potential signs of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a planet located 124 light-years from Earth. K2-18b, however, is not a rocky, Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the Habitable zone. Instead, it’s more likely to be a giant gas ball with a water ocean similar to Neptune (albeit smaller in size). This means that if there’s life on K2-18b, it might be in a form completely different from life as we know it on Earth.

    In 2025, the JWST will likely shed more light into these tantalizing detections, and hopefully confirm, for the first time ever, if there is life on alien worlds light-years away from our own.

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  • Exploding interstellar space rocks could explain mystery radio flashes

    Exploding interstellar space rocks could explain mystery radio flashes

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    Illustration of a neutron star emitting a flash of radio waves

    Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo

    Mysterious flashes of radio waves from space might be caused by interstellar asteroids and comets crashing into neutron stars.

    Astronomers detected the first fast radio burst (FRB) in 2007, and several thousand have since been found. They are thought to come from neutron stars, the ultra-dense cores left behind after some stars explode as supernovae, but exactly what causes them is unclear.

    The favoured explanation for FRBs is that they…

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  • Why Is It So Tricky to Show the Sun, Earth, and Moon in a Diagram?

    Why Is It So Tricky to Show the Sun, Earth, and Moon in a Diagram?

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    Earth, sun, moon: three objects in space whose interactions have a pretty big impact on our lives. Earth orbits the sun once a year, and it rotates on its axis about once a day (depending on your definition of “rotate”). This gives us the night-day sequence and the yearly cycle of the seasons.

    The moon’s gravitational tug influences the tides. On a monthly cycle, we can also see the phases of the moon, which are caused by the relative positions of these three orbs. A full moon makes it possible to see at night. Before electric lights, this was a big deal.

    You can see how these interactions structure our whole idea of time. So if you were writing a science textbook, you’d want to include an illustration of the Earth-sun-moon system, right? But guess what, you can’t. The distances and differences in size make it practically impossible.

    Let’s say we want to build a model of the sun and Earth alone. Earth has a radius of about 6,371 kilometers (3,959 miles), but let’s represent this with a marble 1 centimeter in diameter. To keep things in scale, I’d have to use a giant beach ball for the sun—the kind people knock around at rock concerts—more than a meter in diameter. You could fit 1.3 million marbles into it.

    But wait! It gets worse. That beach ball would also have to be 117 meters away. That’s longer than a football field. Now try to take a picture of the ball and the marble. Good luck with that.

    Modeling the Earth and moon would be easier. If we use that marble for the moon, Earth would be a tennis ball, with a diameter of 6.7 centimeters. Now for the fun part. How far apart do you think we should put them? Take a guess. You’ll probably be wrong because we never see the Earth and moon together. The answer is 2 meters. Here’s what that would look like:

    Image may contain Blackboard Ball Sport Tennis and Tennis Ball

    Illustration: Rhett Allain

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  • We’ve taken a photo of a star in another galaxy for the first time

    We’ve taken a photo of a star in another galaxy for the first time

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    Left: An image of the star WOH G64 taken with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. Right: An artist’s impression of the star

    ESO/K. Ohnaka et al., L. Calçada

    Astronomers have taken the first detailed picture of a star in another galaxy, more than 160,000 light years away. The giant star may be showing signs that it is just years away from exploding, a process we have never seen in detail.

    The largest stars we know of are red supergiants, which are stars that have run out of hydrogen fuel in their cores. A shell of hydrogen gas surrounding the core burns instead, massively expanding the volume of the star.

    One of the largest red supergiants we know of is WOH G64, sometimes called the behemoth star. It is between 1540 and 2575 times the size of the sun and resides in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The star has been a target for astronomers since it was discovered in the 1970s, but its distance has made it hard to examine closely.

    Now, Jacco van Loon at Keele University, UK, and his colleagues have taken a close-up picture of WOH G64 using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in the Atacama desert in Chile, a collection of four individual telescopes linked together to function as if they were a single 200-metre telescope. “In this image, we can see detail which would be equivalent to seeing an astronaut walking on the moon,” says van Loon. “You can’t see that through a normal telescope pointing at the moon.”

    The image, which was taken using infrared light, shows a bright ball of gas and dust, more than 1000°C (1832°F), that the star has pumped out and that now surrounds it as a dense cocoon. “It’s really a structure we had not expected to actually see,” says van Loon. “We had expected just to see the star in the middle.”

    The star appears dimmer than when it was last observed, so the gas and dust probably appeared relatively recently, says van Loon. It might have been produced by the star blowing off its outer layers, which astronomers have never captured in a red supergiant.

    If that is what happened and the process resembles one seen in similar stars called blue supergiants, then it might be a sign that the star is decades or years away from exploding. “If we can see this star explode, we have much more detail about a star before it’s exploded than ever before,” says van Loon.

    “It’s technically extremely impressive to be able to reconstruct an image of this object given its extreme distance,” says Paul Crowther at the University of Sheffield, UK.

    However, it is harder to say for certain whether the observed gas and dust, and the associated dimming in brightness, are a sign of an imminent explosion. “Stars like this object are well known to be highly variable,” says Crowther. “It’s simply what happens in these objects where they have this dense, slow outflow that doesn’t go very far from the star. They’re well known to be dust factories.”

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  • You can't put a price on the sense of awe particle physics inspires

    You can't put a price on the sense of awe particle physics inspires

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    Astronomy and particle physics are no longer seen as vital by the US establishment, so funding has fallen. But our work creates a sense of wonder, and wonder matters, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

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  • How I learned to love looking at the moon – and you can too

    How I learned to love looking at the moon – and you can too

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    A39ET8 FR - ISERE: Moon over Col de Sarenne. Image shot 2010. Exact date unknown.

    Moon over Col de Sarenne

    nagelestock.com/Alamy

    Observational astronomers hate the moon. This might be surprising to some of you – after all, the moon is gorgeous, it’s the closest astronomical object we can observe and the dominant feature of the night sky on Earth. But that very spotlight is the problem: when the moon is out, its glare can hide nearly everything else. When you are looking for tiny details or deep-sky objects, that is a problem.

    Even in just the next couple of months, there are two meteor showers that will each happen within a few days of the full…

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  • Texas A&M approves $200m institute to advance space exploration

    Texas A&M approves $200m institute to advance space exploration

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    In a historic move, Texas A&M has approved more than $500m in construction projects involving a new institute to advance space exploration.

    The investments will impact the state on multiple fronts, from advancing space exploration and hypersonic research to improving veterinary services and community resources.

    “This agenda not only underscores the great needs of the state and nation,” said Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp. “It is only possible thanks to the foresight and commitment of our state leaders.”

    This massive investment follows Texas A&M’s legislative win in 2023, which secured $1.19bn in new funding, including $775m for fresh initiatives.

    The future of space exploration at the Johnson Space Center

    $200m will go towards constructing a four-story space exploration facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to assist in missions to the Moon and Mars.

    The board promised research garages for experimental robots and vehicles, lab spaces, and general learning facilities.

    This facility will span 32 acres and be approximately the size of Kyle Field. It will feature simulated landscapes to mirror the terrain of the Moon and Mars.

    Construction of the Texas A&M University Space Institute will commence in January 2025.

    Hypersonic Wind Tunnel at Texas A&M-RELLIS

    In addition to advancing space exploration, a $10m Hypersonic Wind Tunnel will boost national defence and aerodynamics research at the Texas A&M-RELLIS campus.

    The board said this facility will be the largest academic wind tunnel of its kind in the US and will be capable of large-scale testing.

    The board also said the facility will complement the university’s Ballistics Aero-optics and Materials Range and the Detonation Research Test Facility.

    Construction is set to begin in December.

    Additional projects

    While the majority of the funding is being allocated to the space exploration centre, other approved projects aim to expand training, early education, and student amenities across Texas.

    They include:

    • Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) Training Facility: This $25.3m investment will create an 86-acre training complex at Texas A&M-RELLIS. The facility will provide resources for first responders, law enforcement, and cybersecurity professionals, including an urban simulation grid, drive track, and classrooms.
    • Educare School in San Antonio: The Board allocated $21.69m for Educare San Antonio, a school designed for children from six weeks to kindergarten age. Set to be the first Educare facility in Texas, it will also serve as a hands-on training ground for Texas A&M-San Antonio students.
    • Athletic Facilities in San Antonio: A $10m project funded by Bexar County will upgrade Texas A&M-San Antonio’s softball field and add a new multipurpose field and track, benefiting both university athletes and the community.
    • Student Dining Facility in Commerce: Texas A&M-Commerce will gain a new $7.4m dining hall to enhance student amenities.
    • Utility and HVAC Upgrades in College Station: The Board approved $74.9m for critical infrastructure improvements on the College Station campus, ensuring better utility systems and HVAC performance.

    Regents said this wave of projects reflects Texas A&M’s commitment to maintaining its leadership in fields as diverse as space exploration, veterinary science, and early childhood education, with a clear focus on addressing both academic and community needs statewide.

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  • Distant dwarf planet Makemake might have a surprising ice volcano

    Distant dwarf planet Makemake might have a surprising ice volcano

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    A small world in the outer solar system appears to have volcanic activity possibly spurred by liquid water

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  • The first brown dwarf ever found was the strangest – now we know why

    The first brown dwarf ever found was the strangest – now we know why

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    Congratulations, it’s twins

    K. Miller, R. Hurt/Caltech/IPAC

    An odd star that has confused researchers for decades now makes sense – it turns out not to be a single star but two companions.

    “It used to be that this brown dwarf didn’t make any sense. We worried that we were doing something horribly wrong, or that our models were horribly wrong. But, no, everything’s fine. It just has a friend,” says Timothy Brandt at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland.

    Now, two research teams have used instruments at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile to unravel the mystery of the first brown dwarf.

    Brown dwarfs are “failed stars” in that they have too little matter and are too cool to sustain nuclear fusion. They become faint in the night sky, similar to planets, instead of burning bright for millennia. The first brown dwarf, called Gliese 229B, was discovered in 1995, but its mass was inexplicably large, says Jerry Xuan at the California Institute of Technology, who worked on one of the studies.

    Gliese 229B was estimated to be about 71 times as massive as Jupiter, and a star born at that size would have not cooled down to be as dim as we see it even if it was as old as the universe, says Brandt, who was part of one of the research teams. This led some researchers to suggest that Gliese 22B is a pair of very faint stars, but until now they had no definitive evidence.


    Xuan says this is because the two brown dwarf companions, Gliese 229Ba and Bb, are unusually close together and seeing them both required very precise observations. But observations by the two teams confirmed that they are separate and orbit each other every 12 days, always keeping a distance about 16 times as large as that between Earth and the moon.

    Uncovering Gliese 229B’s double identity may be the beginning of a trend, says Samuel Whitebook at the California Institute of Technology who was part of one of the research teams. “There are likely many binary systems that have been hiding under our noses this whole time,” he says.

    Xuan says he has already picked out several other brown dwarfs to examine more precisely. Because brown dwarfs are similar to both exoplanets and stars, understanding how many of them are actually twins may shed some light on the formation of these other cosmic bodies as well.

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  • First breathtaking images from Euclid telescope’s map of the universe

    First breathtaking images from Euclid telescope’s map of the universe

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    New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

    The interaction between two distant galaxies, captured by Euclid

    ESA

    A mosaic of images from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope captures more than 14 million galaxies, offering a first glimpse of a “cosmic atlas”. The mapping project could add to our understanding of the role dark matter and dark energy play in the structure of the universe.

    “The scale is utterly incomprehensible,” Carole Mundell, the director of science at the ESA, said at a meeting of the International Astronautical Congress in Italy on 15 October. Representing the image at full resolution would require more than 16,000 4K TV screens, she said.

    New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

    Euclid’s first mosaic image represents only 1 per cent of the final map

    ESA

    The mosaic of 260 images is the first glimpse into Euclid’s project to create the largest and most accurate map of the universe yet. The vast number of galaxies was captured during a two-week survey in April and represents only 1 per cent of the final map. The image covers an area of the southern sky about 500 times the size of the full moon.

    The wispy blue band across the image is dust and gas in the nearby Milky Way, known as “galactic cirrus”, said Mundell. Zooming in reveals swirling galaxies interacting hundreds of millions of light years away, some with a supermassive black hole at their centre that can produce gravitational waves measurable on Earth.

    Over the next six years, the telescope will autonomously scan about a third of the night sky. The researchers anticipate the final map will show around 8 billion galaxies, each with billions of stars, stretching across 10 billion years of cosmic history.


    By observing clusters of galaxies and other phenomena, such as how gravity bends light, “Euclid will measure the cosmic web – the distribution of matter in space and time”, said the ESA’s Valeria Pettorino at the meeting. Because dark energy and dark matter affect the formation of voids between clusters of galaxies, measuring these voids could help us understand the characteristics of these elusive substances, she said.

    “We’re testing the fundamental laws of physics at the extreme scales of the cosmos,” said Mundell.

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