Universe Today
What Islands Can Teach Us About Planetary Protection
As Charles Darwin explored the Galapagos Islands, he discovered how the different islands allowed for different species to thrive. This is very similar to our current exploration of the Solar System; individual worlds, separated by the vacuum of space. The similarities provide a new insight into predictin planetary contamination risks and improve protection methods. A new paper by Daniel J. Brener and Charlesg S. Cockell uses the spread of life to new islands as a powerful model for rethinking how we prevent Earth's microbes from contaminating other worlds, shifting focus from probability calculations to whether microbes can actually survive in alien environments.
If We Can't Detect the First Stars, Maybe We Can See Their First Galaxies
Population III stars are the first generation that formed in the Universe, made from pristine hydrogen and helium, without any heavier "metals." They're difficult to find, surrounded by the early cosmic fog and lasting for only a few million years, but a new paper proposes that Webb could detect the pollution from these first stars as they're enriching the gas around them. There would be a hybrid phase when the first galaxies could contain second-generation stars and the polluted gas from the first stars.
Webb Could Detect if Supermassive Black Holes Formed Directly
An unfolding mystery is how early supermassive black holes got so big, so early. Their high mass is tough to explain through a ladder of mergers; instead, astronomers suggest they could have formed directly from huge clouds of gas. In a new paper, researchers propose the signals these directly-forming supermassive black holes might emit, and how they could even be detectable by James Webb before they collapse.
Flyby Mission Strategies for Detecting Oceans on Uranus’ Moons
What methods can be used to identify subsurface oceans on the five largest moons of Uranus: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon, and Miranda? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) investigated potentially using radio science on the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) concept mission, which was designated as a high priority Flagship-class mission by the 2023–2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.
Planets Form Earlier Than Thought Around Baby Stars
The Sun and its planets formed out of the solar nebula, around 4.6 billion years ago. But what was the delay between the Sun's formation and the planets? Astronomers have surveyed 78 protoplanetary disks in the Ophiuchus star-forming region and seen examples of every step in the planetary formation process. They found that the planets start forming much earlier than previously believed, when the disk is still filled with gas and dust, growing together with their host stars.
Cryovolcanism and Resurfacing on Pluto’s Largest Moon, Charon
What processes during the formation of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, potentially led to it having cryovolcanism, and even an internal ocean? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the formation and evolution of Charon to ascertain whether it once possessed an internal ocean during its history and if this could have led to cryovolcanism based on images obtained by NASA’s New Horizons probe.
New Propulsion Systems Could Enable a Mission to Sedna
The dwarf planet Sedna will reach its closest point to the Sun in 2075, the ideal time to send a mission to study this world that takes 11,000 years to orbit the Sun. In a new paper, researchers consider two exotic propulsion systems for a mission like this: a direct fusion drive, and an enhanced solar sail. Both methods could allow a spacecraft to reach Sedna in under a decade of flight time.
Growing Building on Mars with Lichen and Bacteria
When humans finally reach Mars, they're going to rely on local resources for habitat construction. Researchers are considering how Martian explorers could use lichen and bacteria together with Martian regolith to form building materials. These biomaterials can glue together particles of crushed rock into a building material which can then be 3D-printed into houses, furniture and other buildings. This system might only require regolith, air, light and an inorganic medium to create the building material.
A New Way to Detect Primordial Black Holes Through Their Hawking Radiation
Scientists propose a revolutionary new method to detect primordial black holes by hunting for their Hawking radiation. Instead of searching for faint background signals, researchers suggest using the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station to watch for distinctive spikes in positron particles as these ancient black holes pass through our solar system, emitting Hawking radiation.
A Statistical Analysis of Exoplanet Habitability Turns Up One Great Candidate - And Significant Observational Bias
The search for life beyond our planet continues, and one of the most underappreciated tools in an astrobiologists' toolkit is statistics. While it might not be as glamorous as directly imaging a planet’s atmosphere or finding a system with seven planets in it, statistics is absolutely critical if we want to be sure that what we’re seeing is real and not just an artifact of the data, or of our observational techniques themselves. A new paper by Caleb Traxler and their co-authors at the Department of Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine takes on that challenge head-on by statistically analyzing a set of about 10% of the total number of exoplanets found and judging their habitability.
The Galactic Center Isn't Spitting Out Stars. What Does This Mean?
Sometimes a non-detection can tell you a lot. For example, astronomers recently searched through data containing around 5 million stars captured by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. They were looking for stars that had been ejected from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, through the gravitational interaction of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. They failed to find any obvious candidates, which suggests that Sgr A* hasn't merged with another black hole recently.
NASA Just Launched A Mission To Calibrate Space-Based Instruments With Moonlight
Calibration is a necessary, if typically invisible, step in the successful operation of any scientific telescope. Without a known value to compare its readings against, data from telescopes could suffer from biases or transients that could completely misdirect scientists analyzing it. However, those same scientists also struggle to find good sources of data to calibrate against. Enter Arcstone - a technology demonstration mission that launched earlier this week that plans to use one particular source as a calibration dataset - moonlight.
Schweickart Prize Goes to a Plan for Managing Asteroid Mining Risks
This year's $10,000 Schweickart Prize is going to a team of students who are proposing a panel to address the risks that could arise when we start tinkering with asteroids.
Webb Should Be Able to Detect Exo-Jupiters and Exo-Saturns
JWST is a powerful telescope and has directly observed a handful of exoplanets. But according to a new paper, it could set its sights higher, way higher. Astronomers suggest that Webb's MIRI and NIRCam instruments have the capabilities to detect planets around nearby stars as cold (or colder) than Saturn, at the same orbital separation, mass, and age as Saturn and Jupiter. They also found that clouds can have a big impact on their ability to study the planets, but it's easier for MIRI.