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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The Hubble telescope discovered water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet located 97 light years from Earth
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have observed the smallest exoplanet to have water vapor in its atmosphere. Planet GJ 9827d, which is only about twice the diameter of Earth, could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres in other parts of our galaxy. GJ 9827d was discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope in 2017. It orbits the red dwarf every 6.2 days. The star GJ 9827 is located 97 light years from Earth in the constellation Pisces.
NASA’s DSOC sent video using a laser to Earth from a distance of 31 million kilometers
Following successful testing of DSOC technology in Earth orbit and on the Moon, NASA is now using deep space optical communications technologies to test laser communications over increasingly greater distances. While aboard the agency’s Psyche mission, DSOC has already sent video via laser to Earth from 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away and is aiming to prove that high-throughput data can be sent even from Mars.
The NASA/JAXA XRISM mission investigates the composition and physical state of space objects by detecting X-ray radiation
Invisible to our eyes, X-rays emitted by the hot gas that fills much of the Universe can shed light on many cosmic mysteries. The first observations of this gas by JAXA’s X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) are ready and demonstrate that the mission will play a major role in revealing the evolution of the Universe and the structure of spacetime.
Top 12 unusual exoplanets discovered in 2023
In 2023, scientists discovered several stunning exoplanets. Last year, planetary scientists added a number of exciting new worlds to the exoplanet catalog of more than 5,000 objects. Among them are planets that we have never seen before.
The James Webb Space Telescope has proven that complex organic compounds are present even in the most ancient galaxies of the Universe
The James Webb Space Telescope is capable of searching the “carbonaceous” atmospheres of exoplanets to search for alien life. “We have a way to find out if there is liquid water on another planet. And we can achieve this in the next few years.”
NASA demonstrates optical communications for deep space operations
DSOC, an experiment that could change the way spacecraft communicate, has sent data using a laser to and from the Moon for the first time. The transmitted data takes the form of bits (the smallest units of data that a computer can process) encoded in laser photons—quantum particles of light.
ARRAKIHS dark matter satellite will be launched in 2030
The mission is planned to study the dark matter halo of 75 different galaxies – a hypothetical component of galaxies that surrounds the galactic disk and extends far beyond the visible part of the galaxy. The mass of the halo is the main component of the total mass of the galaxy, reports the European Space Agency.
European Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence uses new radio frequency technologies
The SETI Institute received $200 million to search for evidence of alien life. The new funding will allow the SETI Institute to consolidate and expand the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Evidence of the possibility of extraterrestrial origin of life found on an asteroid
Organic substances have been discovered on a rocky S-class asteroid. It is this class of asteroids that most often falls on Earth.