Black Holes and SpaceX dominate this Carnival of Space so let’s have it…
Confirmed. Fossils That Formed 3.5 billion Years Ago, Really are Fossils. The Oldest Evidence of Life Found So Far
Evan Gough | Universe Today
The title of Earth’s Earliest Life has been returned to the fossils in the Pilbara region of Australia. The Pilbara fossils had held that title since the 1980s, until researchers studying ancient rocks in Greenland found evidence of ancient life there. But subsequent research questioned the biological nature of the Greenland evidence, which put the whole issue into question again.
Now a new study of the Pilbara fossils has identified the presence of preserved organic matter in those fossils, and handed the…
Tracking Twilight: ‘Purple Sunset Effect’ Seen Worldwide
David Dickinson | Universe Today
Has twilight looked at little… purple to you as of late? The ‘purple sunset’ effect is subtle, but currently noticeable on a clear evening. Sunsets are always colorful events, as the Sun’s rays shine through a thicker layer of the atmosphere at an oblique angle, scattering out at longer, redder wavelengths. When the air is clear and relatively dust free, this effect is at a minimum… but when the upper atmosphere becomes saturated with dust particles and aerosols, the sky can erupt in a panoply of colors at twilight.
Two natural events are suspected as the main source of the violet twilight currently seen worldwide: the eruption of the Raikoke volcano Kuril Islands, followed by eruption of the Ulawun volcano in Papua New Guinea this past summer. Both eruptions packed a punch, sending dust and ash into to stratosphere topping out at…
Musk Presents the Orbital Starship Prototype. Flights will Begin in Six Months
Matt Williams | Universe Today
On Saturday, Sept. 28th, SpaceX founder Elon Musk presided over a media circus at their testing facility in Boca, Chica, Texas. With the fully-assembled Starship Mk.1 as his backdrop, Musk shared the latest updates on the Starship launch system, which include a timetable for when the first test-flights, commercial flights and crewed flights will commence. Sometime next year, he promised, it will begin taking passengers to space!
The event, which was live-streamed, began at 07:00 PM local time (05:00 PM PDT; 08:00 PM EDT). Musk kicked things off by addressing the challenges that come with trying to escape Earth’s gravity well and going to space in a way that is cost-effective. He also took the time to acknowledge that it was…
New Technique for Estimating the Mass of a Black Hole
Matt Williams | Universe Today
Black holes are the one the most intriguing and awe-inspiring forces of nature. They are also one of the most mysterious because of the way the rules of conventional physics break down in their presence. Despite decades of research and observations there is still much we don’t know about them. In fact, until recently, astronomers had never seen an image of black hole and were unable to guage their mass.
However, a team of physicist from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) recently announced that they had devised a way to indirectly measure the mass of a black hole while also confirming its existence. In a recent study, they showed how they tested this method on the recently-imaged supermassive black hole at the center of…
Mice That Spend a Month in Space Were Able to Reproduce Once They Got Back to Earth
Evan Gough | Universe Today
A team of Japanese researchers have used sperm from mice that spent time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to fertilize female mice back on Earth. While previous research has shown that freeze-dried mouse sperm stored in space can experience radiation damage, these results show that the sperm from live mice may not suffer the same damage.
While the freeze-dried mouse sperm in a previous study was stored in space for 9 months and was damaged by radiation, the live mice in this study spent only 35 days on the ISS. There were 12 male mice in this study, and some of them experienced microgravity for the duration, while others were…
Let’s Talk About Black Holes
Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Recently, we put out a press release about the regular dining habits of a supermassive black hole. Not only was this black hole found to be consuming material, or “eating,” it was doing so regularly, about once every nine hours. While scientists had found such regular eating habits of smaller, so-called stellar mass black holes, this is the first evidence of such behavior in the black hole giants that live at the centers of galaxies.
The lead author of the result, which used data from both NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton, is Giovanni Minuitti of the Center for Astrobiology (CAB, CSIC-INTA) in Spain. Recently, he agreed to answer a series of questions about…
Hunting Elusive Giants: Chandra Spots a Triple AGN
Ryan W. Pfeifle | Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Over the past several decades, we have come to understand that supermassive black holes (SMBHs), with masses in the range of one million to several billion times the mass of our own sun, reside at the centers of most massive galaxies. Not only do we see these SMBHs in nearby galaxies, we also see them in galaxies as early as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang! Astronomers are still struggling to explain how these massive black holes could grow to these immense sizes so quickly, but one possible explanation lies in the interactions between galaxies.
As recently as the 1970s, it was postulated that the collision of two galaxies — a ubiquitous occurrence in the Universe — could induce gravitational torques which drive large volumes of gas and dust toward the centers of the galaxies, or the galaxy nuclei. Indeed, since then theorists have developed realistic models that…
Found: Three Black Holes On Collision Course
Chandra X-Ray Observatory
A new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes provides the strongest evidence yet for a system of three supermassive black holes, as described in our latest press release. Astronomers think these triplet collisions, while extremely rare, play a critical role in how the biggest black holes grow over time.
The system is known as…
NASA’s Bridenstine gives SpaceX a reality check
Mark R Wittington | The Hill
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a lot of things, mad genius, entrepreneur and visionary. He is also a master showman, as exemplified by his recent presentation of his plan to open up the moon, Mars and beyond to human settlement. The event took place in Boca Chica, Texas, close to where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
Musk, among other people, has given that talk before, along with viewgraphs and animated videos. However, rhetoric about the high frontier of space takes on an extra resonance when the backdrop is an actual rocket ship.
Yet another Carnival of Space on the blog! Stay tuned for next week.
