Astronomers have been studying Earth’s ‘second moon’ since the cosmic object appeared in its orbit two months ago. Now the team has uncovered its mysterious origins.
Category: space – Page 129
Off-the-shelf thermoelectric generators can upgrade CO2 into chemicals. The combination could help us colonize Mars
Readily available thermoelectric generators operating under modest temperature differences can power CO2 conversion, according to a proof-of-concept study by chemists at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
The findings open up the intriguing possibility that the temperature differentials encountered in an array of environments—from a typical geothermal installation on Earth to the cold, desolate surface of Mars—could power the conversion of CO2 into a range of useful fuels and chemicals.
“The environment on Mars really got me interested in the long-term potential of this technology combination,” says Dr. Abhishek Soni, postdoctoral research fellow at UBC and first author of the paper published in Device.
How Tiny Fragments Unlocked the Hidden 4-Billion-Year History of Asteroid Ryugu
Researchers studied tiny asteroid fragments from Ryugu, revealing that it originated in the outer solar system and evolved over billions of years.
Using Mössbauer spectroscopy, they discovered changes in the asteroid’s composition due to temperature shifts, offering new insights into the formation and migration of celestial bodies within our galaxy.
Exploring asteroid origins with advanced technology.
Integrated multi-modal sensing and learning system could give robots new capabilities
Trying to understand the makeup and evolution of the solar system’s Kuiper belt has kept researchers busy since it was hypothesized soon after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. In particular, binary pairs of objects there are useful as indicators since their existence today paints a picture of how energetic or violent the evolution of the solar system was in its early days four billion years ago.
Looking closely at the evolution of an ultrawide (in separation) binary object, researchers included more physics that reveals much about their architecture and unfolding. They found that these ultrawide binaries may not have been formed in the primordial solar system as has been thought. Their work has been published in Nature Astronomy.
“In the outer reaches of the solar system, there exists a population of binary systems so widely separated that it seemed worth looking into whether or not they could even survive 4 billion years without being [completely] separated somehow,” said Hunter M. Campbell of the University of Oklahoma in the US.
Observations detect the lowest mass ratio contact binary to date
Astronomers from China and South Korea report the detection of a contact binary system with an extremely low mass ratio of only 0.0356. The newfound system, which received the designation TYC 3801−1529−1, is therefore the lowest mass ratio contact binary discovered to date. The finding was detailed in a paper published November 19 on the preprint server arXiv.
Contact binaries consist of two stars orbiting so closely that they share a common gaseous envelope. The components of such systems often have similar effective temperatures and luminosities, regardless of their respective masses.
The cutoff mass ratio for contact binaries is still a subject of debate. Latest studies suggest that these binaries should have a minimum mass ratio of about 0.038−0.041.
Final data and undiscovered images from NASA’s NEOWISE
While NASA’s NEOWISE telescope ended its journey through space on Nov. 1, 2024, the team at IPAC, a science center at Caltech, was working on one further gift from the prolific mission.
The final data release from NEOWISE was released to the astronomy community just two weeks later, on Nov. 14, encompassing over 26 million images and nearly 200 billion sources detected by the telescope. And today, IPAC is releasing six new images from the mission’s archival data as a tribute to this landmark project, available here.
NEOWISE was launched as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in 2009 and then reactivated in 2013 as NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting phase of the mission. The infrared space telescope studied the entire night sky and conducted 21 complete sky surveys during more than a decade of operation.
How Far Are Space Monsters From Earth?
Consider the possibility that the terrifying entities portrayed in science fiction films, such as extraterrestrial monsters, could exist in reality. How far would these beings be from our world? In this video, we will explore approximately 20 of these creatures, beginning with those closest to us and progressing to those that are more distant.
Planetary scientist proposes an alternative theory for what lies beneath the surfaces of Uranus and Neptune
Diamond rain? Super-ionic water? These are just two proposals that planetary scientists have come up with for what lies beneath the thick, bluish, hydrogen-and-helium atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, our solar system’s unique, but superficially bland, ice giants.
A planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, now proposes an alternative theory—that the interiors of both these planets are layered, and that the two layers, like oil and water, don’t mix. That configuration neatly explains the planets’ unusual magnetic fields and implies that earlier theories of the interiors are unlikely to be true.
In a paper appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Burkhard Militzer argues that a deep ocean of water lies just below the cloud layers and, below that, a highly compressed fluid of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen.
