INFORMATION

How do astronomers look for neutrinos? These small, massless particles whiz through the universe at very close to the speed of light. They’ve been studied since the 1950s and detecting them provides work for a range of very interesting observatories. There’s IceCube in Antarctica (below), which uses a cubic kilometer of ice at the South Pole as its collector. Another neutrino detector, called KM3Net, is under development deep beneath the surface of the Mediterranean sea. It joins existing detectors around the world. This image shows a visual representation of one of the highest-energy neutrino detections superimposed on a view of the IceCube Lab at the South Pole. Credit: IceCube Collaboration Now, a consortium of Chinese scientists has plans to develop another deepwater neutrino “telescope” that will be more extensive than any current technology online today. According to lead researcher Chen Mingjun at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the facility will be the largest neutri...

With the James Webb Space Telescope’s ability to detect and study the atmospheres of distant planets orbiting other stars, exoplanet enthusiasts have been anticipating JWST’s first data on some of the worlds in the famous TRAPPIST-1 system. This is the system where seven Earth-sized worlds are orbiting a red dwarf star, with several in the habitable zone. Today, a new study was released on the innermost planet in the system, TRAPPIST-1 b. The authors of the study were quite frank: this world very likely has no atmosphere at all. Additionally, the conditions there for possible life as we know it only get worse from there. This world orbits so close to the star that it receives four times as much irradiation as the Earth receives from the Sun. Its dayside temperatures reach 500 kelvin, (roughly 230°C, or 450°F), which on the upside is the perfect temperature to bake a pizza. All planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system have been observed previously with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telesco...

Nothing excites space enthusiasts like a good alien mystery. The interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua presented one as it moved through the inner solar system in 2017. At least one scientist has insisted that this pancake-shaped object is an alien spacecraft. That’s because of the way it accelerated away from the Sun as it passed through. However, a number of planetary scientists say its activity might be more comet-like—something fairly common in the solar system. Certainly, a lot of theories floated around about which natural events could cause ‘Oumuamua to accelerate away. At least one of them invokes nitrogen outgassing, although that theory has some problems. It could be more like icy Pluto. Or, maybe it’s some kind of interstellar “dust bunny” made of materials stuck together in a weird shape. A new study by a pair of astronomers solves at least part of the mystery by using chemistry. They suggest that hydrogen gas (H 2 ) got formed and trapped in ‘Oumuamua thanks to millions of y...

This past summer (June 14th to June 16th), representatives from the public space sector, the commercial space industry, and academic institutions convened at George Washington University in Washington D.C. for The Ninth Community Workshop for Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars . The invitation-only event was hosted by Explore Mars, Inc. , a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering international collaboration and cooperation between government and industry to achieve the human exploration of Mars by the 2030s. The purpose of this workshop is to identify activities that will help prepare for missions to Mars by the 2030s. In particular, the workshop sought to address how a sustainable program of human Martian exploration can be achieved. The highlights of this event were recently shared with the release of the Achieve Mars (AM) IX Report , which established priorities and science objectives for future missions to Mars. The authors also made several recom...

We’ve come a long way since gamma rays were discovered. The late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of great scientific advancements. Scientists were just getting a handle on the different types of radiation. Radium featured prominently in the experiments, including one by French scientist Paul Ulrich Villard in 1900. Radium decays readily, and scientists had already identified alpha and beta radiation coming from radium samples. But Villard was able to identify a third type of penetrating radiation so powerful even a layer of lead couldn’t stop it: gamma rays. Now we have a gamma ray detector in space, and it’s showing us how the Universe sparkles with this powerful energy. Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light in the Universe, and as a new animation shows, the sky practically sparkles with flickering gamma-ray sources. The animation contains a year’s worth of observations from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope . Each yellow circle...

The ExoMars Rover mission is back on track for its mission to Mars, but Russia won’t be a part of it this time. Following Russia’s disastrous invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022, the ESA suspended the ExoMars program. Now, the mission is targeted for a 2028 launch to Mars without Russian involvement. In anticipation of that launch date, the ESA is busy testing the Rosalind Franklin rover and its mission-defining drill. “ExoMars is being re-shaped for this new enterprise, with new forces and energies joining the project team, once again fully motivated and focused on setting out the next steps.” Statement from the ESA. The ExoMars program was a partnership between the ESA and Roscosmos. It started with the 2016 launch that put the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in orbit around Mars and attempted to land the Schiaparelli EDM lander on the Martian surface. The TGO succeeded, but unfortunately, Schiaparelli crashed and was destroyed. The next part of the ExoMars program w...

The picture of the Moon in the banner might not look all that spectacular, but it is absolutely astounding from a technical perspective. What makes it so unique is that it was taken via a telescope using a completely flat lens. This type of lens, called a metalens, has been around for a while, but a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) recently made the largest one ever. At eight cm in diameter, it was large enough to use in an actual telescope – and produce the above picture of the Moon, however, blurred it might be. Metalenses have been produced before, but typically only on a millimeter scale. They utilize nanostructures etched into the surface of the lens itself, forcing the light that passes through them to a central focal point, much as the curved surface of a typical lens used in optics does. Part of the reason other metalenses have been relatively small in scale so far is the difficulty of creating those nanostructures on a larger lens structure. For ...

When faced with a potentially mission-ending problem with NASA’s 15-year-old Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, engineers performed a time-honored procedure to fix it: they turned it off and then turned it back on again. Success! IBEX is now fully operational again. Actually, they told the spacecraft to turn itself off – which unlike the famous HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey,”– IBEX obeyed the command and then turned itself back on again. On February 18, IBEX experienced an anomaly and the flight computer reset itself during a planned contact with Earth. But something didn’t work right and IBEX put itself into a “contingency mode.” NASA said that while fight computer resets have happened before, this time the team lost the ability to command the spacecraft during the subsequent reset recovery. The team also was unsuccessful in regaining command capability by resetting ground systems hardware and software. All other systems appeared to be functional, but no command...

NASA’s Curiosity Rover usually looks down at the ground, studying nearby rocks and craters. But sometimes, it looks up and sees something wonderful. A new image released by Curiosity shows beautiful sun rays, called crepuscular rays, streaming through a bank of clouds on Mars at sunset. While relatively common here on Earth, they have never been seen on Mars. Crepuscular comes from crepusculum, the Latin word for twilight. Another image from the rover shows a feather-shaped iridescent cloud in the high atmosphere on Mars. Curiosity, the ‘elder’ rover on Mars, has been studying the Red Planet for over 10 years. Recently, Curiosity has turned its cameras skyward in a new cloud-imaging campaign, with a focus on studying clouds at twilight. This builds on its 2021 observations of clouds, including noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds. The image of crepuscular rays was captured by Curiosity at sunset on Feb. 2, 2023, the 3,730th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Crepuscular rays ...

As tragic as it is, engulfment of a planetary object by its stellar parent is a common scenario throughout the universe. But it doesn’t have to end in doom. A team of astrophysicists have used computer simulations to discover that planets can not only survive when their star eats them, but they can also drive its future evolution. Models of the formation of planetary systems have shown that many planets often end up being consumed by their parent star. It’s simply a matter of orbital dynamics. Random interactions among newly forming planets and the protoplanetary disk that surrounds a young star can send planets on chaotic trajectories. Some of those trajectories end up driving the planet out of the system altogether, while other trajectories send them hurdling into the star. Another chance for engulfment happens near the end of a star’s life when it becomes a red giant. This too affects the gravitational dynamics of the system and can send some large planets into the atmosphere of...

Astronomers have detected a small, compact source embedded in a gap in the disk surrounding a young star. They believe it is a baby planet in the process of growing. Protoplanetary systems offer rare glimpses into the evolutionary history of solar systems like our own. We know already from extensive observations and theory that solar systems start out as vast clouds of interstellar gas that then compress and begin to rotate. Eventually that rotating gas flattens into a disk and planets begin forming around a central core. While we have a very good understanding of the general picture, we do not understand the details of how planets form , especially the differences between inner rocky planets and outer giant worlds. So the more direct observations we can make of protoplanetary systems the better our understanding can be. Unfortunately the process of planet formation plays out over millions of years, so it’s not like we can just stare at one system and watch it evolve before our ve...