Skip to main content

Posts

A Star Orbiting Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole Tests the Limits of Relativity

A Sun-like star orbits the supermassive black hole in our Milky Way so closely that it comes within the distance of Neptune's orbit of the Sun. It has a top speed of more than 8% of light speed. With such extreme motion the star gives astronomers the opportunity to test the limits of general relativity. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/7N8EZeP via IFTTT
Recent posts

Chandrasekhar and the Limits of Physics, Part 1: Triumph

The story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who as a teenager on an ocean voyage worked out that white dwarf stars have a maximum mass of 1.4 Suns. A tour of degeneracy pressure, the relativistic insight everyone else missed, and the number that would define his life. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8XaKJ0h via IFTTT

The Case of the Sun's Missing Silver

Astronomers have solved a decades old puzzle about the Sun's missing silver, not by finding something new, but by modelling something old far more accurately. A revised, more realistic model of the Sun's atmosphere reveals it actually contains 55 per cent more silver than previously calculated, finally matching what meteorites have been telling us all along. It's a quiet reminder that some of the biggest revelations in astronomy come not from new data, but from asking familiar questions with sharper tools. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/PfgY7wc via IFTTT

The First Breath of Another World

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around a rocky planet in another star's habitable zone for the very first time. It’s a milestone that brings us a step closer to answering whether life could exist beyond our Solar System. Predicted by a mathematical model before it was ever observed, and confirmed using a rare planetary alignment 48 light years away, this discovery does more than identify one intriguing world, it provides us with a whole new way to search for others like it. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/PSgyxID via IFTTT

NASA's Perseverance Rover Uncovers Evidence of 4 Billion Year Old Impacts

Old rocks exposed on the rim of Jezero Crater preserve a roughly 4-billion-year-old cosmic “weather report” from the solar system’s most dynamic era. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/7BTjrp3 via IFTTT

NASA’s Artemis III Lander Test Will be a "Dress Rehearsal" for Returning to the Moon!

Before Artemis astronauts land on the Moon’s surface in 2028, NASA will conduct the Artemis III demonstration mission in 2027, allowing teams on Earth and in orbit to practice rendezvous and docking operations between commercial human landing systems and the Orion spacecraft. Data from that mission, along with future uncrewed demonstration missions at the Moon, from Universe Today https://ift.tt/EbSQB7d via IFTTT

Submillimeter Array Catches a Gamma-Ray Burst Thanks to new Fast-Response System

The Submillimeter Array's (SMA) new semi-automated alert system demonstrates how the radio interferometer quickly responds to discoveries from space-based telescopes. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Yehy2N0 via IFTTT