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The Craters that Made Us
How does something come from nothing? It is perhaps the most profound question in all of science and one we still cannot fully answer. How did a barren, lifeless planet transform itself, over billions of years, into a world teeming with life? Where did it actually begin? For decades, deep sea hydrothermal vents have been
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The Moon Just Got a New Scar
Look up at a full Moon on a clear night and you are staring at a face that has been punched, gouged, and battered for four billion years. Those dark patches are vast basins blasted open by impacts so colossal they reshaped a world. The lighter highlands are pocked and pitted, crater upon crater, each
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Are Neutrinos Their Own Evil Twins? Part 1: So We’re Going to Redefine “Particle”
On March 25, 1938, a 31-year-old physicist named Ettore Majorana bought a ticket for a ferry from Palermo to Naples. That night, before boarding, he sent a letter to Antonio Carrelli, director of the Naples Physics Institute: Dear Carrelli, I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it,
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Student Team Finds One of the Oldest Stars in the Universe that Migrated to the Milky Way
Ten undergraduate students from the University of Chicago made an astounding discovery using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). As part of their “Field Course in Astrophysics,” they located one of the oldest stars in the Universe living in the Milky Way. The star, SDSS J0715-7334, is a red giant with 29 times
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Why Does Jupiter Have More Large Moons than Saturn?
Jupiter and Saturn, the two largest planets in the Solar System, are known for their large and varied systems of moons. At present count, Jupiter has more than 100 moons, while Saturn has more than double that, with over 280 known satellites. However, Jupiter’s system of satellites includes four large moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede,
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It’s Not Supposed To Be Like This: A Giant Planet Orbits A Small Star
The nebular hypothesis states that stars and the planets that orbit them form from the same reservoir of material, called a solar nebula. It’s the most commonly accepted explanation for how solar systems form. But despite its ability to explain many things about solar system formation, there are some outstanding questions. The study of exoplanets
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ESA Launches 7 New Missions to Supercharge Space Data Transfer
Space is getting crowded – and not just with satellites, but with the massive amounts of data they’re generating. The amount of information being generated and passed through orbit is exploding. From high-resolution Earth observation images to global maritime monitoring, it’s also become a critical link in our infrastructure. But there’s another space this growing
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Scientists Spot a Solar Flare With Surprising Spectral Behavior
On August 19, 2022, solar astronomers using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on the Hawaiian island of Maui caught the fading remnants of a C-class solar flare. Their observations showed something unusual: very strong spectral fingerprints of calcium II H and hydrogen-epsilon lines. It was the first time these two light signatures were
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NASA Releases Images of Artemis II’s Flight Behind the Moon
NASA’s Artemis II mission has completed its pass of the far side of the Moon, establishing a new distance record for a crewed spaceflight, over 400,000 km (250,000 mi) from Earth. And in the process, its four-person crew is capturing images of lunar regions no human has ever seen! Fortunately for the rest of us,
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A Baby Star Blows A Giant Gaseous Ring
Despite all we’ve learned about star formation, the process is still riven with mystery. Our prying telescopic eyes struggle to pierce the thick gaseous regions that give birth to stars. Progress has been steady, though, and we can thank the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) for some of it. ALMA is a radio-telescope interferometer comprised
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Recent Posts
- To Survive Deep Space, Astronauts May Owe a Debt to Microscopic Worms
- Watch This Dark Volcanic Ash Creep Across the Red Planet
- What Happens When Light Goes Boom? Part 2: The Crowd, the Molasses, and the Speed of Light (Sort Of)
- Early Galaxies Were Surrounded by Huge Clouds of Hydrogen, and Astronomers Found a Whole Bunch!
- The Moon Might Be More Prone To Fires
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