Imagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon—it might be fun to think about, but this scene is the prelude to a disaster when the radiation devastates life as we know it. Killer cosmic rays from nearby supernovae could be the culprit behind at least one mass extinction event, researchers said, and finding certain radioactive…
Tag: cosmic
Earth’s night sky as Milky Way and Andromeda merge
Billions of years from now, Earth’s night sky will change as the Andromeda galaxy rushes toward a merger with the Milky Way. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earths-night-sky-milky-way-andromeda-merge…
Strange gamma-ray heartbeat puzzles scientists
Scientists have detected a mysterious gamma-ray heartbeat coming from a cosmic gas cloud. The inconspicuous cloud in the constellation Aquila is beating with the rhythm of a neighboring precessing black hole, indicating a connection between the two objects, as the team led by DESY Humboldt Fellow Jian Li and ICREA Professor Diego F. Torres from the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC)…
Exoplanet-hunter TESS completes its primary mission
NASA’s 2nd planet-hunter, TESS, has spent 2 years surveying the sky for exoplanets orbiting distant stars. It has found over 2,000 exoplanets so far. TESS now moves into its extended mission phase. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/exoplanet-hunter-tess-completes-primary-mission…
NASA to stop using racist nicknames for cosmic objects
NASA will discontinue the use of certain nicknames for astronomical objects that are considered to be racist, the space agency said Aug. 5. Source: https://www.livescience.com/nasa-stops-racist-nicknames-cosmic-objects.html
How Will the Universe End? Scientists Say They May Have an Answer
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: In the unimaginably far future, cold stellar remnants known as black dwarfs will begin to explode in a spectacular series of supernovae, providing the final fireworks of all time. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which posits that the universe will experience one last hurrah before everything goes dark forever. The dramatic detonations…
Main Belt asteroid Psyche might be the remnant of a planet that never fully formed
New 2-D and 3-D computer modeling of impacts on the asteroid Psyche, the largest Main Belt asteroid, indicate it is probably metallic and porous in composition, something like a flying cosmic rubble pile. Knowing this will be critical to NASA’s forthcoming asteroid mission, Psyche: Journey to a Metal World, that launches in 2022. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-08-main-belt-asteroid-psyche-remnant.html…
NASA Ditching ‘Insensitive’ Nicknames for Cosmic Objects
NASA is “reconsidering how we talk about space,” reports CNET:
NASA gave two examples of cosmic objects it’ll no longer use nicknames for. Planetary nebula NGC 2392 has been called the “Eskimo Nebula.” “‘Eskimo’ is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions,” NASA explained. NASA already added a note to a…
Fragments of asteroids may have jumped the gap in the early solar system
Using some cosmic detective work, a team of researchers has found evidence that tiny pieces of asteroids from the inner solar system may have crossed a gap to the outer solar system, a feat once thought to be unlikely. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-08-fragments-asteroids-gap-early-solar.html…
A new test to investigate the origin of cosmic structure
Many cosmologists believe that the universe’s structure is a result of quantum fluctuations that occurred during early expansion. Confirming this hypothesis, however, has proven highly challenging so far, as it is hard to discern between quantum and classical primordial fluctuations when analyzing existing cosmological data. …