Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space – Page 22

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is taking over as the CEO of Relativity Space, a 9-year-old rocket startup, a company spokesperson confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch. This is Schmidt’s first CEO job since he left Google nearly 15 years ago.

On Monday, Schmidt told employees of Relativity Space that he made a significant investment and had taken a controlling stake in the company, The New York Times first reported.

Schmidt is succeeding the startup’s co-founder, Tim Ellis, as chief executive. In a post on X, Ellis noted he will continue to support Relativity Space as a director on the company’s board.

Read more | >

University of Arizona astronomers have learned more about a surprisingly mature galaxy that existed when the universe was just less than 300 million years old—just 2% of its current age.

Observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the galaxy—designated JADES-GS-z14-0—is unexpectedly bright and chemically complex for an object from this primordial era, the researchers said. This provides a rare glimpse into the universe’s earliest chapter.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, build upon the researchers’ previous discovery, reported in 2024, of JADES-GS-z14-0 as the most distant galaxy ever observed. While the initial discovery established the galaxy’s record-breaking distance and unexpected brightness, this new research delves deeper into its chemical composition and evolutionary state.

Read more | >

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have observed enigmatic rings in the planetary nebula NGC 1,514, visible in the mid-infrared band. Results of the new observations, published Feb. 28 on the arXiv pre-print server, shed more light on the properties and nature of these rings.

Planetary nebulae (PNe) are expanding shells of gas and dust that have been ejected from a star during the process of its evolution from a into a red giant or white dwarf. They are relatively rare, but are important for astronomers studying the chemical evolution of stars and galaxies.

NGC 1,514 (also known as Crystal Ball Nebula) is a large and complex elliptical planetary at a distance of about 1,500 light years away. It originated from a designated HD 281679. The bright, visible component of the system is a giant star of spectral type A0III, while the nebula-generating companion is now a hot, sub-luminous O-type star.

Read more | >

Researchers from Japan and Taiwan have made a groundbreaking discovery, demonstrating for the first time that helium—long considered chemically inert—can bond with iron under extreme pressure. Using a laser-heated diamond anvil cell, they observed this unexpected interaction, suggesting that vast amounts of helium may be present in the Earth’s core. This finding challenges long-held theories about the planet’s internal structure and history and could provide new insights into the primordial nebula from which our solar system originated.

Volcanic eruptions primarily release rocks and minerals, but they can also emit traces of a rare gas known as primordial helium. Unlike the more common isotope, helium-4 (⁴He), which consists of two protons and two neutrons and is continuously produced by radioactive decay, primordial helium—helium-3 (³He)—contains only one neutron and is not formed on Earth. Its presence offers valuable clues about the planet’s deep interior and its connection to cosmic origins.

Given the occasionally high 3 He/4He ratios found in volcanic rocks, especially in Hawaii, researchers have long believed there are primordial materials containing 3 He deep within the mantle. However, graduate student Haruki Takezawa and members of Professor Kei Hirose’s group from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science have now challenged this view with a new take on a familiar experiment — crushing things.

Read more | >

Researchers from Würzburg have experimentally demonstrated a quantum tornado for the first time by refining an established method. In the quantum semimetal tantalum arsenide (TaAs), electrons in momentum space behave like a swirling vortex. This quantum phenomenon was first predicted eight years ago by a Dresden-based founding member of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat.

The discovery, a collaborative effort between ct.qmat, the research network of the Universities of Würzburg and Dresden, and international partners, has now been published in Physical Review X.

Scientists have long known that electrons can form vortices in quantum materials. What’s new is the proof that these tiny particles create tornado-like structures in momentum space—a finding that has now been confirmed experimentally. This achievement was led by Dr. Maximilian Ünzelmann, a group leader at ct.qmat—Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter—at the Universities of Würzburg and Dresden.

Read more | >

There are plenty of types of stars out there, but one stands out for being just a little weirder than the others. You might even say it’s strange. According to a paper from researchers at Guangxi University in China, the birth of one might have recently been observed for the very first time.

A strange star is a (so far theoretical) compact star that is so dense it literally breaks down regular parts of atoms (like neutrons) into their constituent quarks. Moreover, even those quarks (the up and down that comprise a neutron) get compressed into an even rarer type of quark called a strange quark—hence the name strange star.

Technically, the “strange” matter that a strange star would be composed of is a combination of up, down, and strange quarks. But, at least in theory, this mix of sub-hadronic particles could even be more stable than a traditional neutron star, which is similar to a strange star but doesn’t have enough gravity to break down the neutrons.

Read more | >

Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky.

The odd celestial couple consists of a big, hot star, more than 10 times larger than our Sun, and a small compact white dwarf, with a mass similar to our star. Only a handful of these systems have been found so far. And this the first time scientists could track the X-ray light coming from such a curious pair from its initial sudden flare-up to its fading away.

On 27 May 2024, the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on Einstein Probe spotted X-rays coming from within our neighbour galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). To uncover the origin of this new celestial beacon, labelled EP J0052, scientists pointed Einstein Probes’s Follow-up X-ray Telescope in that direction.

Read more | >