Space News and Discussions

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caltrek
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A New Mystery Signal Is Repeating From a Distant Galaxy, and It's a Weird One
by Michele Starr
June 8, 2022

Introduction:
(Science Alert) A newly discovered source of repeating fast radio bursts has deepened the mystery of what, precisely, could be producing these powerful outbursts.

The source, first detected in 2019 and named FRB 190520B, seems to be frequently spitting out millisecond bursts of powerful radio waves.

This has allowed astronomers to perform analyses that reveal information about where it comes from in the Universe, and the space around it. Those analyses suggest that there is probably more than one mechanism in the big wide cosmos capable of producing these strange outbursts.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs), as the name suggests, are very fast bursts of radiation (lasting only milliseconds in duration) that flare brightly in radio wavelengths.

Most of them come from other galaxies (only one source has been detected in the Milky Way), and they're extremely bright, discharging as much energy in an instant as 500 million Suns.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-myst ... a-weird-un
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New insights into neutron star matter
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-insights- ... -star.html
by Technische Universitat Darmstadt
An international research team has for the first time combined data from heavy-ion experiments, gravitational wave measurements and other astronomical observations using advanced theoretical modeling to more precisely constrain the properties of nuclear matter as it can be found in the interior of neutron stars. The results were published in the journal Nature.

Throughout the universe, neutron stars are born in supernova explosions that mark the end of the life of massive stars. Sometimes neutron stars are bound in binary systems and will eventually collide with each other. These high-energy, astrophysical phenomena feature such extreme conditions that they produce most of the heavy elements, such as silver and gold. Consequently, neutron stars and their collisions are unique laboratories to study the properties of matter at densities far beyond the densities inside atomic nuclei. Heavy-ion collision experiments conducted with particle accelerators are a complementary way to produce and probe matter at high densities and under extreme conditions.

New insights into the fundamental interactions at play in nuclear matter

"Combining knowledge from nuclear theory, nuclear experiment, and astrophysical observations is essential to shedding light on the properties of neutron-rich matter over the entire density range probed in neutron stars," said Sabrina Huth, Institute for Nuclear Physics at Technical University Darmstadt, who is one of the lead authors of the publication. Peter T. H. Pang, another lead author from the Institute for Gravitational and Subatomic Physics (GRASP), Utrecht University, added, "We find that constraints from collisions of gold ions with particle accelerators show a remarkable consistency with astrophysical observations even though they are obtained with completely different methods."
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Astronomers may have detected a 'dark' free-floating black hole
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-astronome ... -hole.html
by University of California - Berkeley
If, as astronomers believe, the deaths of large stars leave behind black holes, there should be hundreds of millions of them scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The problem is, isolated black holes are invisible.

Now, a team led by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers has for the first time discovered what may be a free-floating black hole by observing the brightening of a more distant star as its light was distorted by the object's strong gravitational field—so-called gravitational microlensing.

The team, led by graduate student Casey Lam and Jessica Lu, a UC Berkeley associate professor of astronomy, estimates that the mass of the invisible compact object is between 1.6 and 4.4 times that of the sun. Because astronomers think that the leftover remnant of a dead star must be heavier than 2.2 solar masses in order to collapse to a black hole, the UC Berkeley researchers caution that the object could be a neutron star instead of a black hole. Neutron stars are also dense, highly compact objects, but their gravity is balanced by internal neutron pressure, which prevents further collapse to a black hole.

Whether a black hole or a neutron star, the object is the first dark stellar remnant—a stellar "ghost"—discovered wandering through the galaxy unpaired with another star.
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NASA Telescope to Help Untangle Galaxy Growth, Dark Matter Makeup
June 14, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study wispy streams of stars that extend far beyond the apparent edges of many galaxies. Missions like the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes would have to patch together hundreds of small images to see these structures around nearby galaxies in full. Roman will do so in a single snapshot. Astronomers will use these observations to explore how galaxies grow and the nature of dark matter.

Stellar streams look like ethereal strands of hair extending outward from some galaxies, peacefully drifting through space as part of the halo – a spherical region surrounding a galaxy. But these stellar flyaways are signs of an ancient cosmic-scale drama that serve as fossil records of a galaxy’s past. Studying them transforms astronomers into galactic archaeologists.

Especially elusive stellar streams that formed when the Milky Way siphoned stars from globular star clusters have been detected before, but they’ve never been found in other galaxies. They’re fainter because they contain fewer stars, which makes them much more difficult to spot in other, more distant galaxies.

Roman may detect them in several of our neighboring galaxies for the first time ever. The mission’s wide, sharp, deep vision should even reveal individual stars in these enormous, dim structures. In a previous study, Pearson led the development of an algorithm to systematically search for stellar streams originating from globular clusters in neighboring galaxies.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/955934
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China's lunar lander finds evidence of native water on moon
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-china-lun ... ative.html
by Chinese Academy of Sciences
Samples from the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum, an ancient mare basalt whose name translates to "Ocean of Storms," may be able to help determine the source of lunar water.

China's lunar lander Chang'E-5 delivered the first real-time, on-site definitive confirmation of water signal in the basalt's rocks and soil via on-board spectral analysis in 2020. The finding was validated through laboratory analysis of samples the lander returned in 2021. Now, the Chang'E-5 team has determined where the water came from.

The researchers published their results on June 14 in Nature Communications.

"For the first time in the world, the results of laboratory analysis of lunar return samples and spectral data from in-situ lunar surface surveys were used jointly to examine the presence, form and amount of 'water' in lunar samples," said co-corresponding author Li Chunlai from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). "The results accurately answer the question of the distribution characteristics and source of water in the Chang'E-5 landing zone and provide a ground truth for the interpretation and estimation of water signals in remote sensing survey data."

Chang'E-5 did not observe lunar rivers or springs; rather the lander identified, on average, 30 hydroxyl parts per million in rocks and soil on the Moon's surface. The molecules, made of one oxygen and one hydrogen atom, are the main ingredient of water, as well as the most common result of water molecules chemically reacting with other matter. Despite representing what Li called the "weak end of lunar hydration features," hydroxyl is to water what smoke is to fire: evidence.
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Exploring the Evolution of a Galaxy
by Monica Young
June 15, 2022

Introduction:
(Sky and Teelscope) A galaxy in a telescope (or a Hubble image) may seem silent and still, but that’s only because us humans are impatient.
Over millions or even billions of years, gravity builds galaxies — and destroys them. In two studies presented June 14th at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), astronomers show some of the ways galaxies can grow and die.

Given that we can’t watch galaxy evolution unfold in realtime, graduate student Katya Gozman (University of Michigan) became a geologist of sorts, digging deep into the history of the spiral galaxy M94, 16 million light-years away in Canes Venatici.

In geology, it’s the rocks that remember; in astronomy, it’s the stars. When two galaxies collide, the larger one flings the stars of the smaller one to the galactic curb, out to the stellar halo. Compared to the galaxy, the stellar halo is vast, covering more than 10 times the area on the sky as the galaxy itself.

Using the Hyper Suprime Camera on Subaru Telescope, which rests atop Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i, Gozman took long, sensitive observations of this galaxy. These images dig deep to reveal individual stars in its halo. But to the team’s surprise, despite the images’ sensitivity, they found few stars in the halo. Those that are there are ancient, as indicated by their pristine makeup.
Read more here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy ... fe-death/
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Neutrinos hint the sun has more carbon and nitrogen than previously thought
Figuring out our star’s makeup is crucial for understanding the entire universe
photo of the sun

Made mostly of hydrogen and helium, the sun also has heavier elements such as carbon and nitrogen. But scientists disagree just how much of those heavier elements there are.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neu ... s-elements

By Ken Croswell

18 hours ago

After two decades of debate, scientists are getting closer to figuring out exactly what the sun — and thus the whole universe — is made of.

The sun is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. There are also heavier elements such as oxygen and carbon, but just how much is controversial. New observations of ghostly subatomic particles known as neutrinos suggest that the sun has an ample supply of “metals,” the term astronomers use for all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, researchers report May 31 at arXiv.org.
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World's largest plane soars to its highest altitude yet
By Nick Lavars
June 16, 2022
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/worlds-la ... -altitude/
The world's largest flying aircraft has reached new heights, with Stratolaunch today completing the seventh test flight of its gigantic Roc carrier plane and logging a record altitude for the huge aircraft in the process. The exercise was also used to test the in-flight performance of recently installed pylon hardware, which will launch smaller hypersonic aircraft from altitude and send them across the skies at speeds of over Mach 5.

California's Stratolaunch originally designed Roc to carry rockets and satellites into the stratosphere from where they would then be fired into low-Earth orbit. A recent shift in strategy has seen the massive plane, which features six Boeing engines, two side-by-side fuselages and a wingspan of 385 ft (117 m), repurposed as a carrier for hypersonic research vehicles.

In 2020, the company offered a first look at what these vehicles will look like, revealing a concept called the Talon-A. It is designed for swift and repeatable hypersonic flights with an ability to take off and land itself on a runway, in addition to being launched from the Roc carrier aircraft. The company unveiled a test version of this hypersonic vehicle last moth, called the TA-O
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NASA prepares to power-down Voyager spacecraft after more than 44 years
Friday 17 June 2022

After more than 44 years of travelling farther from Earth than any man-made objects have before, the Voyager spacecraft are entering their very final phase.

Both of the Voyagers were launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977 - with Voyager 2 actually the first to take off - taking advantage of a rare alignment (once every 176 years) of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune to shoot into interstellar space.

They were designed to last five years and study Jupiter and Saturn but remarkably both spacecraft are still functioning despite escaping beyond the hot plasma bubble known as the heliopause that defines the beginning of the edge of our solar system.

It is certain that at some point the plutonium powering the spacecraft will decay beyond what is capable of keeping the probes functional. Some estimate that could be as soon as 2025, while others hope it may be later.
https://news.sky.com/story/nasa-prepare ... s-12635485
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