Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays are the highest-energy particles in the universe, whose energies are more than a million times what can be achieved by humans. But while the existence of UHECRs has been known for 60 years, researchers have not…
Category: 2. Space
-
Some of Earth’s meteors are probably coming all the way from a neighboring star system
Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the sun, is probably shedding comets and asteroids into our solar system — and even producing a few meteors in our sky.
Located just 4.3 light-years from Earth, Alpha Centauri consists of…
Continue Reading
-
Designing a satellite to hunt small space debris
A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist is participating in a U.S. government effort to design a satellite and instruments capable of detecting space debris as small as 1 centimeter, less than one-half inch.
Debris that small, which cannot…
Continue Reading
-
Can we find floating vegetation on ocean planets?
Astronomical surveys have discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets, including many habitable planets, which may harbor liquid water on their surfaces. The search for life on such planets is one of the most significant scientific endeavors of this…
Continue Reading
-
Young star clusters give birth to rogue planetary-mass objects
How do rogue planetary-mass objects — celestial bodies with masses between stars and planets — form? An international team of astronomers, including the University of Zurich, has used advanced simulations to show that these enigmatic objects…
Continue Reading
-
NASA’s Hubble provides bird’s-eye view of Andromeda galaxy’s ecosystem
Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon. What backyard observers don’t see is a swarm of nearly three dozen small…
Continue Reading
-
The International Space Station is overly sterile; making it ‘dirtier’ could improve astronaut health
Astronauts often experience immune dysfunction, skin rashes, and other inflammatory conditions while traveling in space. A new study publishing February 27 in the Cell Press journal Cell suggests that these issues could be due to the excessively…
Continue Reading
-
The International Space Station lacks microbial diversity. Is it too clean?
With air filters and weekly wipe-downs and vacuuming, NASA goes to great lengths to keep the International Space Station clean so that astronauts stay healthy. But astronauts still often experience health problems like immune…
Continue Reading
-
Biosignatures on Mars: Testing Earth’s Gypsum for Martian Microbes
What tests can be performed on Earth to help us find signs of ancient life on Mars? This is what a recent study published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences hopes to address as a team of researchers…
Continue Reading
-
Lucy Captures Its First Images of Main-Belt Asteroid Donaldjohanson
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will fly by the small asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025.
By blinking between images captured by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft on February 20 and 22, 2025, this animation shows the perceived motion of Donaldjohanson…
Continue Reading