Space

Direct Imaging of A Gas Giant, A Step Toward Finding A Second Earth

D irect imaging of a gas giant is not totally new. What is new is the combination of direct imaging with an indirect method that allows better understanding of the mass of gas giants in other solar systems. Knowing the mass of a planet is crucial to under ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Apr 14 2023 - 11:07am

Saturn’s Rings: Enjoy Them While You Can

Saturn’s rings are one of the jewels of the solar system, but it seems that their time is short and their existence fleeting. A new study suggests the rings are between 400 million and 100 million years old – a fraction of the age of the solar system. Thi ...

Article - The Conversation - May 16 2023 - 8:24am

Universe Breakers Shatter Cosmological Theories About Galaxy Formation

Astronomers at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have ...

Article - Mark Pierce - Jun 5 2023 - 8:40am

How To Keep Earth Safe- Samples From Mars Sterilized Or Returned To Above Geostationary Orbit- Op Ed

NASA currently has Mars sample return as their priority flagship mission not just for this decade but for the next one as well. They were recommended to do this in the 2012 decadal review. It is good for geology, nobody doubts that. But it is motivated ma ...

Article - Robert Walker - Jun 16 2023 - 3:03pm

Betelgeuse, Gamow, and a Big Red Horse

There has been a lot of talk recently of Betelgeuse possibly going supernova this century or not long after.  The basis of this is a paper referenced in this article: Betelgeuse is almost 50% brighter than normal. What's going on? If you prefer, you c ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Jun 20 2023 - 4:14am

How To Annihilate A Star

Stars die in lots of ways. Most low-mass stars like our Sun shed their outer layers and eventually fade to white dwarf stars. Larger ones prefer to burn out rather than fade away so they go supernova and create ultradense objects like neutron stars and bla ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 22 2023 - 10:40am

Our Universe Is Brimming With Life. Artificial, To Be Sure

One of the things that keeps me busy these days is the organization of a collective publication by a number of experts in artificial intelligence and top researchers in all areas of scientific investigation. I will tell you more of that project at another ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Jul 7 2023 - 6:44am

Ingenious Idea: Soyuz Crew in Tether Spin On Way to ISS- For Artificial Gravity- Almost No Extra Fuel

Joseph Carroll's ingenious idea is to attach a tether from the crewed Soyuz spaceship to its final stage- and use this as a counterweight to do the first ever real experiment in tethered artificial gravity. He has found a way to do this without using ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jul 23 2023 - 5:12pm

Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths

Planet dwellers like us naturally look first to other moons and planets for colonization. Yet, asteroids have enough resources to build space habs for trillions, with the same living space per person as for Earth. The idea is to use the materials from the ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jul 31 2023 - 6:50am

We Know Very Little About Black Holes

Astronomers have speculated that black holes eat slowly. A recent paper argues that their computer simulation shows just the opposite.  Don't get too excited, this is still a computer simulation about theoretical physics, which isn't out there wi ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Sep 20 2023 - 1:12pm