Lifeboat Foundation

A team of researchers, led by a University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa planetary scientist, discovered that high energy electrons in Earth’s plasma sheet are contributing to weathering processes on the Moon’s surface and, importantly, the electrons may have aided the formation of water on the lunar surface. The study was published today in Nature Astronomy.

Understanding the concentrations and distributions of water on the Moon is critical to understanding its formation and evolution, and to providing water resources for future human exploration. The new discovery may also help explain the origin of the water ice previously discovered in the lunar permanently shaded regions.

Due to Earth’s magnetism, there is a force field surrounding the planet, referred to as the magnetosphere, that protects Earth from space weathering and damaging radiation from the Sun. Solar wind pushes the magnetosphere and reshapes it, making a long tail on the night side. The plasma sheet within this magnetotail is a region consisting of high energy electrons and ions that may be sourced from Earth and the solar wind.

India is building its first manned submersible to study the deep sea and conduct a biodiversity assessment, an announcement that comes days after the country successfully landed a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole.

The JWST is just the beginning of a new era of space astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been a spectacular success so far, revealing new insights into the cosmos with its powerful vision. But the JWST also has a history of cost overruns, delays, and near-cancellations that have raised questions about the feasibility of future space telescopes.

Source: Northrop Grumman/NASA via Flickr.

Continue reading “Researchers suggest how to make space telescopes cheaper and better” »

When Elon Musk announced the team behind his new artificial intelligence company xAI last month, whose mission is reportedly to “understand the true nature of the universe,” it underscored the criticality of answering existential concerns about AI’s promise and peril.

Whether the newly formed company can actually align its behavior to reduce the potential risks of the technology, or whether it’s solely aiming to gain an edge over OpenAI, its formation does elevate important questions about how companies should actually respond to concerns about AI. Specifically:

Chandrayaan-3 rover confirms presence of sulphur in lunar surface, search for Hydrogen underway: ISRO.

The space observatory has observed a dynamic environment around a young protostar as it accumulates mass on its path to becoming a Sun-like celestial body.

Since its launch, the advanced James Webb Space Telescope.

One example is star-forming regions, often challenging to observe due to their location within densely populated clouds of gas and dust.

Human intervention right now holds the key.

How do we assess the health of our planet? In 2009, a group of 28 scientists wanted a definite answer to this question. So, they outlined nine planetary boundaries, which are critical for Earth’s stability.

A reassessment in 2023 says that six of these nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed, suggesting that Earth is “well outside of the safe operating space for humanity.”

(WTAJ) — Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope say they have stumbled onto possible signs of life coming from a massive Earth-like exoplanet, NASA confirmed in a release.

K2-18 b is an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — that’s 8.6 times as massive as Earth. A new investigation with the JWST revealed the presence of “carbon-bearing molecules” that include methane and carbon dioxide. The findings add to recent studies that suggest that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, meaning it has the potential to hold a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water-covered surface, NASA reported.

Astronomers first studied K2-18 b’s atmosphere with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 2019. The results prompted further studies of the massive exoplanet that have changed experts understanding of the system.

A new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) captures a cosmic wildflower in space.

Using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers photographed a distant galaxy surrounded by what appear to be four light-blue flower petals.