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Astronomers studying cosmic dust in a spiral galaxy discovered an even more distant galaxy.

And the light being shed, in this case, comes partly from the elliptical galaxy on the left side of the image. Astronomers used Webb and Hubble to watch the light from the elliptical galaxy, which is farther away than its partner, shining through the dusty arms of the spiral galaxy. The two galaxies are close neighbors, but not quite close enough to be in danger of colliding and merging.

In fact, the elliptical galaxy on the left is doing a lot of work in this image. Not only is it backlighting the dust in its neighbor’s spiral arms, but it’s providing a gravitational lens to reveal a distant galaxy that astronomers had never seen before.

Continue reading “Look: Webb and Hubble telescopes team up to image a dust-shrouded galaxy” »

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Continue reading “How Big Is the Universe?” »

Could human civilization eventually spread across the whole Milky Way galaxy? Could we move beyond our small, blue planet to establish colonies in the multitude of star systems out there? These questions are pretty daunting, but their (theoretical) answers were actually put forth decades ago. Roey Tzezana describes the conceptual von Neumann machine. [Directed by Eoin Duffy, narrated by Addison Anderson, music by Wesley Slover].

Because the mineral changesite-(Y) contains the isotope helium-3, it could one day fuel nuclear fusion reactors.

Astronomers used radio telescopes to estimate the temperature of molten rock on Io, the most volcanically active world in the solar system.

Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality.

That’s because as a white dwarf draws material away from its hydrogen-burning partner, the stolen gas follows the star’s magnetic field lines in a big, curving arc toward its new home. And in the process, it drains energy from the stars’ whirling dance (so do the gravitational waves produced by their rotation). When that happens, both stars fall toward the shared center of gravity they’re orbiting. Closer orbits also mean shorter orbits, so it takes the stars less time to complete a single lap.

And the closer the stars get, the stronger the gravitational waves they produce, which drains away more energy, so they fall even closer together. By the time they’re close enough to complete an orbit in just a handful of minutes, the donor star has usually run out of hydrogen. That’s why the really close, fast-orbiting cataclysmic binaries tend to be a white dwarf and a helium-burning star.

The massive launch system will carry a mysterious U.S. Space Force payload to a high-altitude geosynchronous orbit.

It’s been a while since SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy to orbit. A string of payload delays has stopped the heavy-duty rocket from hitting the launch pad since the summer of 2019.

Continue reading “It’s been three years, but SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy might finally launch again this month” »

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, known as MOM, has ended after eight years – even though it was designed for a six-month lifespan, the Indian Space Research Organization announced this week.

The Mars orbiter launched on Nov. 5, 2013 and made it into orbit about 10 months later. It was an enormous feat to have reached Mars’ orbit successfully in the first attempt, Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, a member of India’s space commission, said during an address Monday.

In 2014, more than half of the world’s attempts at such a mission – 23 out of 41 – had failed, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. was successful with a Mars flyby in 1964, when a spacecraft called Mariner 4 returned with 21 images of the surface of the planet. Other successful missions include the Soviet Union’s in 1971 and the European Space Agency’s in 2003.