A flash of light in the night sky, thought to have been a burst from a galaxy in the early universe, may actually have been nothing more than a glint from a piece of junk in Earth’s orbit Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269887-space-junk-foils-astronomers-observing-oldest-galaxy-in-the-universe/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Tag: burst
Vast Energy Use of Bitcoin Criticized
The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance has calculated that Bitcoin’s total energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 terawatt hours (TWh) a year, with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours, reports the BBC: The UK’s electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina uses around the same amount of power as the…
Insight-HXMT gives insight into origin of fast radio bursts
The latest observations from Insight-HXMT were published online in Nature Astronomy on Feb. 18. Insight-HXMT has discovered the very first X-ray burst associated with a fast radio burst (FRB) and has identified that it originated from soft-gamma repeater (SGR) J1935+2154, which is a magnetar in our Milky Way. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-insight-hxmt-insight-fast-radio.html…
A Russian ‘space truck’ just burst into flames on purpose and the photo is amazing
A Russian “space truck” has met its fiery doom on its way home to Earth. Source: https://www.livescience.com/russian-progress-76-cargo-ship-ms15-burns-up-photo.html
Galaxy-Size Gravitational-Wave Detector Hints At Exotic Physics
The fabric of spacetime may be frothing with gigantic gravitational waves, and the possibility has sent physicists into a tizzy. A potential signal seen in the light from dead stellar cores known as pulsars has driven a flurry of theoretical papers speculating about exotic explanations. Scientific American reports: The most mundane, yet still quite sensational, possibility is that researchers working with…
JADES will go deeper than the Hubble Deep Fields
Astronomers announced this month that a new deep-field survey called JADES will be carried out with the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s much-anticipated successor. The Webb is due to launch later this year. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/jades-deep-field-surveys-epoch-of-1st-galaxies…
Precision measurements of intracluster light suggest possible link to dark matter
A combination of observational data and sophisticated computer simulations have yielded advances in a field of astrophysics that has languished for half a century. The Dark Energy Survey, which is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, has published a burst of new results on what’s called intracluster light, or ICL, a faint type of light found…
Astronomers unmask cosmic eruptions in nearby galaxies
A brief burst of high-energy light swept through the solar system on April 15, triggering many space-based instruments, including those aboard NASA and European missions. Now, multiple international science teams conclude that the blast came from a supermagnetized stellar remnant known as a magnetar located in a neighboring galaxy. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-astronomers-unmask-cosmic-eruptions-nearby.html…
Rare star’s giant gamma-ray burst GRB 200415A captured close to our home galaxy
Earth gets blasted by mild short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) most days. But sometimes, a giant flare like GRB 200415A arrives at our galaxy, sweeping along energy that dwarfs our sun. In fact, the most powerful explosions in the universe are gamma-ray bursts. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-rare-star-giant-gamma-ray-grb.html…