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Category: space – Page 61

NASA’s PUNCH Mission: Tracking Solar Storms With an 8,000-Mile Virtual Telescope

PUNCH Mission Prepares for Launch

Four small spacecraft, each about the size of a suitcase, are set to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California no earlier than February 28. Designed and built by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, these spacecraft are part of NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission. They will share a ride into space with NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) observatory.

Physicists find unexpected crystals of electrons in new ultrathin material

MIT physicists report the unexpected discovery of electrons forming crystalline structures in a material only billionths of a meter thick. The work adds to a gold mine of discoveries originating from the material, which the same team discovered only about three years ago.

In a paper published Jan. 22 in Nature, the team describes how electrons in devices made, in part, of the new material can become solid, or form crystals, by changing the voltage applied to the devices when they are kept at a temperature similar to that of outer space. Under the same conditions, they also showed the emergence of two new electronic states that add to work they reported last year showing that electrons can split into fractions of themselves.

The physicists were able to make the discoveries thanks to new custom-made filters for better insulation of the equipment involved in the work. These allowed them to cool their devices to a temperature an order of magnitude colder than they achieved for the earlier results.

Study reveals how rogue planetary-mass objects form in young star clusters

A study published in Science Advances sheds new light on the mysterious origins of free-floating planetary-mass objects (PMOs)—celestial bodies with masses between stars and planets.

Led by Dr. Deng Hongping of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an international team of astronomers, used advanced simulations to uncover a novel formation process for these enigmatic objects. The research suggests that PMOs can form directly through violent interactions between circumstellar disks in young star clusters.

Mars May Have Once Had Oceanfront Beaches

Dr. Benjamin Cardenas: “We tend to think about Mars as just a static snapshot of a planet, but it was evolving. Rivers were flowing, sediment was moving, and land was being built and eroded.”

Did an ocean exist on ancient Mars that might have been suitable for life as we know it? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by Guangzhou University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences investigated the possibility of an ancient shoreline in the northern hemisphere of Mars that could have been home to an ancient ocean. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the environmental conditions on ancient Mars and whether they were suitable for life as we know it.

For the study, the researchers analyzed radar data obtained from China’s Zhurong rover, which landed in a northern region on Mars called Utopia Planitia in May 2021. However, Zhurong stopped functioning after researchers put it in hibernation mode in May 2022 and the rover never woke up, likely due to dust covering its solar panels. Despite this, the researchers of this study presented evidence of an ancient shoreline in Utopia Planitia that mirrors coastal sediments observed on the Earth called “foreshore deposits”

“We’re seeing that the shoreline of this body of water evolved over time,” said Dr. Benjamin Cardenas, who is an assistant professor of geology at Penn State and a co-author on the study. “We tend to think about Mars as just a static snapshot of a planet, but it was evolving. Rivers were flowing, sediment was moving, and land was being built and eroded. This type of sedimentary geology can tell us what the landscape looked like, how they evolved, and, importantly, help us identify where we would want to look for past life.”

Discovery suggests there could be huge amounts of helium in Earth’s core

Researchers from Japan and Taiwan reveal for the first time that helium, usually considered chemically inert, can bond with iron under high pressures. They used a laser-heated diamond anvil cell to find this, and the discovery suggests there could be huge amounts of helium in the Earth’s core. This could challenge long-standing ideas about the planet’s internal structure and history, and may even reveal details of the nebula our solar system coalesced from.

The research is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

During a there are often traces of what is known as primordial helium. That is, helium, which differs from normal helium, or 4 He, so called because it contains two protons and two neutrons and is continuously produced by radioactive decay. Primordial helium, or 3 He, on the other hand, is not formed on Earth and contains two protons and one neutron.

Bubbles that break rules: A fluid discovery that defies logic

A team led by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill have made an extraordinary discovery that is reshaping our understanding of bubbles and their movement. Picture tiny air bubbles inside a container filled with liquid. When the container is shaken up and down, these bubbles engage in an unexpected, rhythmic “galloping” motion—bouncing like playful horses and moving horizontally, even though the shaking occurs vertically.

This counterintuitive phenomenon, revealed in a new study published in Nature, has significant implications for technology, from cleaning surfaces to improving in microchips and even advancing .

These galloping bubbles are already garnering significant attention: their impact in the field of fluid dynamics has been recognized with an award for their video entry at the most recent Gallery of Fluid Motion, organized by the American Physical Society.

Consciousness May Have Created the Universe — This Is Very Strange

According to my recursive universe theory, we need Primordial Consciousness to explain the beginning of the first Universe. Please take a look at this YouTube video clip!

Consciousness is one of those topics that makes everyone uncomfortable—scientists, philosophers, and just about anyone who dares to question the nature of reality. Why? Because, despite all our technological advancements and scientific breakthroughs, we still don’t have a clear idea of what consciousness actually is or where it comes from. It’s the elephant in the room, the mystery that science can’t seem to crack. We can map the brain and understand its functions, but that still doesn’t explain why we experience thoughts, feelings, or self-awareness.

Some argue that consciousness is nothing more than the byproduct of biological processes, a lucky accident of evolution. But what if that’s not the whole story? What if consciousness isn’t a mere side effect of neurons firing but something far more fundamental—something that’s intertwined with the fabric of the universe itself?

How Mars’ Red Color Rewrites Its Water History

Dr. Adomas Valantina: “Mars is still the Red Planet. It’s just that our understanding of why Mars is red has been transformed.”

What can Mars’ red hue that’s been observed for thousands of years teach us about when water existed on its surface potentially millions, or even billions, of years ago? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the connection between Mars’ red color and water interactions in the Red Planet’s ancient past. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of Mars and whether life could have existed at some point in its history.

For the study, the researchers used a combination of data obtained from Mars orbiters and laboratory experiments to ascertain the iron oxide mineral that is responsible for Mars’ red color and what relation this has to past liquid water that might have existed on the planet’s surface. This study builds upon past research that concluded the mineral hematite was responsible for Mars’ red color, which is a mineral that forms in water-free environments. However, the researchers for this study discovered that ferrihydrite is responsible for Mars’ red color, which is a mineral that forms in cold, watery environments.

“Mars is still the Red Planet,” said Dr. Adomas Valantina, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and lead author of the study. “It’s just that our understanding of why Mars is red has been transformed. The major implication is that because ferrihydrite could only have formed when water was still present on the surface, Mars rusted earlier than we previously thought. Moreover, the ferrihydrite remains stable under present-day conditions on Mars.”

LTT 9779 b: A Window into Extreme Exoplanetary Weather

What can an extremely hot Neptune-sized exoplanet teach scientists about exoplanetary weather? This is what a recent study published Nature Astronomy hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the extreme weather patterns on the “ultra-hot Neptune” exoplanet, LTT 9,779 b, which is tidally locked to its star and orbits so close to its star that it’s causing unique cloud and weather patterns. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of ultra-hot exoplanets and how these worlds remain intact.

“This planet provides a unique laboratory to understand how clouds and the transport of heat interact in the atmospheres of highly irradiated worlds,” said Louis-Philippe Coulombe, who is a PhD student at the University of Montreal’s (UdeM) Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (IREx) and lead author of the study.

Located approximately 262 light-years from Earth, LTT 9,779 b orbits its star in only 0.8 days, or just over 19 hours, meaning its tidally locked orbit results in dayside temperatures of just below 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,600 degrees Fahrenheit) while its nightside temperatures are just over 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit).