On Sunday, October 9th, astronomers around the world were privy to an unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation that swept over Earth, according to a NASA statement published on Thursday. The source of the event was a gamma-ray burst (GRB), one of the most luminous events ever known.
The Moon rotates around the Earth at about the same speed, as it does around its axis, that’s why we can only see one side of it. It means that 41% of its surface hasn’t been explored yet! This fact surprises many people, as we are used to thinking that we know everything about all things in the world. While even our own planet remains a mystery to us.
A deep-space mission is celebrating the first anniversary of its launch from Earth by zipping closer to the planet than the International Space Station’s orbit.
NASA’s Lucy mission launched on Oct. 16, 2021, bound on a 12-year journey to explore the Trojan asteroids, which no spacecraft has ever visited. These asteroids are found at the same distance from the sun as Jupiter, with one phalanx orbiting ahead of the planet and one behind it. All told, Lucy will whiz past nine different asteroids.
If we take the Moon’s current rate of recession and project it back in time, we end up with a collision between the Earth and the Moon around 1.5 billion years ago. However, the Moon was formed around 4.5 billion years ago, meaning that the current recession rate is a poor guide for the past.
Along with our fellow researchers from Utrecht University and the University of Geneva, we have been using a combination of techniques to try and gain information on our solar system’s distant past.
We recently discovered the perfect place to uncover the long-term history of our receding Moon. And it’s not from studying the Moon itself, but from reading signals in ancient layers of rock on Earth.
Dwarf galaxies are small, faint galaxies that are often found in or close to bigger galaxies or galaxy clusters. As a result, they could be impacted by their larger companions’ gravitational effects.
“We introduce an innovative way of testing the standard model based on how much dwarf galaxies are disturbed by gravitational tides’ from nearby larger galaxies,” said Elena Asencio, a Ph.D. student at the University of Bonn and the lead author of the story.
Tides occur when gravity from one body pulls on various areas of another body differently. These are comparable to tides on Earth, which form when the moon exerts a stronger pull on the side of the Earth that faces the moon.
If (or when) human exploration of our planetary neighbours goes ahead, this is a question that future colonists would have to tackle.
What do you need to make your garden grow? As well as plenty of sunshine alternating with gentle showers of rain — and busy bees and butterflies to pollinate the plants — you need good, rich soil to provide essential minerals. But imagine you had no rich soil, or showers of rain, or bees and butterflies. And the sunshine was either too harsh and direct or absent — causing freezing temperatures.
4FR / iStock.
The researchers behind the study cultivated the fast-growing plant Arabidopsis thaliana in samples of lunar regolith (soil) brought back from three different places on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts.
When it comes to finding habitable exoplanets, the next big challenge is not just spotting exoplanets or looking at their orbits, but getting a better understanding of what conditions there might be like by analyzing their atmospheres. New tools like the James Webb Space Telescope will allow us to peer into the atmospheres of exoplanets and see what they are composed of, which can affect the planet’s surface temperature, pressure, and weather systems.
Now, astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), a ground-based telescope located in Chile, have discovered the heaviest element ever in an exoplanet atmosphere. Looking at two ultra-hot gas giants called WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b, the researchers identified the element barium in their atmospheres.
These two planets orbit extremely close to their respective stars and thus have extremely high surface temperatures which can go over 1,000 degrees Celsius. On one of the planets, WASP-76 b, it gets so got that iron falls from the sky as rain. But the researchers were surprised to find barium high in the atmospheres of these planets because it is so heavy.
The E-Walker has been tried and tested on Earth, but it’s yet to prove itself in space.
Large construction projects in space may be one step closer to reality, thanks to a new walking space robot. Researchers have designed the E-Walker — a state-of-the-art walking robot — to take on the behemoth task of space construction. A robot prototype has already been tested here on Earth by assembling a 25m Large Aperture Space Telescope. The telescope would usually be built in space, which is the E-Walker’s future duty.
Doubling up on its potential duties, a smaller-scale prototype of the same robot has also been created and shows promise for large construction applications on Earth, such as maintenance of wind turbines.
The team’s findings were presented in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
IStock/Vitaly Kusaylo.
Researchers have designed the E-Walker – a state-of-the-art walking robot – to take on the behemoth task of space construction. A robot prototype has already been tested here on Earth by assembling a 25m Large Aperture Space Telescope. The telescope would usually be built in space, which is the E-Walker’s future duty.
Unfortunately, the organization will not be rebuilding the damaged observatory.
The U.S. National Science Foundation issued a solicitation on Thursday for a new multidisciplinary, world-class educational center at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, according to a statement by the organization. The center will serve as a hub for STEM education and outreach.
Dennisvdw/iStock.
STEM programs and initiatives.