The last solar eclipse of the decade—and the only annular solar eclipse of the year—will be visible in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa starting just a few hours after this article’s publication.
Annular solar eclipses, like total solar eclipses, occur when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. However, the Moon doesn’t totally cover the Sun during annular solar eclipses, leaving behind an annulus, or bright ring.
The first data from the space telescope’s mission tallies more than 200 potential planets, including some just 50 light-years away.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Supriya Chakrabarti, Professor of Physics, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Perhaps you remember the opening scene of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” that took place on Privet Drive. A bearded man pulled a mysterious device, called a deluminator, from his dark robe and one by one the lights from the street lamps flew into it.
Astronauts may be far from home, but they still celebrate the holidays.
Residents of the International Space Station posted an incredible photo and video for the holidays, celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas far above the world.
Astronaut Jessica Meir posted a stunning picture from the station’s cupola, the small, panoramic, ESA-built observatory module of the station. It allows for observation of activities like spacewalks and shuttle approaches, but also provides the perfect place to celebrate Hanukkah.
Navigating Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a challenge. Just getting close is hard enough — it’s hundreds of millions of miles away, after all. But let’s suppose either a robot or a human lands on the surface of the only other body in the Solar System known to have liquid on its surface. They’d need a map — and fortunately, NASA has one ready to go should the occasion ever arise.
In November 2019, scientists made the first ever map detailing the moon’s complicated — and terrifying — terrain. It reveals a moon filled with weird and wonderful geography, including dunes, liquid methane lakes, plains, labyrinthine canyons, and craters.
This is #10 on Inverse’s 20 wildest space discoveries of 2019.
It’s 2050, and you’ve just arrived on Mars. Your first meal awaits: a plate of spaghetti marinara made from fresh vine-ripened tomatoes. Tough to imagine, right?
The idea that astronauts might enjoy the fresh, cherry-red fruits has seemed borderline absurd. Tomato plants, with their sprawling vines and bulbous fruits, take up space—valuable space. And they’re extremely finicky.
But now, scientists have developed a way to genetically modify cherry tomatoes so they grow in tighter bunches and take up less space. This could be a game changer as the push to grow vertical, rooftop gardens increases and as humanity stretches out past low-Earth orbit toward the moon, and eventually, Mars.
Cracks are emerging in the outer space honor system.
We’re already starting to treat the cosmos the way we treat the Earth.
Here on Earth, you can see the aurora of the Northern Lights, when solar winds interact with the planet’s magnetosphere. It turns out that Mars has its own auroras too, called proton auroras, but they give off ultraviolet light which makes them invisible to the naked eye.
NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, however, currently in orbit around Mars, is able to detect these auroras using its Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument. Using data from this instrument, scientists have been investigating the relationship between the proton auroras and the fact that Mars lost its water over time. The Martian aurora is indirectly created by hydrogen in the atmosphere, which comes from water being lost into space.
The animation below shows how the proton aurora is formed. First, solar winds send protons toward Mars, where they interact with a cloud of hydrogen surrounding the planet. The protons take electrons from the hydrogen atoms to become neutrons. These neutral particles can then pass through a region of the planet’s magnetosphere called the bow shock. When the hydrogen atoms enter the atmosphere and collide with gas particles, they give off the ultraviolet light that we call an aurora.
The Universe is not what textbook physics tells us except that we perceive it in this way – our instruments and measurement devices are simply extensions of our senses, after all. Reality is not what it seems. Deep down it’s pure information – waves of potentiality – and consciousness creating it all. https://www.ecstadelic.net/top-stories/the-alpha-point-vs-th…sciousness #AlphaPoint vs. #OmegaPoint
“Each of us appears in the divine play in a dual role of creator and actor. A full and realistic enactment of our role in the cosmic drama requires the suspension of our true identity. We have to forget our authorship and follow the script.”
-Stanislav Grof
Our human minds are fractals of the larger cosmic mind and consciousness is all that is. Information, which physicists now claim to be fundamental, requires consciousness to assign meaning to it. In other words, Mind is primary, the Universe is a network of networks of entangled conscious minds, and our experiential reality emerges from confluent digital data streams. So, what’s the basis for such radical claims, you might ask.
