Beijing (XNA) Jun 18, 2021
As construction of China's space station gradually unfolds, the country needs fresh vigor to carry out the ambitious endeavor. Currently, the Astronaut Center of China in Beijing is training the third group of Chinese astronauts. The 18 new astronauts-17 men and one woman-are in three groups: seven will become spacecraft pilots, another seven will eventually be space flight engineers

Beijing (XNA) Jun 18, 2021
Astronauts on board the core module of China's space station have started to prepare their orbiting residence for operations over the next three months. As soon as the three crew members-Major General Nie Haisheng, Major General Liu Boming and Senior Colonel Tang Hongbo-floated into the core module, named Tianhe, or Harmony of Heavens, on Thursday afternoon, they started to configure the e

Moscow (Sputnik) Jun 18, 2021
Radiation is considered one of the main issues facing space agencies in their bid to send a manned flight to Mars, according to Russian scientists from the Institute of Biomedical Problems. Researchers from Russia and the US have been debating whether it will be necessary to remove the spleen - the organ which primarily removes old or damaged red blood cells from the body - from astronauts

Boston MA (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
When Betelgeuse, a bright orange star in the constellation of Orion, lost more than two-thirds of its brightness in late 2019 and early 2020, astronomers were puzzled. What could cause such an abrupt dimming? Now, in a new paper published Wednesday in Nature, an international team of astronomers reveal two never-before-seen images of the mysterious darkening --and an explanation. The

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
When astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered an oddball galaxy that looked like it didn't have much dark matter, some thought the finding was hard to believe and looked for a simpler explanation. Dark matter, after all, is the invisible glue that makes up the bulk of the universe's matter. All galaxies appear to be dominated by it; in fact, galaxies are thought to form in

Bremen, Germany (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
Timepix3 was developed to detect elementary particles at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It was then carried up to the International Space Station (ISS), where it measures the radiation dose to which astronauts and equipment are exposed. Most recently, Timepix3 has been used on the Zugspitze. Its task is to simultaneously detect the secondary cosmic rays and radon de

Bath UK (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
An international team of scientists, led by astrophysicists from the University of Bath in the UK, has measured the magnetic field in a far-off Gamma-Ray Burst, confirming for the first time a decades-long theoretical prediction - that the magnetic field in these blast waves becomes scrambled after the ejected material crashes into, and shocks, the surrounding medium. Black holes are forme

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
New findings published this week in Physical Review Letters suggest that carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen cosmic rays travel through the galaxy toward Earth in a similar way, but, surprisingly, that iron arrives at Earth differently. Learning more about how cosmic rays move through the galaxy helps address a fundamental, lingering question in astrophysics: How is matter generated and distributed acr

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
Small modeling errors may accumulate faster than previously expected when physicists combine multiple gravitational wave events (such as colliding black holes) to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, suggest researchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The findings, published June 16 in the journal iScience, suggest that catalogs with as few as 10 to 3

Riverside CA (SPX) Jun 18, 2021
Supermassive black holes, or SMBHs, are black holes with masses that are several million to billion times the mass of our sun. The Milky Way hosts an SMBH with mass a few million times the solar mass. Surprisingly, astrophysical observations show that SMBHs already existed when the universe was very young. For example, a billion solar mass black holes are found when the universe was just 6% of i