Space News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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NASA opens sample taken from the Moon 50 years on
A sample of moon rock collected during the Apollo 17 mission is opened by NASA 50 years on.

The Apollo missions to the Moon brought a total of 2,196 rock samples to Earth. But NASA has only just started opening one of the last ones, collected 50 years ago.
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-nasa-samp ... years.html
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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
weatheriscool
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Hubble finds a protoplanet that could upend planet formation models
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-prenatal- ... ation.html
by ESA/Hubble Information Centre
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an "intense and violent process." This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called "disk instability."

The new world under construction is embedded in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas with distinct spiral structure swirling around, surrounding a young star that's estimated to be around 2 million years old. That's about the age of our solar system when planet formation was underway. (The solar system's age is currently 4.6 billion years.)

"Nature is clever; it can produce planets in a range of different ways," said Thayne Currie of the Subaru Telescope and Eureka Scientific, lead researcher on the study.

All planets are made from material that originated in a circumstellar disk. The dominant theory for Jovian planet formation is called "core accretion," a bottom-up approach where planets embedded in the disk grow from small objects—with sizes ranging from dust grains to boulders—colliding and sticking together as they orbit a star. This core then slowly accumulates gas from the disk. In contrast, the disk instability approach is a top-down model where as a massive disk around a star cools, gravity causes the disk to rapidly break up into one or more planet-mass fragments.

The newly forming planet, called AB Aurigae b, is probably about nine times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its host star at a whopping distance of 8.6 billion miles—over two times farther than Pluto is from our Sun. At that distance it would take a very long time, if ever, for a Jupiter-sized planet to form by core accretion. This leads researchers to conclude that the disk instability has enabled this planet to form at such a great distance. And, it is in a striking contrast to expectations of planet formation by the widely accepted core accretion model.
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Astrophysicists theorize a new type of neutron star
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-astrophys ... -star.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A pair of researchers, one with Manly Astrophysics, the other with Universidad de Murcia, has proposed the existence of a new type of neutron star. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Arthur Suvorov and Kostas Glampedakis suggest that an exotic type of neutron star could be created if there is an ultra-strong magnetic field created during a collision between neutron stars.

Prior research has suggested that neutron stars form when a star collapses under its own gravity, setting off a supernova. The remnant neutron star is much smaller and has a high density. Other research has suggested that if two neutron stars collide, they would create a single object with a mass that is greater than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit, and would therefore collapse into a black hole. The limit only applies to neutron stars that cease rotating due to the collision, however. Prior research has suggested that if the new star does spin, it could exist for a while before collapsing to a black hole. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that a star that is not spinning could still persist for a period of time under unique circumstances.
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caltrek
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Astronomers Have Just Identified The Most Distant Galaxy Ever Discovered
by Michelle Starr
April 7, 2022

https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomer ... years-away

Introduction:
(Science Alert) A glowing red object in the early Universe has been identified as the most distant galaxy discovered to date.

It is, astronomers have revealed, a galaxy that existed just 330 million years after the Big Bang.

Its faint light, stretched by the expansion of the Universe, had to travel 13.5 billion light-years to reach us, here on Earth.

The discoverers have named the galaxy HD1, and it represents something of a mystery. Scientists are not entirely sure what the galaxy is: whether it's a starburst galaxy, positively roiling with star formation, or a quasar, with a massive, active supermassive black hole at its center.

If it's the latter, the black hole's growth to supermassive size so soon after the Universe winked into existence presents a challenge to models of black hole formation and evolution.
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World's largest International Dark Sky Reserve created
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-world-lar ... k-sky.html
by University of Texas at Austin
The world's largest International Dark Sky Reserve is coming to Texas and Mexico, thanks to a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory, The Nature Conservancy, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and many others. The designation, granted by the IDA, recognizes the commitment of organizations, governments, businesses and residents in the region to maintaining dark skies. The move will benefit not only astronomical research, but also wildlife, ecology and tourism.

The new Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve will encompass more than 15,000 square miles in portions of western Texas and northern Mexico. It is the only such reserve to cross an international border.

"This reserve protects both the scientific research and public education missions of McDonald Observatory," said Taft Armandroff, director of UT Austin's McDonald Observatory. "Since 1939, the observatory has enabled the study of the cosmos by faculty, students and researchers at UT Austin and other Texas institutions of higher learning, with topics ranging from planets orbiting nearby stars to the accelerating expansion of the universe."

The core of the reserve, where the protection for dark skies is strongest, is formed by the lands of McDonald Observatory and The Nature Conservancy's Davis Mountain Preserve. The reserve will protect numerous wildlife habitats and migration corridors passing through the Big Bend region.
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andmar74
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Secret Government Info Confirms First Known Interstellar Object on Earth, Scientists Say
A small meteor that hit Earth in 2014 was from another star system, and may have left interstellar debris on the seafloor.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp9ez/ ... ntists-say


That's no surprise, a lot of interstellar objects must have hit Earth.
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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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Ax-1's all-civilian crew dock at International Space Station
Source: NBC News
The all-civilian Ax-1 mission crew docked at the International Space Station early Saturday morning, marking the first time private citizens visited the spacecraft.

...snip...

The Ax-1 crew is led by Michael López-Alegría, a retired NASA astronaut who now serves as the vice president of business development for Axiom Space. He's joined by three paying customers: American real estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe, a former fighter pilot from Israel. Connor, Pathy and Stibbe paid $55 million apiece for the experience, as The Associated Press reported this year.

While on the space station, they will participate in science experiments and philanthropic projects, including health-related research for the Mayo Clinic and the Montreal Children’s Hospital.

Axiom Space said the mission is a “precursor” to commercializing low-Earth orbit, and said it intends to fly at least three other commercial flights to the space station. It is also planning to construct its own privately-funded space station in orbit.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/a ... -rcna23722
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Astronomers capture surprising changes in Neptune's temperatures
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-astronome ... tures.html
by ESO
An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), to track Neptune's atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period. They found a surprising drop in Neptune's global temperatures followed by a dramatic warming at its south pole.

"This change was unexpected," says Michael Roman, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Leicester, UK, and lead author of the study published today in The Planetary Science Journal. "Since we have been observing Neptune during its early southern summer, we expected temperatures to be slowly growing warmer, not colder."

Like Earth, Neptune experiences seasons as it orbits the Sun. However, a Neptune season lasts around 40 years, with one Neptune year lasting 165 Earth years. It has been summertime in Neptune's southern hemisphere since 2005, and the astronomers were eager to see how temperatures were changing following the southern summer solstice.

Astronomers looked at nearly 100 thermal-infrared images of Neptune, captured over a 17-year period, to piece together overall trends in the planet's temperature in greater detail than ever before.
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