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Category: space – Page 26

In just over three years since its launch, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has generated significant and unprecedented insights into the far reaches of space, and a new study by a Kansas State University researcher provides one of the simplest and most puzzling observations of the deep universe yet.

In images of the deep universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, the vast majority of the galaxies rotate in the same direction, according to research by Lior Shamir, associate professor of computer science at the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering. About two thirds of the galaxies rotate clockwise, while just about a third of the galaxies rotate counterclockwise.

The study— published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society —was done with 263 galaxies in the JADES field that were clear enough to identify their direction of rotation.

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Astrophysicists have once again enriched our knowledge of the cosmos with a new discovery: two small planets orbiting TOI-1453. Located at around 250 light years from Earth in the Draco constellation, this star is part of a binary system (a pair of stars orbiting each other) and is slightly cooler and smaller than our sun. This discovery, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, paves the way for future atmospheric studies to better understand these types of planets.

Around this star are two planets, a super-Earth and a sub-Neptune. These are types of planets that are absent from our own solar system, but paradoxically constitute the most common classes of planet in the Milky Way. This discovery sheds light on a planetary configuration that could provide valuable clues to the formation and evolution of planets.

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the HARPS-N high-resolution spectrograph, the researchers were able to identify TOI-1453 b and TOI-1453 c, the two exoplanets orbiting TOI-1453.

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A symmetry violation has been observed in a particle-decay process that—together with five related decays—could shed light on the matter–antimatter imbalance in the Universe.

The known Universe has some 1012 galaxies that are made out of matter and no galaxies that are made out of antimatter. This is a surprising result because matter and antimatter are expected to exist in equal quantities. More formally, matter and antimatter are related by a symmetry known as CP symmetry, which states that a particle and its antiparticle should obey the same laws of nature. A necessary condition for the observed imbalance between matter and antimatter in the Universe is therefore a violation of CP symmetry—for a review see H. R. Quinn and Y. Nir [1]. Solving this puzzle has driven extensive experimental efforts that have revealed such a violation in different particle sectors. The Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) Collaboration at CERN has now measured a CP violation in a certain decay channel of B ±].

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Time crystals realized in the so-called quasiperiodic regime hold promise for future applications in quantum computing and sensing.

In ordinary crystals, atoms or molecules form a repeating pattern in space. By extension, in quantum systems known as time crystals, particles form a repeating pattern in both space and time. These exotic systems were predicted in 2012 and first demonstrated in 2016 (see Viewpoint: How to Create a Time Crystal). Now Chong Zu at Washington University in St. Louis and his colleagues have experimentally realized a new form of time crystal called a discrete-time quasicrystal [1]. The team suggests that such states could be useful for high-precision sensing and advanced signal processing.

Conventional time crystals are created by subjecting a collection of particles to an external driving force that is periodic in time. Zu and his colleagues instead selected a quasiperiodic drive in the form of a structured but nonrepeating sequence of microwave pulses. The researchers applied this quasiperiodic drive to an ensemble of strongly interacting spins associated with structural defects, known as nitrogen-vacancy centers, in diamond. They then tracked the resulting dynamics of these spins using a laser microscope.

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While performing yesterday’s flyby of Mars, ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence made the first use of its payload for scientific purposes beyond Earth and the Moon. Activating a trio of instruments, Hera imaged the surface of the red planet as well as the face of Deimos, the smaller and more mysterious of Mars’s two moons.

Launched on 7 October 2024, Hera is on its way to visit the first asteroid to have had its orbit altered by human action. By gathering close-up data about the Dimorphos asteroid, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera will help turn asteroid deflection into a well understood and potentially repeatable technique.

Hera’s 12 March flyby of Mars was an integral part of its cruise phase through deep space, carefully designed by ESA’s Flight Dynamics team. By coming as close as 5,000 km away from Mars, the planet’s gravity shifted the spacecraft’s trajectory towards its final destination, Dimorphos and the larger Didymos asteroid it orbits around. This manoeuvre shortened Hera’s journey time by many months and saved a substantial amount of fuel.

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Watch the latest space experiment developed by the Fighting Illini!🚀🤖

Step into the future of space construction! Watch as University of Illinois researchers revolutionize how we build in space using advanced robotics and innovative composite materials. In this episode of Robots In Space, aerospace engineer Mike DiVerde breaks down the groundbreaking DARPA NOM4D program that’s sending experimental manufacturing technology to the International Space Station. Discover how the Fighting Illini are pioneering techniques that could transform space infrastructure construction, making it faster, cheaper, and more efficient than ever before. From Cygnus spacecraft operations to microgravity experiments, this video showcases cutting-edge aerospace engineering that’s pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in space.

#SpaceManufacturing #DARPANOM4D #SpaceRobotics #FightingIllini #AerospaceEngineering

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In recent years, physicists have been trying to better understand the behavior of individual quantum particles as they move in space. Yet directly imaging these particles with high precision has so far proved challenging, due to the limitations of existing microscopy methods.

Researchers at CNRS and École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, have now developed a new protocol to directly image the evolution of a single-atom wave packet, a delocalized quantum state that determines the probability that an associated atom will be found in a specific location. This imaging technique, introduced in Physical Review Letters, could open exciting possibilities for the precise study of complex quantum systems in continuous space.

“Our group is interested in the study of ultracold atoms, the coldest systems in the universe, just a few billionths of degrees above absolute zero, where matter displays fascinating behaviors,” Tarik Yefsah, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. “One of these behaviors is the so-called superfluidity, a remarkable state of matter, where particles flow without friction.

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Astronomers have finally traced mysterious radio pulses in the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System and is part of the Local Group of galaxies. It is a barred spiral galaxy that contains an estimated 100–400 billion stars and has a diameter between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years. The name “Milky Way” comes from the appearance of the galaxy from Earth as a faint band of light that stretches across the night sky, resembling spilled milk.

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From across the Milky Way galaxy, something has been sending out signals.

Every two hours or so, a pulse of radio waves ripples through space-time, appearing in data going back years. Now a team of astronomers led by Iris de Ruiter of the University of Sydney has identified the source of this mystery signal – and it’s something we’ve never seen before.

Around 1,645 light-years from Earth sits a binary star system, containing a white dwarf and a red dwarf on such a close orbit that each revolution smacks their magnetic fields together, producing a burst of radio waves our telescopes can detect. This source has been named ILT J110160.52+552119.62 (ILT J1101+5521).

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The X-37B is a reusable robotic space plane operated by the US Space Force. It resembles a miniature space shuttle at just under 9 metres long with a 4.5 metre wingspan and is an uncrewed vehicle designed for long-duration missions in low Earth orbit.

The craft launches vertically atop a rocket, lands horizontally like a conventional aircraft and serves as a testbed for new technologies and experiments that can be returned to Earth for analysis.

It’s development was a collaborative effort between NASA, Boeing, and the US Department of Defence. It was originally conceived by NASA in the late 1990s to explore reusable spaceplane technologies but transitioned to the US Air Force in 2004 for military purposes.

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