Baltimore MD (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
This Hubble picture exemplifies the fact that the universe is a vast stage for grand illusions. Albert Einstein realized this a century ago as he formulated his law of general relativity. Gravity, he said, warped space like stretching and twisting a rubber sheet. The consequences would be that images of distant objects would be magnified, brightened, and distorted into funhouse mirror view

Boston MA (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of the shapes and sizes of nearby molecular clouds have discovered a gigantic cavity in space. The sphere-shaped void, described in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, spans about 150 parsecs - nearly 500 light years - and is located on the sky among the constellations Perseus and Taurus. The research team, which is based at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and

Baltimore MD (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
When the universe was about 3 billion years old, just 20% of its current age, it experienced the most prolific period of star birth in its history. But when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile gazed toward cosmic objects in this period, they found something odd: six early, massive, "dead" galaxies that had run out of the col

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 24, 2021
Water is a hot topic in the study of exoplanets, including "hot Jupiters," whose masses are similar to that of Jupiter, but which are much closer to their parent star than Jupiter is to the sun. They can reach a scorching 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius), meaning any water they host would take the form of water vapor. Astronomers have found many hot Jupiters with water in t

Paris, France (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
An international team of astronomers has not only detected clouds on the distant exoplanet WASP-127b, but also measured their altitude with unprecedented precision. A presentation by Dr Romain Allart at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2021 shows how, by combining data from a space- and a ground-based telescope, the team has been able to reveal the upper structure of the planet's atmospher

Livermore CA (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
The interiors of Uranus and Neptune each contain about 50,000 times the amount of water in Earth's oceans, and a form of water known as superionic water is believed to be stable at depths greater than approximately one-third of the radius of these ice giants. Superionic water is a phase of H2O where hydrogen atoms become liquid-like while oxygen atoms remain solid-like on a crystalline lat

Cincinnati OH (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel to address climate change and get astronauts home from Mars. UC College of Engineering and Applied Science assistant professor Jingjie Wu and his students used a carbon catalyst in a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane. Known as the "Sabatier reaction" from the late French chemi

Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany (SPX) Sep 24, 2021
The Moon is a cold, dry desert. Unlike the Earth, it is not surrounded by a protective atmosphere and water which existed during the Moon's formation has long since evaporated under the influence of solar radiation and escaped into space. Nevertheless, craters and depressions in the polar regions give some reason to hope for limited water resources. Scientists from MPS, the University of Oxford

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 24, 2021
The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they've seen on Mars. On Sept. 18, NASA's InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be about a magnitud

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 24, 2021
Scientists tap into an array of imagers aboard the six-wheeled explorer to get a big picture of the Red Planet. NASA's Perseverance rover has been exploring Jezero Crater for more than 217 Earth days (211 Martian days, or sols), and the dusty rocks there are beginning to tell their story - about a volatile young Mars flowing with lava and water. That story, stretching billions of yea