[This British guy does excellent technical videos. He poses an interesting question and then tries to answer it. I like Whites who are into engineering, maths and science. Jan]
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHbLV7xEhc
Month: April 2023
Space: New Jupiter-Sized Planet Discovered And It Is Unbelievably Dense
[The whole science and methodology of discovering exo-planets is simply amazing and the things they are finding are wild. Jan]
NASA astronomers have recently discovered a new planet in the distant reaches of the universe, according to a report from Science Alert. The Jupiter-sized exoplanet, named TOI-4603b, is said to be a brown dwarf with a density greater than lead, making it among the densest material in the known universe, second only to people who think Andrew Garfield was the best Spider-Man. Despite rivaling Jupiter’s size, the giant planet contains the mass of nearly 13 Jupiters, making it nearly 3 times the density of Earth, and a staggering 9 times denser than Jupiter.
Obviously, many people are questioning whether or not humans could ever inhabit the new planet, though that seems out of the question at this time. For starters, it’s so distant from our current position, at roughly 730 light years away from Earth, that making the distant trek out to TOI-4603b would take generations of space travel. Additionally, the planet’s orbit is just 7.25 days from its sun, meaning a single week on this world would account for the entire on-planet year.
Concepts such as space and time can truly boggle the mind when viewed through this lens. At a 7.25-day orbit, this new planet is reminiscent of Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar, in which Matthew McConaughey and his team of space explorers visited a planet that caused years to pass by on Earth in the span of what felt like seconds to the characters on the ground. While the reality of this dense dwarf may be far less cinematic, the comparison stands to reason why it is highly unlikely that humans would ever visit TOI-4603b.
Scientists have also been struggling to understand how such a planet could even form in the first place, as temperature and pressure from a mass of this density should be causing constant nuclear fusion on the planet’s surface. Nuclear fusion occurs when atoms have been smashed together, creating heavier elements such as lead or uranium. According to what little we understand about the new distant planet, its existence seems to suggest that its core can fuse deuterium, as its mass isn’t constantly collapsing under its own weight.
Deuterium is an extremely heavy isotope of hydrogen that doesn’t require the same heat and pressure necessary to cause nuclear fusion and is used on Earth to slow the neutrons in fission reactors. If the new planet is, in fact, capable of fusing the material, this reinforces its assumed status as a brown dwarf, which often behaves more like stars than planets in their formation and orbit. Velocity measurements taken by NASA’s transiting exoplanet survey satellite, often shortened to TESS, caught TOI-4603b whipping around its solar system in the distant reaches of space in just over a week, providing scientists with a deep insight into the planet’s density and radius.
According to researchers in India, TOI-4603b contains nearly all the criteria necessary to be classified as an exoplanet, though other astronomers wish to probe deeper in order to garner a better understanding of the incredibly dense new planet. Others have noted that the planet’s orbit seems to move in an ovular shape, suggesting the planet’s creation is relatively recent. This means that the planet isn’t just new to us but is rather entirely new.
Source: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sci/new-planet-discovered-unbelievably-dense.html
Space: New type of black hole found lurking in Earth’s ‘cosmic backyard’ is closest ever discovered
The two closest black holes to Earth, named Gaia BH1 and BH2, may be part of a rare class of black holes never seen before, new research suggests.
A multi-wavelength image of the stunning galazy Centaurus A, with twin lobes of purple light bursting out of its bright center
Two recently discovered black holes are remarkably close to Earth — and they may represent a previously unknown category of the mysterious, massive objects. An international team of astronomers discovered the black holes using data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission combined with a bevy of ground-based telescopes from around the world.
Dubbed Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2, the two black holes are the closest to Earth of any discovered so far, according to ESA. Gaia BH1 lies a mere 1,560 light-years from our solar system towards the Ophiuchus constellation, nearly three times closer than the previous record holder. Gaia BH2 sits about 3,800 light years away, toward the constellation Centaurus. Both are roughly nine to 10 times more massive than our sun, and sit within our own Milky Way galaxy.
Why has it taken so long for astronomers to notice such massive black holes? Because they’re practically invisible. In the past, scientists searched for black holes by looking for the remnants of their latest meal; when a star or cloud of interstellar gas falls in to a black hole, it leaves behind a burst of electromagnetic radiation, which astronomers can detect to infer a black hole’s presence, according to NASA(opens in new tab).
Related: What’s the biggest black hole in the universe?
A map of the Milky Way galaxy, revealing the locations of the extremely close black holes Gaia BH1 and BH2
But unlike previous discoveries, Gaia BH1 and 2 are completely dark; they don’t appear to be snacking on anything at the moment, making them "dormant," or inactive. Instead, the researchers found the black holes by carefully tracking the movements of two sun-like companion stars orbiting around the cosmic giants.
The stars displayed a slight wobble as they traveled through space, indicating that something with a lot of gravity, such as another star, was tugging on them. But when researchers checked the area with telescopes, they couldn’t find anything emitting radiation. According to the math, these movements only made sense if a black hole was involved.
While both black hole systems were discovered in late 2022, astronomers are just now beginning to appreciate how unique the nearby monsters are.The new research suggests that, unlike X-ray binaries — star-black hole pairs that orbit closely together and emit telltale X-ray and radio wave radiation — Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2 likely represent a new category of black hole never seen before, according to ESA.
"What sets this new group of black holes apart from the ones we already knew about is their wide separation from their companion stars," Kareem El-Badry(opens in new tab), an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the discoverer of the new black holes, said in a statement(opens in new tab). He added that these dormant black holes "likely have a completely different formation history than x-ray binaries."
Scientists hope that Gaia’s next data release, which is scheduled for 2025, will uncover more dormant black holes and hopefully shed some (metaphorical) light onto how they formed. The new research was published March 30 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(opens in new tab).
Space: How the James Webb space telescope Broke Cosmology In Just 2 Months
[James Webb was an incredible step forward. Jan]
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pNDlWX4R5o&t=341s
Space: NASA prepping for September arrival of OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample
[What will be even more amazing is when they return the many samples of soil and rock from Mars that the lander is busy gathering. That will take several years. But they'll have to launch it from the surface of Mars. That will be an amazing first. That will be difficult. Jan]
Practice makes perfect, and there are no do-overs once teams recover the sample from asteroid Bennu.
OSIRIS-REx’s asteroid sample is coming home.
OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, took a bite out of the space rock Bennu in October 2020 and is on course to return that sample to Earth just over seven years to the day after it launched.
As the probe — whose name is short for "Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer" — flies its return trajectory through space, teams on Earth are preparing for the sample’s Sept. 24 landing in the Utah desert.
If all goes as planned, OSIRIS-REx’s sample return capsule will separate from the primary vehicle and enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:41 a.m. EDT (1441 GMT) on Sept. 24. Built to withstand the heat and turbulence that comes with punching through the atmosphere, the capsule is expected to parachute down to a relatively soft landing at approximately 10:54 a.m. EDT (1454 GMT).
"Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room," Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in an agency press release(opens in new tab).
Scientists are interested in samples from Bennu and asteroids like it because of their potential to hold clues to planetary formation processes and even, potentially, molecular evidence for the precursors to life. Meteorite samples found on Earth are useful for this type of research, but only to a point. Asteroid material collected in space is free of any Earthly contamination and contains particles smaller than those that survive on space rocks that zoom through our planet’s atmosphere.
To protect the incoming Bennu material from any terrestrial micro-invaders, NASA teams are taking extensive measures and making sure they are prepared well ahead of time. Over the next six months, NASA and Lockheed Martin crews will practice step-by-step procedures for recovering and transporting the OSIRIS-REx sample from a 37-mile by 9-mile (59 by 15 kilometers) landing area inside a Department of Defense property in the Utah desert to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston.
Upon landing, the return capsule will be transported to a mobile clean room, where technicians will then unpack the vessel’s heat shield and protective exterior to reveal the sealed container of recovered Bennu material. Ground samples will also be taken from OSRIS-REx’s touchdown location, to test against any contamination risk during landing. Once brought to JSC, a careful unpacking procedure will be observed, which is also being rehearsed leading up to OSIRIS-REx’s arrival.
"These accomplishments are the direct result of the extensive training and rehearsals that we performed every step of the way. We are bringing that level of discipline and dedication to this final phase of the flight operations," said OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta.
Once unpacked, a fourth of the recovered material will be designated for the OSIRIS-REx researchers. The rest, NASA says, will be reserved for "other scientists to study, now and in future generations."