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Webb Telescope Detects Unusual Gas Jets from Centaur 29P

Inspired by the half-human, half-horse creatures that are part of Ancient Greek mythology, the field of astronomy has its own kind of centaurs: distant objects orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the gases spewing from one of these objects, suggesting a varied composition and providing new insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system.

Centaurs are former trans-Neptunian objects that have been moved inside Neptune’s orbit by subtle gravitational influences of the planets in the last few million years, and may eventually become short-period comets. They are “hybrid” in the sense that they are in a transitional stage of their orbital evolution: Many share characteristics with both trans-Neptunian objects (from the cold Kuiper Belt reservoir), and short-period comets, which are objects highly altered by repeated close passages around the sun.

Since these small icy bodies are in an orbital transitional phase, they have been the subject of various studies as scientists seek to understand their composition, the reasons behind their outgassing activity—the loss of their ices that lie underneath the surface—and how they serve as a link between primordial icy bodies in the outer solar system and evolved comets.

A mysterious wave-like structure that sheds 9,000 light-years in length on our Milky Way

The Radcliffe Wave, a 9,000 light-year-long structure, is oscillating through the Milky Way.

The Milky Way galaxy is far from static. One striking example of its dynamic nature is the discovery of the Radcliffe Wave, a massive, 9,000 light-year-long structure made of star-forming gas. Located just 500 light-years from the Solar System at its nearest point, the Radcliffe Wave was first identified in 2018 using data from the Gaia spacecraft, with findings published in 2020. But recent research has unveiled something even more intriguing: this enormous structure is not just moving in its orbit around the galactic center, it’s also oscillating like a wave.

Posthuman Pathways: Strange And Awesome Destinations On Humanity’s Future Journeys

Soon humanity may reach out to the galaxy and spread ourselves to every world in it, but in the billions and billions of years to come on those billions and billions of worlds, humanity shall surely diverge down many roads and posthuman pathways.

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Credits:
Posthuman Pathways.
Episode 470; October 24, 2024
Editor: Tim Lusko.
Produced, Narrated \& Written: Isaac Arthur.
Graphics:
Jeremy Jozwik.
Ken York YD Visual.
Udo Schroeter.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator

Scientists Discover Planet Orbiting Closest Single Star to our Sun

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team’s observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star.

Located just six light-years away, Barnard’s star is the second-closest stellar system—after Alpha Centauri’s three-star group—and the closest individual star to us. Owing to its proximity, it is a primary target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. Despite a promising detection back in 2018, no planet orbiting Barnard’s star had been confirmed until now.

The discovery of this new exoplanet—announced in a paper published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics—is the result of observations made over the last five years with ESO’s VLT, located at Paranal Observatory in Chile. “Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” says Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, and lead author of the paper.

Space Articles

The magnitude of the SpaceX Starship prototype.

Video Credit: Nik Cooper.

#starship #engineering #technology #space #rockets.

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Simulations at Caltech model a new way for autonomous spacecraft to avoid collisions. This technology holds promise for autonomous vehicles on Earth as well as in space.

‘Halloween comet’ could be visible during daytime this week — here’s the best time to see it

Talk about a Halloween treat.

A recently discovered comet will be blazing by the Earth in broad daylight just in time for Halloween, astronomers say.

Comet C/2024 S1, first found at the end of September, will pass around the Earth on Oct. 24, according to planetary astronomer James Wray of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who advises to “look low in the eastern sky just before sunrise.”

“Neptunian Ridge” Discovered: Scientists Unveil New Map of Distant Planets

Researchers have discovered the Neptunian Ridge, a region packed with planets, located between the Neptunian Desert and Savannah. This finding sheds light on how planets migrate and evolve in different environments.

A new ‘map’ of distant planets has been unveiled by scientists from The University of Warwick, which finds a ridge of planets in deep space, separating a desert of planets from a more populated savannah.

Researchers from Warwick and other universities examined Neptunian exoplanets – these planets share similar characteristics to our own Neptune, but orbit outside of our solar system.

Unlocking the Mysteries of Celestial Flow Features

“Through our simulated impacts, we found that the pure water froze too quickly in a vacuum to effect meaningful change, but salt and water mixtures, or brines, stayed liquid and flowing for a minimum of one hour,” said Dr. Michael J. Poston.


How does extra salty water, also known as briny water, form and evolve on worlds without atmospheres, such as asteroids and moons? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how briny water could still flow for a period of time on the asteroid Vesta after large impacts resulted in the melting of subsurface ice. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the geological and chemical processes on planetary bodies without atmospheres and what this could mean for finding life as we know it.

“We wanted to investigate our previously proposed idea that ice underneath the surface of an airless world could be excavated and melted by an impact and then flow along the walls of the impact crater to form distinct surface features,” said Dr. Jennifer Scully, who is a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a co-author on the study.

For the study, the researchers used a JPL test chamber to analyze how liquid samples responded to rapid drops in atmospheric pressure on the asteroid Vesta, thus simulating the conditions of a high-speed impact, which also includes the very brief creation of an atmosphere resulting from that impact. In the end, the researchers made some intriguing findings that could help scientists better understand the geological and chemical processes that occur on planetary bodies without atmospheres.