Universe Today

Blackholes are a fascinating class of object to study. We have learned significant amounts over the years but one of the outstanding mysteries remains; how there were supermassive black holes with millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun present in the first billion years after the Big Bang. Our current models of stellar mass black hole evolution and mergers cannot explain their existence. A new paper suggests that ultralight dark matter particles, like axions may have done the trick and provides a mass range for expected particles.

As humans continue to make tentative progress out into the cosmos, the impact of space exploration on our fragile bodies is only beginning to be understood. We know that space travel decreases muscle and bone mass but a team of researchers have discovered which bones suffer the most! Using a group of mice that became astro-rodents for 37 days, they discovered that bone degeneration effective the femur most but not the vertebrae. They concluded that it’s our weight-bearing bones that suffer the most.

Travellers to Mars Need to Avoid the Dust

Many health problems are faced by astronauts who spend significant amounts of time in space. But perhaps one of the most insidious is the danger to their mental health. In particular, a prolonged sense of loneliness that could crop up as part of a long-term deep space mission could have dire consequences. A recent paper from Matthieu Guitton, the editor-in-chief of the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans and a researcher at the CERVO Brain Research Center in Quebec, proposes one potential solution to that risk - social robots.

One of the common misconceptions about black holes is that they devour not only matter, but also the history of that matter. So when a black hole forms, you can only guess how it came to be. That isn't entirely true. Informational history is only lost when matter crosses the event horizon, and perhaps not even then. The material surrounding a black hole still has a rich history. In a recent study, astronomers have used that history to uncover the origins of a black hole system.

Could microbes survive in the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of the Moon? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated the likelihood of long-term survival for microbes in the PSR areas of the Moon, which are craters located at the poles that don’t see sunlight due to the Moon’s small axial tilt. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand unlikely locations where they could find life as we know it throughout the solar system.

What can a sample return mission from Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, teach scientists about planetary and satellite (moon) formation and evolution? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as an international team of more than two dozen scientists discussed the benefits and challenges of a mission to Io with the goal of sampling its volcanic plumes that eject from its surface on a regular basis.

It’s getting a little harder to be the first humans to achieve something but, if all goes to plan, a team of four private astronauts are expected to head off into a polar orbit around Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule today (31 March) at 9:46pm ET and take the crew over the North and South Poles of Earth. Financed by Chun Wang, a Malta-based investor, they are planning a series of experiments, including attempting to grow oyster mushrooms in microgravity, which could eventually become a source of food for space missions.

Astronomers suspect that Europa has cryovolcanoes, regions where briny water could erupt through Europa's ice shell, throwing water—and hopefully organic molecules—into space. NASA's Europa Clipper and ESA's JUICE mission are on their way and will be able to scan the surface of the icy moon for signs of cryovolcanism. What should they be looking for? Pockets of brine just below the surface could be active for 60,000 years and should be warmer than their surroundings.

Subsurface Habitats on the Moon and Mars Could Be Grown Using Mushrooms and Inflatable Robots

One of the first verified predictions of general relativity is the gravitational deflection of starlight. The effect was [first observed in 1919 during a total solar eclipse.](https://briankoberlein.com/post/einstein-and-eddington/) Since stars appear as points of light, the effect is seen as an apparent shift in the position of stars near the eclipse. But the effect happens more generally. If a distant galaxy is obscured by a closer one, some of the distant light is gravitationally lensed around the closer galaxy, giving us a warped and distorted view of the faraway stars. This effect can also magnify the distant galaxy, making its light appear brighter, and we have used this effect to observe some of the most distant stars in the Universe.

In-situ resource utilization will likely play a major role in any future long-term settlement of the Moon. However, designing such a system in advance with our current level of knowledge will prove difficult, mainly because there's so much uncertainty around both the availability of those resources and the efficacy of the processes used to extract them. Luckily, researchers have tools that can try to deal with both of those uncertainties - statistical modeling. A team from Imperial College London, the University of Munich, and the Luxembourg Institue of Science and Technology recently released a pre-print paper on arXiv that uses a well-known statistical modeling method known as Monte Carlo simulation to try to assess what type of ISRU plan would be best for use on the Moon.

Even though Jupiter's moon Io is considered the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, Venus actually has more volcanoes and volcanic features on its surface. For a long time, scientists thought that most of these features and volcanoes were ancient remnants of the planet's geological past. However, newer research shows that Venus is still volcanically active.

What kinds of scientific instruments can be used to sample the plumes of Enceladus with the goal of identifying the ingredients for life as we know it? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of international researchers investigated how the novel High Ice Flux Instrument (HIFI) could be the next-generation instrument used to sample the plumes of Enceladus while building off the groundbreaking findings from the NASA Cassini spacecraft’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA). This study has the potential to help scientists and engineers develop new and efficient methodologies for finding life on Enceladus and throughout the solar system.

How can scientists and engineers build off the success of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter to better explore the Red Planet? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as an aerospace executive with more than two decades of research and engineering experience investigated how a next-generation Mars helicopter could conduct groundbreaking science while delivering peak efficiency and performance. This study has the potential to help scientists and engineers develop new methods for exploring Mars with cost-effective and efficient methods.

What can cryovolcanism on the dwarf planet Ceres teach us about potential cryovolcanism on Uranus’ five largest moons, which include Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, Titania, and Miranda? This is what two studies recently presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address, as a team of researchers investigated using Ceres as an analog for the potential ocean moons, Umbriel and Oberon, and the likelihood of an impact crater on Umbriel showing evidence of cryovolcanism. These studies have the potential to help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of ocean worlds in the outer solar system and whether they could potentially have life as we know it.

When it comes to the planets produced in protoplanetary disks, size matters, but not the way you might think. That's the conclusion a group of astronomers found when they aimed the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile at hundreds of these disks around young stars in the southern constellation Lupus. They used the observatory in 2023 and 2024 to focus on the disks and supplemented that with archival data.

Efforts are underway to develop advanced propulsion systems that can reduce transit times to Mars and other locations in the Solar System. These include nuclear propulsion concepts, which NASA began researching again in 2016 for its proposed "Moon to Mars" mission architecture. In a recent paper, two aerospace innovators reviewed some key nuclear-electric propulsion concepts, their respective advantages, and challenges. In the end, they conclude that nuclear propulsion has the potential to revolutionize space exploration and make humanity "multiplanetary."

Deciding how to power a CubeSat is one of the greatest challenges when designing a modular spacecraft. Tradeoffs in solar panel size, battery size, and power consumption levels are all key considerations when selecting parts and mission architecture. To help with those design choices, a paper from researchers in Ethiopia and Korea describes a new machine-learning algorithm that helps CubeSat designers optimize their power consumption, ensuring these little satellites have a better chance of fulfilling their purpose.

The hazards facing lunar astronauts are many. There's the radiation, the temperature extremes, the psychological challenges associated with isolation, and the risk of important equipment breaking down. But there's also the dust, which constitutes an ever-present background hazard.