Matter and anti-matter are always thought of as opposites. If they interact, they turn into pure energy. But there are cases, thanks to the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics, where particles and antiparticles are somewhat coexisting. Now, a new particle can be added to those cases.
Oort Cloud comet C/2014 UN271, also known as Comet measures some 85 miles (137 km) in diameter, give or take 10.5 miles (17 km), reports a research team led by astronomer Emmanuel Lellouch of the Paris Observatory. Their new paper on the mega comet has been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, and you can sneak a peak of the preprint at the arXiv.
These latest observations confirm that Comet is the largest Oort Cloud object ever detected, as it’s nearly twice as big as comet Hale-Bopp (observed in 1997), the nucleus of which measured between 25 and 50 miles (40 and 80 km) wide. It’s also bigger than Comet Sarabat (observed in 1729), which had a nucleus measuring somewhere around 62 miles (100 km) in diameter.
Comet is currently inbound from the Oort Cloud 0, a distant region of the solar system known for packing billions and possibly trillions of icy objects. The comet will make its closest approach to Earth in 2031, when it will come to within 11 au of the Sun (1 billion miles), in which 1 au is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. The comet, coming no closer than Saturn, won’t likely be visible to the unaided eye, but astronomers will be keeping a close watch, as it’s turning out to be a rather extraordinary object.
Saturn’s aurora borealis, unlike auroras on other planets, is driven by a powerful weather system. The winds drag Saturn’s magnetic field lines.
Circa 2016
Digital stickers are on the horizon with a new MIT stamping technique that prints tiny, intricate circuits with electronically conductive ink.
Get ready for a giant update.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, is expected to provide an update on the current status of the company’s Starship project, the giant ship designed to send humans to Mars and beyond.
The ESA is investigating hibernation technology that could allow astronauts to remain healthy during long-duration missions to Mars and beyond.
A renewed era of space exploration is upon us, and many exciting missions will be headed to space in the coming years. These include crewed missions to the Moon and the creation of permanent bases there. Beyond the Earth-Moon system, there are multiple proposals for crewed missions to Mars and beyond. This presents significant challenges since a one-way transit to Mars can take six to nine months. Even with new propulsion technologies like nuclear rockets, it could still take more than three months to get to Mars.
Continue reading “Could Astronauts Hibernate on Long Space Voyages?” »
Thermal span in a layered compound promises applications in next-generation electrical switches and nonvolatile memory.
When temperature changes, many materials undergo a phase transition, such as liquid water to ice, or a metal to a superconductor. Sometimes, a so-called hysteresis loop accompanies such a phase change, so that the transition temperatures are different depending on whether the material is cooled down or warmed up.
In a new paper in Physical Review Letters, a global research team led by MIT physics professor Nuh Gedik discovered an unusual hysteretic transition in a layered compound called EuTe4, where the hysteresis covers a giant temperature range of over 400 kelvins. This large thermal span not only breaks the record among crystalline solids, but also promises to introduce a new type of transition in materials that possess a layered structure. These findings would create a new platform for fundamental research on hysteretic behavior in solids over extreme temperature ranges. In addition, the many metastable states residing inside the giant hysteresis loop offer ample opportunities for scientists to exquisitely control the electrical property of the material, which can find application in next-generation electrical switches or nonvolatile memory, a type of computer memory that retains data when powered off.
A team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile have found evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. This candidate planet is the third detected in the system and the lightest yet discovered orbiting this star. At just a quarter of Earth’s mass, the planet is also one of the lightest exoplanets ever found.
“The discovery shows that our closest stellar neighbour seems to be packed with interesting new worlds, within reach of further study and future exploration,” said João Faria, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Portugal, lead author of a study published today in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Proxima Centauri is a small, M-class star, lying just 4.2 light years away.
The newly discovered planet, named Proxima d, orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance of about four million kilometres, less than a tenth of Mercury’s distance from the Sun. It lies between the star and the habitable zone – the band where liquid water can exist at the surface of a planet – and takes just five days to complete one orbit around its star.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian flu in an Indiana turkey flock on Wednesday, the nation’s first case in a commercial poultry operation since 2020.
European scientists say they have made a major breakthrough in their quest to develop practical nuclear fusion — the energy process that powers the stars.
The UK-based JET laboratory has smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it can extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen.
Continue reading “Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy — BBC News” »
