Striped brown dwarf looks a lot like Jupiter

The surface features of brown dwarfs – objects midway in mass between planets and stars – can’t be seen. But researchers have found a way to reveal Jupiter-like stripes and bands in the atmosphere of the closest brown dwarf, Luhman 16B. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/brown-dwarf-luhman-16b-jupiter-like-stripes…

NASA missions help investigate an ‘Old Faithful’ active galaxy

During a typical year, over a million people visit Yellowstone National Park, where the Old Faithful geyser regularly blasts a jet of boiling water high in the air. Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered a cosmic equivalent, a distant galaxy that erupts roughly every 114 days. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-nasa-missions-faithful-galaxy.html…

Researchers find Mars has a Chandler wobble

A combined team of researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and the Royal Observatory of Belgium, has found evidence that Mars has a Chandler wobble. In their paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the group describes their study of decades of data from Mars probes and what it showed them. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-mars-chandler.html…

Climate Change May Have Caused a ‘Wandering’ Polar Vortex and a Colder Winter

Space.com reports:
High above the North Pole, the polar vortex, a fast-spinning whirl of frigid air, is doing a weird shimmy that may soon bring cold and snowy weather to the Eastern U.S., Northern Europe and East Asia for weeks on end, meteorologists say. While it’s not unusual for the polar vortex to act up, this particular reconfiguration — wandering around and…

Winds and jet streams found on the closest brown dwarf

A University of Arizona-led research team has found bands and stripes on the brown dwarf closest to Earth, hinting at the processes churning the brown dwarf’s atmosphere from within. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-jet-streams-closest-brown-dwarf.html…

Scientists Turn CO2 Into Jet Fuel

Researchers may have found a way to reduce the environmental impact of air travel in situations when electric aircraft and alternative fuels aren’t practical. Wired reports that Oxford University scientists have successfully turned CO2 into jet fuel, raising the possibility of conventionally-powered aircraft with net zero emissions. From a report: The technique effectively reverses the process of burning fuel by relying…

Video Taken By Pilots of What Could Be the Elusive Los Angeles Jet Pack Guy Emerges

We now have credible video of what appears to be the elusive “Jet Pack Guy” flying around at thousands of feet near Los Angeles International Airport. The Drive reports: The footage doesn’t come to us from some random Reddit board or YouTube channel, either. It was taken during an instructional flight from Sling Pilot Academy in the training area off Palos…

A blazar in the early Universe

The supersharp radio ‘vision’ of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) has revealed previously unseen details in a jet of material ejected at three-quarters the speed of light from the core of a galaxy some 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. The galaxy, dubbed PSO J0309+27, is a blazar, with its jet pointed toward Earth, and is the brightest…

An updated way to calculate the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations

A small team of researchers from California Institute of Technology, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Santiago High School has developed an updated version of an old equation to calculate the likely existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. The team has uploaded their paper to the arXiv preprint server. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-likelihood-extraterrestrial-civilizations.html…

Is leaked Pentagon UFO a ‘Batman’ balloon ?

A recently distributed image of a UFO captured from a US fighter jet may have a rather mundane explanation. The photograph, which emerged earlier this… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/342097/is-leaked-pentagon-ufo-a-batman-balloon…