Tag Archives: astronomy

Legendary NASA Scientist Wonders if Aliens Are as Shortsighted and Stupid as Humans

by CelindaArmbruste Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Exploring new stretches of the galaxy brought NASA scientist William Borucki back to Earth.

Borucki, 76, retired in July as the principal investigator of NASA’s Kepler Mission, an unmanned spacecraft that has been surveying a portion of the Milky Way for habitable planets since March 2009. The mission has discovered more than 1,000 confirmed planets and inspired many to think about what, if any, life is out there.

But Borucki said it also made him reconsider life on Earth—and its fate in light of climate change.

“The Earth is a very special place,” Borucki said in an interview with the Huffington Post earlier this month. “Unless we have the wisdom and technology to protect our biosphere, it could become like many other dead worlds.”

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Legendary NASA Scientist Wonders if Aliens Are as Shortsighted and Stupid as Humans

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Did Astronomers Just Find the First Moon Outside Our Solar System?

by Jacobi Posted on December 27, 2013

Jupiter’s moon Io in orbit around the gas giant. Io is casting a dark shadow on Jupiter’s atmosphere. Photo: Cassini / NASA

As ever more advanced telescopes have shown that our Earth is similar to at least 17 billion Earth-like planets, astronomers have also been looking for something else—a moon in orbit around one of these exoplanets. An exomoon. And now they might have found one.

The potential moon, says Ian O’Neill for Discovery News, is half the size of Earth and in orbit around a planet four times bigger than Jupiter.

The candidate exomoon is around 45 million kilometers (0.13 AU) from its host exoplanet. As a comparison, Jupiter’s most distant satellite (S/2003 J 2) orbits over 30 million kilometers from the gas giant, so such an extreme orbit around a larger planet is certainly feasible.

The potential discovery was announced in a preliminary research paper, says Nature, and is definitely still up for debate: “After sifting through detailed observations of this event, astronomers proposed that the intervening object could be either a smallish star with a Neptune-sized planet orbiting it, or a largish planet with a moon orbiting it.”

If the latter possibility is confirmed, it would be the first ever detection of an exomoon. The problem is that there is no way to repeat the observation and know for sure.

“It’s kind of a shame because we’ll probably never know what the answer is,” says David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard‒Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the research.

No one is really surprised by the idea of exomoons. After all, moons are incredibly common in our solar system. Yet, finding the first known exomoon would be a big discovery, so the scientists are taking the more conservative interpretation, says Discovery News.

More from Smithsonian.com:

You Can’t Throw a Rock in the Milky Way Without Hitting an Earth-Like Planet
This Is an Actual Photo of a Planet in Another Solar System

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Did Astronomers Just Find the First Moon Outside Our Solar System?

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This Baby Rogue Planet Is Wandering the Universe All by Itself

by Peggy Mason Posted on October 10, 2013

An artist’s idea of what PSO J318.5-22 may look like. Photo: MPIA/V. Ch. Quetz

Birthed from the protoplanetary disk, most planets spend their days orbiting their parent star, growing old together as they loop around their galaxy’s core. A newly discovered planet named PSO J318.5-22 (which we’ve decided to call Flapjack, because why not?) has no parent. It has no planetary siblings. The planet is adrift, alone.

Estimated to be just 12 million year old, Flapjack is, relatively, just a baby, a planetary toddler off on an adventure to explore the universe. It’s a rogue planet, and it’s sailing through space some 80 light-years away. It is, says Alan Boyle for NBC, about six times the size of Jupiter.

It’s also, say the researchers in a release, the best example we have yet of a rogue planet. Scientists have known that some big objects tend to travel alone, rather than orbiting as part of a system. But they weren’t sure whether these celestial rogues were teeny, faint stars or wandering planets. Recently, though, astronomers have been finding planets all over the universe. Comparing Flapjack to these confirmed planets gave the scientists what they needed to call it a planet.

Rogue planets, says Universe Today, may be planets that formed normally, as part of a solar system, but then were kicked out to wander alone. That’s what they think happened to Flapjack. But there’s also the possibility that rogue planets could be birthed in interstellar space, growing from cold clouds of dust and gas. If that’s the case, Flapjack, says Universe Today, could have been born free.

The red dot in the middle is a telescope’s view of PSO J318.5-22. Photo: N. Metcalfe / Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium

More from Smithsonian.com:

Scientists Get The Best Look Yet at a Rogue Planet With No Star

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This Baby Rogue Planet Is Wandering the Universe All by Itself

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NASA Found Propene, the Chemical Used to Make Your Tupperware, on One of Saturn’s Moons

by Obediah Ousley Posted on October 2, 2013

Photo: NASA

Titan, Saturn’s massive, planet-like moon, is known for its seasonal weather patterns, sand dunes akin to those found in Africa’s Namib desert and hydrocarbon lakes. Now, the second-largest moon in the Solar System has gotten even more Earth-like: it contains propylene, an ingredient used in household plastics such as Tupperware and car bumpers.

This is the first time the common Earth chemical has been found anywhere other than on our planet, NASA reports. The chemical, found in Titan’s lower atmosphere, was detected with a composite infrared spectrometer by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

Titan’s atmosphere is mostly composted of nitrogen, followed by methane. Hydrocarbons like ethane and propane are also present. This new discovery fills in a gap in that chemical line-up, though experts suspect that many more molecular surprises await. The BBC reports, citing curious “colossal hydrocarbons” that have been detected:

When the effects of ultraviolet light are combined with the bombardment from particles driven in Saturn’s magnetic field, it becomes possible to cook up some very exotic chemistry.

Cassini’s plasma spectrometer has seen evidence for hydrocarbons with an atomic mass thousands of times heavier than a single hydrogen atom.

As for the propylene, the NASA project managers believe that ”this new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan’s atmosphere.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Titan Missile Museum
The Birth of Saturn’s Moonlets

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NASA Found Propene, the Chemical Used to Make Your Tupperware, on One of Saturn’s Moons

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The Moon Had Water Since the Day It Was Born

by Aaron Darek Posted on August 27, 2013

The Bullialdhus Crater. It looks little, but it ain’t. Photo: NASA

The Moon was birthed from the Earth—a blob of molten rock sent spiraling off into space in the aftermath of a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago. Years of volcanic activity and bombardment by asteroids beat the Moon into its current form—a dry, desolate land. But, below its battered surface the Moon hides traces of its parentage: deep inside the lunar material, there’s water, says new research.

Water on the Moon may sound strange, but it’s actually been reported and confirmed many times over. Water has been found lining the walls of lunar craters, buried within the lunar surface layers, and in rocks collected by Apollo astronauts. But there is a huge difference between that previously discovered water and the water described in the new study, a project spearheaded by NASA’s Rachel Klima.

Researchers think that the crater water and the soil water arrived after the Moon was formed. Water can be delivered by icy comets or produced through chemical interactions with the solar wind. In the new study, however, the researchers looked at the huge 38 mile-wide Bullialdhus Crater. Scientists think that a giant impact at the center of the crater forced some of the Moon’s subsurface to the top—it’s a window that looks 4 to 6 miles into the Moon’s interior. In these interior lunar rocks the researchers found a spike in hydroxyl, one half of a water molecule, chemically attached to the Moon’s original material—a sign that it’s been there since the Moon was formed.

“I think it would be very tough to have this water be anywhere other than original to the material that formed the moon,” said Klima to ABC.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Water On the Moon Probably Came From Earth
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The Moon Had Water Since the Day It Was Born

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NASA Goes All the Way to Saturn, Takes a Stunning Selfie

by Ameliankak Posted on July 23, 2013

That little blue dot floating in the black is every single one of us. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Last week we told you to smile wide, because a camera far, far, far away was about to take your portrait. From orbit around the gas giant Saturn, some 898 million miles from Earth, the Cassini space probe turned and took this photo. We’re that tiny blue dot, drifting in the black between Saturn’s rings and the blue smear at the bottom. (This smear, says Carolyn Porco, the head of the imaging team for Cassini, is Saturn’s E ring, a band produced by the geysers of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.)

This photo is just a sneak preview of what’s to come, says NASA. The full Saturn-Earth photo was taken as 33 individual frames, and this is just one of them. But, it’s the one that has Earth.

The snap is only humanity’s third such photo from the outer solar system. Unlike most tourists, NASA doesn’t travel to distant places just to spend the whole time taking photos of itself. One of the earlier snaps was also taken by Cassini, back in 2006. The one before that was by Voyager 1 way back in 1990—the famous Pale Blue Dot.

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Smile! A Satellite Around Saturn Is About To Take Your Picture

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Smile! A Satellite Around Saturn Is About To Take Your Picture

by eltonwagner4653 Posted on July 18, 2013

This is what astronomers think the photo should look like. Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech

On Friday afternoon at around 5:30 on the east coast, 2:30 on the west, look up to the sky and smile. Nine hundred million miles away, a camera is taking your photo. Our Earth and everything on it is playing the backdrop to a portrait of Saturn taken by a camera aboard NASA’s Cassini orbiter. That satellite has been cruising around Saturn since 2004.

The photo will see Saturn obscure the Sun, giving a good view of the gas giant’s rings. Blocking out the Sun also means that the relatively faint light of the Earth will be able to shine through. NASA:

“While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini’s vantage point 898 million [1.44 billion kilometers] away, the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We hope you’ll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity.”

Cassini will start obtaining the Earth part of the mosaic at 2:27 p.m. PDT (5:27 p.m. EDT or 21:27 UTC) and end about 15 minutes later, all while Saturn is eclipsing the sun from Cassini’s point of view. The spacecraft’s unique vantage point in Saturn’s shadow will provide a special scientific opportunity to look at the planet’s rings. At the time of the photo, North America and part of the Atlantic Ocean will be in sunlight.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Fantastic Photos of our Solar System
Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Is a Raging Hurricane

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For the First Time, NASA Took a Photo of the Sun’s Tail

by f45 Posted on July 11, 2013

Interstellar material builds up in front of the star LL Ori. Photo: NASA / Hubble Heritage Team

Yesterday we wrote about how the Earth is awash in the solar wind, charged particles that flow from the Sun and interact with everything in their reach. When the aurora light up the poles, that’s the solar wind. When people talk about the Voyager probes ‘leaving the solar system,’  they’re talking about the the edge of the reach of the solar wind.

Solar wind particles can stream from the Sun at speeds of more than two million miles per hour. When these particles hit the Earth, they push against our planet’s magnetic field—squashing it in the front and stretching it into a long tail in the back. The solar wind does this to all the other things in the solar system with a magnetic field, too—the tail of Jupiter’s magnetic field stretches up to 304 million miles. But the Sun’s magnetic field is being pushed as well, and for the first time researchers with NASA have taken a photo of the Sun’s stretched out tail. It may not look like much, but science is often just a bunch of colored blotches:

The Sun’s tail, or ‘heliotail,’ as seen by IBEX. Photo: NASA / IBEX

As the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, it passes through what’s known as the interstellar medium, a mélange of dust and gas and cosmic rays. Like a ship passing through the ocean, the Sun’s passage through the interstellar medium causes the Sun’s magnetic field to build up in front of the solar system, and to sweep the Sun’s magnetic field back in a long tail behind it. According to NASA, though we’re learning a lot about the Sun’s magnetic field because of a relatively new satellite known as the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, we still don’t know how far the Sun’s tail may be.  NASA has more detail on how they took their photo:

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Spaceships Made of Plastic Could Carry Us to Mars

by SFGJrg Posted on June 13, 2013

If anyone wants to make it to Mars unharmed, they’ll need to solve the radiation problem. Photo: Mars One

There’s at least a small handful of teams—NASA, the Chinese Space Agency, SpaceX, Mars One, and others—looking to put people on Mars in the next few decades. Other than the trouble involved in getting people to the red planet, landing them on the surface, giving them enough food and water to survive and stopping them from going crazy with isolation, there’s another big hurdle to jump: radiation. And not just measly, harmless radiation like from your cell phone. Space is full of galactic cosmic rays, incredibly high energy particles–like lead that’s moving near the speed of light. Galactic cosmic rays can blast through your DNA, shredding the bonds and increasing your risk of cancer.

Stopping all this radiation is one of the challenges for anyone looking to send people far from Earth, and new research is pointing us in an unusual direction on how to do it: plastic spaceships.

Aluminum, being both strong and light, is the material of choice for spaceship building. But aluminum isn’t so hot at blocking radiation. Plastic, on the other hand, seems to be way better.

This isn’t an entirely new idea. Back in 2004 NASA wrote about how plastic could be used to protect the explorers of the solar system, speaking with NASA scientist Frank Cucinotta, who works on the Space Radiation Health Project:

Plastics are rich in hydrogen–an element that does a good job absorbing cosmic rays,” explains Cucinotta. For instance, polyethylene, the same material garbage bags are made of, absorbs 20% more cosmic rays than aluminum. A form of reinforced polyethylene developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center is 10 times stronger than aluminum, and lighter, too. This could become a material of choice for spaceship building, if it can be made cheaply enough. “Even if we don’t build the whole spacecraft from plastic,” notes Cucinotta, “we could still use it to shield key areas like crew quarters.” Indeed, this is already done onboard the ISS.

While plastic was already thought to be theoretically better than aluminum at protecting astronauts based on laboratory tests no one had ever tested it using a craft that is fully exposed to cosmic rays. That’s where the new research comes in, says Cary Zeitlin, the leader of the study:

This is the first study using observations from space to confirm what has been thought for some time—that plastics and other lightweight materials are pound-for-pound more effective for shielding against cosmic radiation than aluminum. Shielding can’t entirely solve the radiation exposure problem in deep space, but there are clear differences in effectiveness of different materials.

More from Smithsonian.com:

After Decades of Wishing for a Mars Colony, It May Finally Be Within Reach

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Spaceships Made of Plastic Could Carry Us to Mars

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A Galactic GPS System That’s Now in the Works Could Help Our Descendants Navigate Through the Universe

by Andrew Brentford Posted on June 7, 2013

Photo: Avarycce

The International Space Station aims to be testing out an interplanetary GPS system by 2017, IEEE Spectrum reports. Rather than navigate with the stars or planets themselves, the system would rely upon the lingering X-ray pulses of dead stars to create a map of the galaxy.

At present, space navigation relies primarily on a network of earthbound tracking stations. When a craft ventures into deep space, ground crews beam radio waves out to the craft, which are then retransmitted back. By measuring the round trip time and the Doppler shift of the signal, the crews can calculate the craft’s position. But the further away the craft wanders from our planet, the poorer this method’s resolution becomes. So it follows that if a space vehicle could calculate its own position independently and accurately, its navigational capabilities would improve by leaps and bounds.

The new system aims to do just that. It relies upon the electromagnetic radiation emitted by pulsars, or technically dead stars that still give off bursts of oscillating energy. These pulses come at regular intervals, so they can be used for navigation in the same way GPS systems on earth use atomic clocks for standardization and accuracy.

A craft heading into space would carry a detector that, similarly to a GPS receiver, would accept X-rays from multiple pulsars and use them to resolve its location.

In order to test the system, the NASA team built the Goddard X-ray Navigation Laboratory Testbed (GXNLT). Nicknamed the “pulsar-on-a-table,” it’s composed of pulsar-processing software and hardware, a modulated X-ray source, and a built-in detector. The test bed tries to mimic the combination of an interplanetary GPS and pulsars.

If all goes well, a NASA engineer told IEEE Spectrum, these initial systems will lay the foundation for our descendants to navigate throughout our solar system and beyond.

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Quirkiest Space Shuttle Science 
Have GPS Devices Taken Fun Out of Navigation? 

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A Galactic GPS System That’s Now in the Works Could Help Our Descendants Navigate Through the Universe

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