Lifeboat Foundation

Previously, astronomers had only detected three short-period ultracool dwarf binary systems. They were relatively young-up to 40 million years old. In a recent study, astrophysicists at Northwestern University and the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) have discovered an extreme system: the tightest ultracool dwarf binary system ever observed.

This newly discovered system is known as LP 413-53AB. It consists of a pair of ultracool dwarfs. The system is estimated to be billions of years old. Surprisingly, its orbital period is at least three times shorter than all ultracool dwarf binaries discovered so far.

The proximity between the two stars is like this: they take less than one Earth day to revolve around each other. Each star’s “year” lasts just 17 hours.

“The host star, TOI-5205, is just about four times the size of Jupiter, yet it has somehow managed to form a Jupiter-sized planet, which is quite surprising!” exclaimed Dr. Shubham Kanodia, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the Carnegie Earth & Planets Lab and an expert in red dwarf stars, and lead author of the study. Dr. Shubham recently discussed the discovery in an in-depth blog post, as well. Using food as an analogy, Jupiter orbiting our Sun is equivalent to a pea orbiting a grapefruit, whereas TOI-5205b orbiting its parent star would be equivalent to a pea orbiting a lemon.

The general theory of planetary formation begins with a massive, rotating disk of gas and dust encircling young stars, with gas planets initially being formed from rocky material comprising approximately 10 Earth masses. Over time, this material forms the core of the giant planet, which then accumulates large amounts of gas from the disk to produce the massive gas giants we observe today. As it turns out, the confirmation of TOI-5205b could throw this theory into disarray.

Continue reading “Astronomers Find a Seemingly Impossible Exoplanet” »

The fact that we are connected through space and time shows that life is a unitary phenomenon, no matter how we express that fact.

Why don’t we experience ‘quantum weirdness’ in our everyday lives? A brief dive into the current crossroads of quantum physics, as well as looking at how scientists may endeavour to solve lingering questions about the quantum world and help move forward our understanding of the Universe.

In the first episode of the new season of “Star Trek: Picard,” Raffi (Michelle Hurd), while working for a mysterious, faceless contact within Starfleet, is attempting to locate dangerous stolen technology that can be used as a massively destructive weapon. Raffi catches wind of where the weapon will be used but arrives moments too late to stop it. She watches in horror as the Starfleet recruitment building — the entire massive structure — is sucked into a mysterious portal that is instantaneously formed below it. An exit portal then appears about a mile up and a few miles over, and the building crashes to the ground, crushing its own next-door neighbors.

The practical implications for portal technology will, of course, be immediately evident to anyone who has ever played the 2007 video game “Portal.” That game was predicated on making magical doorways through which the player would pass in order to surmount increasingly complex physics and maze puzzles. If one could form an entrance portal in front of them, and then an exit portal on a platform above, one could easily traverse the world.

Generally speaking, the relationship “Star Trek” has with technology is very positive. Starships allow people to travel the cosmos, replicators have essentially ended hunger, and transporters allow people to visit alien worlds. But often, when new technologies are introduced into “Star Trek,” ethical concerns are immediately raised. What, for instance, is a building-size portal-maker really for besides transporting entire buildings a mile into the air and then dropping them? Characters speak often about how certain machines could handily be weaponized.

While Earth and Venus are approximately the same size, and both lose heat at about the same rate, the internal mechanisms that drive Earth’s geologic processes differ from its neighbor. It is these Venusian geologic processes that a team of researchers led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology hopes to learn more about as they discuss both the cooling mechanisms of Venus and the potential processes behind it.

The geologic processes that occur on Earth are primarily due to our planet having tectonic plates that are in constant motion from the heat escaping the core of the planet, which then rises through the mantle to the lithosphere, or the rigid outer rocky layer, that surrounds it. Once this heat is lost to space, the uppermost region of the mantle cools, while the ongoing mantle convection moves and shifts the currently known 15 to 20 tectonic plates that make up the lithosphere. These tectonic processes are a big reason why the Earth’s surface is constantly being reshaped. Venus, on the other hand, does not possess tectonic plates, so scientists have been puzzled as to how the planet loses heat and reshapes its surface.

Continue reading “Venus May Have a Bizarro Version of a Vital Earth Phenomenon” »

Astronomers interpret the spectra of 10 well-known dark asteroids and find them to be water-rich like the dwarf planet Ceres.

Simulations and an experiment aboard the International Space Station show that changes in the system’s repulsive forces are behind the alignment of particles embedded in an electrified plasma.

Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruises are among the cruise liners installing SpaceX’s Starlink on their fleet.