If you’re a fan of all things space, you’ve doubtless heard about the “devil comet,” which has captivated keen-eyed observers in the northern hemisphere for the past few weeks. Now it’s our turn, as comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is creeping into view for the southern hemisphere. Before you get too excited, let me quash your hopes. Comet ...
We breathe oxygen and nitrogen gas in our atmosphere every day, but did you know that these gases also float through space, around and between galaxies? Our team captured a high-resolution view of how these elements make it so far out into the universe. Our study is now published in Monthly Notices of the Royal ...
After a decade of silence, one of the most powerful magnets in the universe suddenly burst back to life in late 2018. The reawakening of this “magnetar,” a city-sized star named XTE J1810-197, born from a supernova explosion, was an incredibly violent affair. The snapping and untwisting of the tangled magnetic field released enormous amounts ...
Stars are born from huge clouds of mostly hydrogen gas floating in space. Astronomers like me study this gas because it helps us understand how stars and galaxies form and grow. Hydrogen gas gives off a faint glow that is invisible to human eyes but can be observed with a telescope tuned to detect radio ...
How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature. Energetic cosmic beams known as jets are seen throughout our universe. They are launched when material — mainly dust ...
How stable are planetary systems? Will Earth and its seven siblings always continue in their steady celestial paths, or might we one day be randomly ejected from our cosmic home? Physicists understand the rules that govern the orbits of two celestial bodies, but as soon as a third is added (let alone a fourth, fifth, ...
About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the cosmos was a very dark place. The glow of the universe’s explosive birth had cooled, and space was filled with dense gas — mostly hydrogen — with no sources of light. Slowly, over hundreds of millions of years, the gas was drawn into clumps by gravity, and ...
In the few short years since the COVID pandemic changed our world, China, Japan, and India have all successfully landed on the Moon. Many more robotic missions have flown past the Moon, entered lunar orbit, or crashed into it in the past five years. This includes spacecraft developed by South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, ...
Scientists have no reported evidence of the actual conditions in Hell, perhaps because no one has ever returned to tell the tale. Hell has been imagined as a supremely uncomfortable place, hot and hostile to bodily forms of human life, similar to a black hole. Thanks to a vast astronomical survey of the entire sky, ...
Since antiquity, Mars has been a source of myth, lore, and inspiration. It is also an exciting place to research — a legitimate candidate for us to find some form of alien life. Since the 1960s, Mars has been a popular destination for space missions. For the first time, NASA has invited the private sector ...
© 2024 nspirement. All rights reserved
