Space – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Mar 21
2023

Watch: NASA’s Fermi captures cosmic fireworks invisible to the bare eye

The animation shows a subset of more than 1,500 light curves collected by the Large Area Telescope over nearly 15 years in space.

NASA has released an intriguing animated video of the sky in gamma rays, the “highest-energy form of light”. Captured by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the animation shows activity during observations from February 2022 to February 2023.

According to a press release, the “pulsing circles represent just a subset of more than 1,500 light curves – records of how sources change in brightness over time – collected by the LAT over nearly 15 years in space”. The LAT detects gamma rays with energies ranging from 20 million to over 300 billion electron volts.

Mar 21
2023

Neutrinos created by CERN Large Hadron Collider detected for the first time

Neutrinos created by LHC went undetected earlier, but FASER changed that and can help us learn more about deep space.

Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN, have detected neutrinos created by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment for the very first time. These were the highest energy neutrinos that were ever produced in a laboratory setup and are similar to those found in particle showers from deep space.

First detected in 1956, neutrinos are subatomic particles that play a key role in the burning of stars. Every time nuclei of atoms either come together (fusion) or break apart (fission) in the universe, neutrinos are released.

-Dant-/iStock.

One of the most abundant particles of the cosmos, neutrinos play an important role in the standard model of particle physics too. Researchers have been creating neutrinos in the lab to study but never have they been detected by the giant laboratory of the LHC.

Mar 21
2023

What If We Live in a Superdeterministic Universe?

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Mar 20
2023

Scientists discovered a new type of thermonuclear explosion that may never be seen again

Astronomers may have discovered a new type of thermonuclear explosion that only occurs in neutron stars every 1,000 years. They call it a hyperburst.

Mar 19
2023

FCC agrees on a new framework for satellite coverage for smartphones

The framework will enable satellite access for smartphone users in emergency situations.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to establish a new regulatory framework to enable connections between satellite operators and wireless firms to connect smartphone users in isolated or underserved regions worldwide.

FCC stated in a release that it aims to “create clear and open protocols to facilitate supplemental coverage from space.”

NicoElNino/iStock.

Today’s adoption of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking followed a series of presentations and announcements concerning satellite-cellular combinations.

Mar 19
2023

How much fuel is left in this 20-year-old Mars orbiter?

Designing, building, and launching a spacecraft is hugely expensive. That’s why NASA missions to Mars are designed with the hope that they’ll last as long as possible — like the famous Opportunity rover which was supposed to last for 90 days and managed to keep going for 15 years. The longer a mission can keep running, the more data it can collect, and the more we can learn from it.

That’s true for the orbiters which travel around Mars as well as the rovers which explore its surface, like the Mars Odyssey spacecraft which was launched in 2001 and has been in orbit around Mars for more than 20 years. But the orbiter can’t keep going forever as it will eventually run out of fuel, so figuring out exactly how much fuel is left is important — but it also turned out to be more complicated than the NASA engineers were expecting.

Odyssey started out with nearly 500 pounds of hydrazine fuel, though last year it looked as if the spacecraft was running much lower on fuel than had been predicted.

Mar 19
2023

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe makes its 15th close flyby of the sun this St. Patrick’s Day

NASA’s sun-touching Parker Solar Probe spacecraft will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) by making another close approach to our star. While people all over Earth enjoy a cold beer, the spacecraft will brave blisteringly hot temperatures as high as 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 degrees Celsius) as it makes its 15th close approach to the sun, or perihelion.

According to NASA’s Parker Solar Probe website, (opens in new tab) the exact time of the close approach will be 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) when the spacecraft comes to within around 5.3 million miles (8.5 million km) of the sun’s surface, the photosphere.

Mar 18
2023

Scientists develop ‘cosmic concrete’ to construct habitats on Mars

Dr. Aled Roberts.

Scientists have been testing various materials for the construction of such habitats on Mars. An innovation in this field comes from scientists at the University of Manchester. They have developed a new ‘cosmic concrete’ composed of extraterrestrial dust, a press release stated.

Mar 18
2023

3D holographic televisions are much closer than a galaxy far, far away

Year 2022 😗😁

For decades we have dreamed of true holographic displays for entertainment, communication, and education. Star Wars had 3D projections rendered in real-time — the definition wasn’t great, but they were communicating across interplanetary distances — and Avatar had holographic maps showcasing the terrain of Pandora. In reality, we mostly have 2D images which show dimension and depth when viewed from different angles. That might be on the verge of changing.

Pierre-Alexandre Blanche from the Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona recently published a paper in Light: Advanced Manufacturing which acts as a roadmap toward true 3D holographic displays.

“3D movies exist already, and the effects are amazing,” Blanche told SYFY WIRE. “But we’re working toward diffraction-based display that will produce all the human visual cues. That’s what’s missing today in the world of 3D display. They’re always missing one or more visual cues.”

Mar 18
2023

Tracing 13 billion years of history by the light of ancient quasars

Astrophysicists in Australia have shed new light on the state of the universe 13 billion years ago by measuring the density of carbon in the gases surrounding ancient galaxies.

The study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, adds another piece to the puzzle of the history of the universe.

“We found that the fraction of carbon in warm gas increased rapidly about 13 billion years ago, which may be linked to large-scale heating of gas associated with the phenomenon known as the Epoch of Reionization,” says Dr. Rebecca Davies, ASTRO 3D Postdoctoral Research Associate at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and lead author of the paper describing the discovery.