Greener polyurethanes for space and beyond
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 08:14Have you heard of polyurethanes? As you read this, you’re undoubtedly close to some, or maybe sitting on them: this versatile class of chemicals is used for everything from padding your couch to insulating your windows, packaging food to carpet underlay, electronics casings to skateboard wheels. They also have vital uses in space, triggering a new ESA Clean Space project aiming to manufacture them in a greener way.
Astronomers finally measure polarized light from exoplanet
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00An international team led by Dutch astronomers has, after years of searching and defying the boundaries of a telescope, for the first time directly captured polarized light from an exoplanet. They can deduct from the light that a disk of dust and gas is orbiting around the exoplanet in which moons are possibly forming. The researchers will soon publish their findings in the journal Astronomy and
Cultivating plant growth in space
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00When in space, astronauts typically eat dehydrated, nutrient-dense food, but when it comes to longer space missions, that can become a problem as they'll eventually lack nutrients from fresh vegetables. However, one chemical and biomolecular engineering professor will be researching ways astronauts can grow their own fresh vegetables more efficiently while they are on missions. Ying Diao w
DARPA seeks compact, deployable electron accelerator
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00Linear accelerators, LINACs for short, are devices that accelerate electrons or other sub-atomic particles along a straight line to generate a beam of high energy. LINACs have a variety of commercial uses such as generating X-rays for cargo inspection, medical diagnostics, food sterilization, and even enabling precise external radiation treatments to destroy cancer cells without damaging surroun
Defense, Commerce departments join to find 5G solutions
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00The U.S. departments of Defense and Commerce will jointly seek public input on development of 5G communication networks, they announced on Monday. 5G, or fifth generation telecommunications standard for broadband cellular networks, offers higher download speeds and has been of particular interest to the U.S. military prior to its civilian rollout in 2019. The Defense Department r
The earliest supermassive black hole and quasar in the universe
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00The most distant quasar known has been discovered. The quasar, seen just 670 million years after the Big Bang, is 1000 times more luminous than the Milky Way, and is powered by the earliest known supermassive black hole, which weighs in at more than 1.6 billion times the mass of the Sun. Seen more than 13 billion years ago, this fully formed distant quasar is also the earliest yet discover
'Old Faithful' cosmic eruption shows black hole ripping at star
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00You've heard of Old Faithful, the Yellowstone National Park geyser that erupts every hour or two, a geological phenomenon on a nearly predictable schedule. Now, an international group of scientists who study space have discovered an astronomical "Old Faithful" - an eruption of light flashing about once every 114 days on a nearly predictable schedule. The researchers believe it is a tidal d
Researchers use LRZ HPC resources to perform largest-ever supersonic turbulence simulation
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00Through the centuries, scientists and non-scientists alike have looked at the night sky and felt excitement, intrigue, and overwhelming mystery while pondering questions about how our universe came to be, and how humanity developed and thrived in this exact place and time. Early astronomers painstakingly studied stars' subtle movements in the night sky to try and determine how our planet moves i
NASA missions help investigate an 'old faithful' active galaxy
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00During a typical year, over a million people visit Yellowstone National Park, where the Old Faithful geyser regularly blasts a jet of boiling water high in the air. Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered a cosmic equivalent, a distant galaxy that erupts roughly every 114 days. Using data from facilities including NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Transiting Exopla
Galaxy mergers could limit star formation
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00Our astronomers have looked nine billion years into the past to find evidence that galaxy mergers in the early universe could shut down star formation and affect galaxy growth. Using a powerful Earth-based telescope they saw that a huge amount of star-forming gas was ejected into the universe by the coming together of two galaxies. The merger created a new galaxy called ID2299 at a t
When Galaxies Collide: Hubble Showcases 6 Beautiful Galaxy Mergers
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00To celebrate a new year, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has published a montage of six beautiful galaxy mergers. Each of these merging systems was studied as part of the recent HiPEEC survey to investigate the rate of new star formation within such systems. These interactions are a key aspect of galaxy evolution and are among the most spectacular events in the lifetime of a galaxy. It
Wind bands, jet streams spotted on nearest brown dwarf
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00The brown dwarf closest to our solar system hosts wind bands and jet streams, according to new analysis of the object's atmosphere. Brown dwarfs are too big to be planets but not quite massive enough to generate fusion, a prerequisite for stellar classification. Though hot in their infancy, brown dwarfs steadily cool as they mature, making them difficult to spot and study. Becaus
Chandra Studies Extraordinary Magnetar
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the idea that it is also a pulsar, meaning it emits regular pulses of light. Magnetars are a type of neutron star, an incredibly dense object mainly made up of tightly packed neutron, which forms from the coll
Unveiling the double origin of cosmic dust in the distant Universe
Wednesday, 13 January 2021 06:00Two billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was still very young. However, thousands of huge galaxies, rich in stars and dust, were already formed. An international study, led by SISSA - Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, now explains how this was possible. Scientists combined observational and theoretical methods to identify the physical processes behind their evolu
SpaceX wins contracts for lunar lander, environmental satellite launches
Tuesday, 12 January 2021 23:55WASHINGTON — SpaceX secured contracts Jan. 13 for the launches of a commercial lunar lander mission backed by NASA as well as a privately funded satellite to track methane emissions.
Intuitive Machines announced that it selected SpaceX for the launch of its IM-2 lunar lander mission on a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than 2022.