The Oort Cloud consists of comets with million-year orbits and surrounds the solar system
The spherical shell known as the Oort Cloud is virtually invisible. Its particles are spread so thinly and so far from the light of any star, including the Sun, that astronomers simply cannot see the cloud, even though it envelops us like a blanket. It may be hard for the human mind to comprehend: a cosmic cloud so colossal that it encircles the Sun and eight planets, stretching trillions of miles into deep space.
And asteroids have their own satellites
The European Space Agency’s Gaia star-gazing mission has once again proven its ability to explore asteroids, discovering potential moons around more than 350 asteroids that are not known to have moons.
Analysis of a sample of asteroid Bennu reveals dust rich in carbon, nitrogen and organic compounds needed for life
Early analysis of a sample of the asteroid Bennu returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed dust rich in carbon, nitrogen and organic compounds, all of which are essential components for life as we know it. The sample, dominated by clay minerals, particularly serpentine, reflects the type of rock found at mid-ocean ridges on Earth.
The Erigone family of asteroids are water-rich space rocks that offer a window into the solar system’s past
A family of primitive asteroids is giving astronomers a window into the past as they seek to unravel the history of these small space rocks that are believed to have once brought water to Earth.
Asteroids still pose a danger to our planet. Earth scientists are actively working on this problem
NASA’s new NEO Surveyor spacecraft will search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that could pose a threat to our planet, making it the agency’s first space telescope designed specifically for planetary defense. The impact craters that scar the Earth’s surface are evidence of the enormous impact asteroids have had on the history and development of our planet.
Hera mission to visit previously shot down asteroid Dimorphos to assess impact of its DART collision
Dimorphos is a moon of the near-Earth asteroid Didymos. This binary asteroid system was previously visited by NASA’s DART spacecraft, which deliberately collided with Dimorphos in 2022 and changed its orbit around Didymos as a demonstration of a planetary defense technique designed to change the trajectory of a potentially hazardous asteroid.
Earth temporarily has a new ‘mini-Moon’
On Sunday, September 29, Earth captured a new “mini-moon” called 2024 PT5. The bus-sized asteroid is expected to orbit our planet for 57 days, but it’s too small to be seen by amateur skywatchers. This isn’t the first time such a phenomenon has occurred. In 2020, astronomers identified another mini-moon, 2020 CD3, which orbited Earth for more than a year.
The Draconid meteor shower will be visible tonight
The Draconids meteor shower will reach its peak activity today, on the night of Wednesday, October 9. The number of “shooting stars” at this time can reach 15 per hour. The peak of the meteor shower is expected at approximately 16:00 Moscow time, but shooting stars can also be observed after dusk, the Moscow Planetarium reported.
Video reports from other planets and systems? Our Sun can provide such an opportunity
Plans to use a solar lens date back to the 1970s. More recently, astronomers have proposed developing a fleet of small, lightweight CubeSats that would deploy solar sails to accelerate them to 542 AU. Once there, they would slow down and coordinate their maneuvers, creating an image and sending data back to Earth for processing.
The mystery of solar winds is almost solved
Since the 1960s, astronomers have wondered how the Sun’s supersonic “solar wind,” a stream of energetic particles that flows into the solar system, continues to gain energy after it leaves the Sun. In addition to helping scientists better predict solar activity and space weather, such information also helps us understand the mysteries of the universe elsewhere and how stars like the Sun and stellar winds elsewhere operate.
Solar flares and magnetic storms pose a real danger
About once every thousand years, Earth experiences an extreme solar event that can cause severe damage to the ozone layer and increase ultraviolet (UV) radiation levels at the surface. Over the past century, the north magnetic pole has moved across northern Canada at about 40 kilometers per year, and the field has weakened by more than 6%. Geological records show that there have been periods of centuries or millennia when the geomagnetic field was very weak or even absent.
Solar flares continue to break records
NOAA Is Rewriting the Book on How to Rank Solar Storms: The Capabilities, the Science, and Our Understanding of the Science — A lot has changed in space weather in the last 25 years. Technology has improved, and scientists have learned more about extreme space weather events from historic geomagnetic storms like the Halloween solar storm of October 2003 and the Gannon Event of May 2024. Looking to the future, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) are now looking for ways to better inform the public about space weather events that can impact Earth. That’s why NOAA is asking the public for input on how to rewrite its space weather scales.
Abnormally restless Sun: the number of solar flares has increased several times
The Sun triggers an X-class solar flare, sending coronal mass ejections toward Earth. Active sunspot AR3777 in early August 2024 triggered the most powerful of three solar flares in that period, sending another coronal mass ejection toward Earth with a possible geomagnetic storm. CMEs are powerful explosions of magnetic fields and plasma that result from solar flares on the Sun that can lead to powerful geomagnetic storms on Earth.
Rogue planets captured by the Sun are able to make their way into the solar system
The Sun scoops up rogue planets as they fly by. The Sun is capable of capturing both small planets and Jupiter-sized gas giants that stray too close; our star then keeps them at the edge of the solar system.
The Corona Paradox of the Sun
Scientists have long wondered why the hot charged particles in our sun’s atmosphere get hotter as they move away from the sun’s surface. A new study may provide an answer, finding that the super-hot nature of the sun’s outer atmosphere, or “corona,” may be linked to the intriguing behavior of small-scale waves in this hazy plasma. These waves, known to scientists as “kinetic Alfvén waves,” or “KAWs,” are wave-like oscillations of magnetic fields that manifest themselves in motions in the sun’s photosphere.
The Heliosphere – a new object for study
Scientists call the region of space that the Sun influences the heliosphere, but without an interstellar probe, they know little about its shape. The heliosphere, the region of space that the Sun influences, is more than a hundred times the distance from the Sun to Earth.
Mars’ Surface Turns Out to Be Younger Than Expected, Planet Still Seismically Active
The results suggest that the Red Planet experiences between 180 and 260 meteorite impacts per year, and these objects can be as small as basketballs, leaving craters eight meters (26 feet) across in the ground. Overall, the impact rate is two to ten times higher than predicted, depending on the size of the impactor.
Mars rover Perseverance finds interesting rock that may have harbored microbial life billions of years ago
Analysis by instruments on board the rover shows that the rock has qualities that meet the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life. The rock contains chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by life billions of years ago, when there was flowing water in the area the rover was exploring. The science team is considering other explanations for the observed features, and further research will be needed to determine whether ancient life is a valid explanation.
Scientists are preparing to populate and terraform Mars
We could terraform Mars with desert moss. Among its recent discoveries, the rover found rocks made of pure sulfur. From October 2023, the rover will explore a region of Mars rich in sulfates, a type of salt containing sulfur and formed when water evaporates. NASA finds ice on Mars with new map. NASA selects commercial service research to support robotic science on Mars. owe Industries is currently developing a propulsion system that can generate up to 100,000 N of thrust with a specific impulse (Isp) of 5,000 seconds, the high efficiency of the system allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed in just two months.
A whole field of sulfur rocks, the latest discoveries on Mars and amazing photos
As the rover ascends, it moves along the Martian timeline, allowing scientists to study how Mars evolved from a planet that was more like Earth in the distant past, with a warmer climate and abundant water, to the icy desert it is today. The amount of frost on Mars’ equatorial volcanoes represents about 150,000 tons of water exchanged between the surface and the atmosphere every day during the cold season, equivalent to about 60 Olympic swimming pools. NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered crystals of pure sulfur on Mars.
Martian Phobos and Deimos Hide the Secret of Their Origin
For years, researchers have puzzled over the origins of Phobos and its twin, Deimos. Some have suggested that the moons are former asteroids attracted by Mars’ gravity, as their chemical composition is similar to that of some rocks in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. However, computer models simulating this capture process have failed to reproduce the pair’s nearly circular paths around Mars. Another hypothesis suggests that a giant impact, similar to the one that created our Moon, ejected the duo from the Red Planet; however, Phobos has a different chemical composition than Mars, making this scenario unlikely.
The mechanism by which black holes glow remains an unsolved mystery for scientists
A team of astronomers studied 16 supermassive black holes that shoot powerful beams into space to track where the beams, or jets, are pointing now and where they were pointing in the past. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA) at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), they found that some of the beams had changed direction by a large amount.
James Webb Telescope Reveals Supermassive Black Holes of the Early Universe
Peering deep into space and time, two teams using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have studied an exceptionally bright galaxy called GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8-billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old. Also studying JWST data, a team of astronomers led by Lukas Furtak and Adi Zitrin of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev were also able to determine the mass of the supermassive black hole. At about 40 million times the mass of the Sun, it is surprisingly massive compared to the galaxy it hosts.
Several black holes have been discovered in our Milky Way galaxy. At the galaxy’s heart is a dormant one 4.2 million times larger than the Sun
The black holes at the center of the Milky Way (Earth’s home galaxy) and Andromeda (one of our closest galactic neighbors) are among the quietest eaters in the universe. What little light they emit varies subtly in brightness, suggesting that they consume a small but steady stream of matter rather than large clumps. The streams approach the black hole gradually and in a spiral, like water swirling down a drain.
Supermassive black holes protect galaxies from growing too large
Galaxies could live longer if supermassive black holes act as their “hearts and lungs,” keeping them breathing and preventing them from growing too big. That’s the suggestion of a new study, which suggests that the universe would have aged much faster and today be filled with “zombie” galaxies containing dead or dying stars if it weren’t for the supermassive black holes that are thought to reside at the heart of all large galaxies. The astrophysicists behind the discoveries compare the jets of gas and radiation that supermassive black holes blow from their poles into their airways to breathing and lungs.
Black Hole Systems: Gravitational Waves of Space-Time Learned to Catch on Earth
Astronomers have discovered supermassive black holes with masses millions or billions of times that of the Sun in most massive galaxies in the local Universe, including our own Milky Way. Webb’s new observations provide evidence of an ongoing merger of two galaxies and their massive black holes when the Universe was just 740 million years old. The system is known as ZS7. Most black hole binaries are expected to be in what are called “quasi-circular” orbits. The giant black holes are thought to have been created when two smaller black holes collided and merged one day. And now scientists are wondering if we can learn about the black hole family tree by working backwards through the generations.
Anomalous ‘light’ black holes are primordial in the Universe
Black holes are formed either by the collapse of a massive star or by the merger of heavy objects. However, scientists suspect that smaller “primordial” black holes, including some with masses similar to the Earth, may have formed in the chaotic early moments of the universe. When we think of black holes, we tend to picture enormous cosmic monsters, such as stellar-mass black holes with masses tens or hundreds of times that of the Sun. We can even imagine supermassive black holes, with masses millions (or even billions) of times that of the Sun, sitting at the hearts of galaxies and dominating their surroundings. A team of scientists has predicted that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could detect a class of “light” black holes that have eluded detection until now.
Latest news on the theory of structure and origin of black holes
Supermassive black holes are thought to be born from successive mergers of smaller black holes, each bringing with it angular momentum that accelerates the spin of the black hole they birth. Measuring the spin of supermassive black holes can therefore provide insight into their history – and a new study suggests a new way to make such inferences based on the effects of spinning black holes on the very fabric of space and time.
The black hole in Omega Centauri is closer to Earth than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way
Most known black holes are either extremely massive, like the supermassive black holes found at the cores of large galaxies, or relatively light, with masses less than 100 solar masses. However, intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are rare and are considered rare “missing links” in black hole evolution.
Magnetic field and sea
German zoologists have found that bottlenose dolphins are as good as sharks and other fish in their ability to sense very weak electric fields, which allows these cetaceans to use the Earth’s magnetic field for orientation in space. Underwater compasses have recorded disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field deep under water.
Scientists have linked the development of life with a magnetic field and concluded about magnetic fields on other planets
The weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field has led to a dramatic acceleration in the evolution of multicellular life. Fossil evidence has been found in Brazil and South Africa that the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field was about 30 times weaker than today’s values at the end of the Ediacaran period, about 590 to 560 million years ago. One of the defining features of the Earth is its magnetic field. It forms a protective shield against high-energy particles ejected by the Sun, and thus may have provided a safer place for life to grow into the complex array of organisms we see today.
Gravity and life: new discoveries
Scientists have found geological evidence that the gravitational interaction between Mars and Earth is driving the 2.4-million-year deep-sea circulation cycle and global warming. What happens if the moon disappears? Stars can strip entire planets of their atmospheres. Discovery of retrograde orbits.
Moon race. Last news
Following the Artemis III mission, which lands the first humans near the lunar south pole, Artemis IV astronauts will live and work on humanity’s first lunar space station, Gateway, opening up new opportunities for science and preparation for human missions to Mars . The mission will combine the complex choreography of multiple launches and dockings of spacecraft in lunar orbit, and will also mark the debut of a larger, more powerful version of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and a new mobile launcher.
As part of the Artemis project, scientists are studying the features of the lunar landscape
A meteorite study shows that in ancient lunar history, the Moon’s crust contained more water than scientists previously thought. Moonquakes are similar to earthquakes. In the case of the Moon, they are caused by folds that form on the Moon’s surface as it shrinks. The Moon is shrinking because the Moon’s interior has cooled over the past few hundred million years.
Scientists have found that life on our planet could not have appeared without the Earth’s magnetic field
The movement of the iron core generates electricity, which results in a magnetic orientation of the entire planet. Scientists can trace the magnetic history of our planet through cooled lava. Because the planet’s magnetism deflects solar radiation, it allows life to exist on Earth. In fact, throughout the history of our planet, the poles have even changed their position several times, and the magnetic field strength has increased and decreased. The rocks indicate that Earth had a strong magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago, but scientists are not sure where the field might have come from. Magnetized boulders have also been discovered on the Moon.
Magnetic Universe. New discoveries – from everyday use to neutron stars
Scientists smashed atom against atom and unleashed a magnetic monster. A groundbreaking experiment has created a field so strong it could eclipse the grip of a neutron star. Rotating magnets can create levitation that is almost impossible to physics. For the first time, physicists had a clear understanding of how individual atoms behave like waves.
Laws formulated by a 17th century scientist are used in modern space technologies
The story of how we understand planetary motion would be impossible to tell if not for the work of the German mathematician Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s Three Laws describe how the planets orbit the Sun. They describe 1 – how planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun as the focus, 2 – a planet covers the same area of space in the same amount of time, regardless of where it is in its orbit, and 3 – the period revolution is proportional to the size of its orbit.
Solar hype from space agencies and increased solar activity. Coincidence?
The aurora ceases to remain polar. Now it can be observed with the naked eye all over the world. Until 2022, tourists from all over the world rushed to see the clear lights in the northern regions. In the last year, the red glow can be seen… everywhere. Not always, of course, but very often. Auroras are dangerous for people with unstable psyches.
China outpaces rivals in space exploration
China built its own Tiangong space station, also known as “Tianhe”, located at altitudes of 217 and 280 miles (340 to 450 kilometers) in low Earth orbit in 2021. For the first time in more than four decades, it was China that brought moon rocks to humanity. China launched the Chang’e-6 probe to return soil from the far side of the Moon. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Einstein Probe spacecraft was launched on January 9, 2024. China has already begun to lead the world in military launches, sending 45 defense satellites into orbit in 2022.
Features of the landscape on Mars – new discoveries
Olympus Mons is one of a dozen large volcanoes, many of which are ten to a hundred times taller than their Earthly counterparts. If Martian space tourism takes off in the coming decades, Olympus Mons could become a prime destination for adventure enthusiasts. Olympus may once have been a volcanic island surrounded by an ocean nearly 4 miles (6 km) deep, according to geological evidence found in the high cliffs. Another new study found that the rover discovered polygonal wedges 35 kilometers underground – the first time they have been discovered beneath the planet’s surface. Evidence suggests that the wedges formed between 3.7 and 2.9 billion years ago due to major climate changes in Mars’ past. The Mars Express orbiter has discovered enough water ice buried beneath the Red Planet’s equator to cover the entire planet in a shallow ocean if it melted.
Modern latest satellite meteorological monitoring systems
Space-based observing systems account for approximately 90% of the data used in global numerical weather prediction models. Everyone on Earth is affected by the effects of climate change, such as rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and rising sea levels. Natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, floods and tornadoes can dramatically change the Earth’s surface to the point where the changes are visible in space. Changes caused by human actions and interventions such as mining and deforestation are also visible in satellite images. Collecting climate data helps communities better plan for and become more resilient to these changes.
Scientists have proven: there are asteroids – piles of rubble that carry water, carbon and amino acids
Scientists have proven that there are asteroids that are resistant to external influences. This means that the tested methods are not suitable for protecting the Earth from such objects. Scientists have discovered possible “seeds of life” in the matter of asteroids: The idea that life originated outside our solar system has been around for a very long time, and now analysis of new asteroid samples is providing evidence for this “panspermia” theory.
Space debris threatens not only the further exploration of outer space, but also directly the inhabitants of the Earth
NASA confirms that the object that crashed into a house in Florida was indeed space debris from the ISS. Satellites are burning up in the upper atmosphere – and we still don’t know what impact this will have on the Earth’s climate. Space pollution threatens the Earth’s magnetosphere; the deposition of highly conductive materials can reduce the planet’s protective capabilities, an expert says.
Global warming leads to a change in the speed of rotation of the Earth and a change in the length of the day
The melting of polar ice leads to a change in the planet’s rotation speed, which in turn affects the global calculation of time, a study from the University of California showed, reports the scientific journal Nature. Geophysicists from the University of California have found evidence that the slowing rotation of the Earth’s core, combined with the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers, will lead to the fact that in 2029, humanity will have to shorten, rather than increase, the length of the day for the first time.
Heavy hydrogen used in nuclear energy and water turned out to be older than Earth
In protoplanetary disks, water is virtually omnipresent. Recent studies of the water content of early planetary systems like ours show that water is an abundant and ubiquitous molecule, originally synthesized on the surface of tiny grains of interstellar dust by hydrogenation of frozen oxygen, reports the journal Elements. In the molecular cloud from which a new planetary system will emerge, oxygen attaches and freezes to the dust grains it encounters. Once a hydrogen molecule intersects with this frozen oxygen, water ice is formed.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft outside the solar system stopped sending useful data back to Earth
The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest man-made object in space. It was sent in 1977 with a golden record on board that contained various sounds of our home planet: greetings in different languages, dogs barking and the sounds of two people kissing, to name just a few examples. The idea behind this recording was that Voyager 1 might one day become an emissary of alien life—a sonic time capsule of the creatures of Earth. Since its launch, it has also managed to complete missions to Jupiter and Saturn. In 2012, he crossed interstellar space.
Europa, a moon of Jupiter, generates enough oxygen to breathe for a million people during the day
NASA’s Juno mission measures the amount of oxygen on Europa. Jupiter’s ice-covered moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours—enough to keep a million people breathing for a day. But the rate of oxygen production on Jupiter’s moon Europa is significantly slower than most previous studies. The results, published March 4 in the journal Nature Astronomy, were obtained by measuring hydrogen evolution from the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon using data collected by the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument.
Astronomers paid attention to the “seasons” of Uranus and Neptune, and also discovered their new satellites
The James Webb Space Telescope recently took aim at the strange and mysterious Uranus, a side-rotating ice giant. What Webb discovered was a dynamic world with rings, moons, storms and other atmospheric features, including a seasonal polar cap. With his exceptional sensitivity, Webb captured images of Uranus’ faint inner and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta Ring, the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. He also took pictures of many of the planet’s 27 known moons, even seeing some of the smaller moons inside the rings.
The commercial Odysseus module landed in the south polar region of the Moon
After launching on February 15, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander touched down in the moon’s south polar region on February 22 and has since transmitted valuable science data back to Earth. Odysseus took six NASA payloads with him, and their data is essential for future human exploration of the Moon under Artemis. This is the first commercial unmanned mission to the Moon. For the first time in more than 50 years, NASA was able to collect data using new scientific instruments and technology demonstrations on the Moon. The data comes from the first successful payload landing of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign.
Astronauts on the ISS are looking for solutions to problems that may arise during a long flight
The flight of Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronauts, participants of the 70th long-term expedition, continues at the International Space Station. A long stay in space causes physical changes in the human body. For example, the condition of bones and muscles deteriorates. Therefore, the health of astronauts is closely studied by doctors and scientists.