Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space – Page 18

Unified model explains extreme jet streams on all giant planets

One of the most notable properties of the giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—are the extreme winds observed around their equators. While some of these planets have eastward equatorial winds, others have a westward jet stream. For the first time, an international team of scientists led by Leiden Observatory and SRON, can explain the winds on all the giant planets using one model.

So-called fast rotating convection in the atmospheres of the can play a crucial role in driving both east and westward jet streams. This is what a team of astronomers led by postdoctoral researcher Keren Duer-Milner from Leiden Observatory and SRON has found. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

Using global circulation models, the team found that differences in atmospheric depth can produce the eastward jets on Jupiter and Saturn and the westward jets on Uranus and Neptune. The system shows a so-called bifurcation: Under the same conditions, the atmosphere can settle into one of two stable states—either eastward or westward equatorial jets—establishing a direct link between jet direction and atmospheric depth.

Webb spots first hints of atmosphere on a potentially habitable world

Hints of an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1e raise hopes it could be a watery, potentially habitable world. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope are unraveling the mysteries of TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized exoplanet 40 light years away that could harbor liquid water. Early data suggests hints of an atmosphere, but much remains uncertain. Researchers have already ruled out a hydrogen-rich primordial atmosphere, pointing instead to the possibility of a secondary atmosphere that could sustain oceans or ice.

University of Bristol astrophysicists are helping shed new light on an Earth-sized exoplanet 40 light years away where liquid water in the form of a global ocean or icy expanse might exist on its surface.

That would only be possible if an atmosphere is present – a big mystery the scientists are attempting to unravel and now even closer to solving using the largest telescope in Space.

Researchers Have Discovered a Way To Simulate the Universe — on a Laptop

Cosmologists can now explore data faster than ever before with a new emulator. As astronomers continue to uncover the mysteries of the universe, their work generates increasingly vast and intricate data sets. A recent innovation is making it possible for researchers to process these enormous collec

“I Heard It Before I Saw It”: This Giant European Antenna in Australia Will Talk to Distant Planets (and change how we explore space)

In a significant advancement for international space collaboration, the European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled its latest deep space antenna in New Norcia.

“This Cosmic Highway Is Vanishing”: Scientists Warn Jupiter’s Gravity Is Tearing the Asteroid Belt Apart and Flinging Rocks Toward Earth

Orbiting between Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt, a vast region of space populated by approximately 1.9 million asteroids, each over one kilometer in

Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

In 2005, Cassini found the first evidence that Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Jets of water burst from cracks close to the moon’s south pole, shooting ice grains into space. Smaller than grains of sand, some of the tiny pieces of ice fall back onto the moon’s surface, while others escape and form a ring around Saturn that traces Enceladus’s orbit.

Physicists detect water’s ultraviolet fingerprint in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted between the stars—like a sealed bottle cast into the cosmic ocean. This summer, that bottle finally washed ashore in our solar system and was designated 3I/ATLAS, only the third known interstellar comet. When Auburn University scientists pointed NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory toward it, they made a remarkable find: the first detection of hydroxyl (OH) gas from this object, a chemical fingerprint of water.

Swift’s space-based telescope could spot the faint ultraviolet glow that ground observatories can’t see—because, high above Earth’s atmosphere, it captures light that never reaches Earth’s surface.

Detecting water—through its ultraviolet by-product, hydroxyl—is a major breakthrough for understanding how interstellar comets evolve. In solar-system comets, water is the yardstick by which scientists measure their overall activity and track how sunlight drives the release of other gases. It’s the chemical benchmark that anchors every comparison of volatile ices in a ’s nucleus.

/* */