Key Takeaways:
Princeton University cosmologist David Spergel emphasizes that the universe’s shape reveals crucial insights into its historical evolution and future trajectory. Questions regarding whether the universe will expand indefinitely or eventually contract, as well as its finiteness or infiniteness, all pivot on its shape.
Varda Space Industries has shared incredible footage captured by a camera on its W-1 capsule during its reentry through Earth’s atmosphere on February 21.
A study recently submitted to The Astronomical Journal continues to search for the elusive Planet Nine (also called Planet X), which is a hypothetical planet that potentially orbits in the outer reaches of the solar system and well beyond the orbit of the dwarf planet, Pluto.
The goal of this study, which is available on the pre-print server arXiv, was to narrow down the possible locations of Planet Nine and holds the potential to help researchers better understand the makeup of our solar system, along with its formation and evolutionary processes. So, what was the motivation behind this study regarding narrowing down the location of a potential Planet 9?
Dr. Mike Brown, who is a Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Astronomy at Caltech and lead author of the study, tells Universe Today, “We are continuing to try to systematically cover all of the regions of the sky where we predict Planet Nine to be. Using data from Pan-STARRS allowed us to cover the largest region to date.”
From early in his career, Kamal Kesour understood the damaging effects of urban noise and was aware of the instrumentation used to measure and control it. He had lived in big cities, and after his PhD he went to work for an environmental consulting firm that specialized in urban noise. But it wasn’t until later, during a research position at Innovation Maritime in Canada, that he realized marine mammals can experience similarly noisy environments. This noise comes from underwater vibrations generated by shipping vessels transporting goods around the world. Kesour now has a career helping to make maritime transportation vessels less noisy.
Kesour has spent the past few years in Rimouski, Canada, at the Marine Acoustic Research Station (MARS), which lies on the banks of the St. Lawrence Estuary and is jointly led by Innovation Maritime, the Rimouski Institute of Marine Sciences, and engineering consultancy OpDAQ systems. There, he measures ambient underwater noise from ships as they pass on their way to and from the Atlantic Ocean or North America’s Great Lakes. He also conducts on-ship measurements to help pinpoint noise sources and to “fingerprint” the vibrations of individual ships. Physics Magazine caught up with Kesour to learn more about his measurements and their implications for noise pollution produced by the shipping industry.
All interviews are edited for brevity and clarity.
AIM’s mission was extended multiple times because of its valuable scientific insights.
After an impressive 16 years in orbit, NASA’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission has officially concluded.
A typo sent an enormous radio telescope to the wrong patch of sky — where it discovered an invisible galaxy-sized cloud of hydrogen gas.
BWC Megastructures are types of hypothetical mega engineering projects, like artificial planets, who scope is vast, but whose practicality is debatable. To fi…
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Just over five years ago, on 22 February 2019, an unmanned space probe was placed in orbit around the Moon.
Named Beresheet and built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, it was intended to be the first private spacecraft to perform a soft landing. Among the probe’s payload were tardigrades, renowed for their ability to survive in even the harshest climates.
The mission ran into trouble from the start, with the failure of “star tracker” cameras intended to determine the spacecraft’s orientation and thus properly control its motors. Budgetary limitations had imposed a pared-down design, and while the command center was able to work around some problems, things got even trickier on 11 April, the day of the landing.
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Buran and the Moonraker Mysterywe embark on a captivating journey into the realm of the unknown, exploring the enigmatic connection between the Soviet space…
