Feed aggregator

How “heart-centered” archaeology is helping to find the Indigenous children who never came home from residential schools

When fetuses and babies were exposed to sound stimuli, their brains' subsequent activity appeared to be more complicated in the females than the males

When fetuses and babies were exposed to sound stimuli, their brains' subsequent activity appeared to be more complicated in the females than the males

An environmental engineer provides a glimpse of the magnitude of the challenge to remove PFAS from water supplies and ways you can reduce these “forever chemicals” in your own drinking water

The large constellation Vela contains many hidden treasures.

The post Sail into the Southern Skies with Vela appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Research on personality types in the middle of the extroversion-introversion scale is limited—yet the majority of people fall into this category

More than 1.4 billion people live in India, giving its healthcare system a major role in planetary well-being. In the past 10 years, prime minister Narendra Modi has worked to improve India's healthcare, but there is still much work to be done

More than 1.4 billion people live in India, giving its healthcare system a major role in planetary well-being. In the past 10 years, prime minister Narendra Modi has worked to improve India's healthcare, but there is still much work to be done

Two Russian cosmonauts are scheduled to spend about seven hours working outside the International Space Station today (April 25), and you can watch the action live.

Ariane 6 media kit

India currently has a fairly small chip-manufacturing industry, but prime minister Narendra Modi wants the country to become a dominant player in the sector in just a few years

India currently has a fairly small chip-manufacturing industry, but prime minister Narendra Modi wants the country to become a dominant player in the sector in just a few years

The Great Carina Nebula

A centre to innovate the design and manufacture of space hardware has today opened in Vienna. Driving commercialisation in space, it is the first of its kind of ESA-backed disruptive innovation centres outside ESA’s own premises.

ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence will make a swingby of Mars next March, borrowing speed to help reach its target Didymos binary asteroid system.

China plans to launch the three-astronaut Shenzhou 18 mission to its Tiangong space station today (April 25), and you can watch the action live.

Well over 5,000 planets have been found orbiting other star systems. One of the satellites hunting for them is TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Astronomers using TESS think they are made a rather surprising discovery; their first free-floating – or rogue – planet. The planet was discovered using gravitational microlensing where the planet passed in front of a star, distorting its light and revealing its presence.

We are all familiar with the eight planets in our Solar System and perhaps becoming familiar with the concept of exoplanets. But there is another category of planet, the rogue planets. These mysterious objects travel through space without being gravitationally bound to any star. Their origin has been cause for much debate but popular theory suggests they were ejected from their host star system during formation, or perhaps later due to gravitational interaction. 

Artist impression of glory on exoplanet WASP-76b. Credit: ESA

Simulations have suggested that these ‘free-floating planets’ or FFPs should be abundant in the Galaxy yet until now, not many have been detected. The popular theory of ejection from star systems may not be the full story though. It is now thought that different formation mechanisms will be responsible for different FFP masses. Those FFPs that are high mass may form in isolation from the collapse of gas whilst those at the low mass end (comparable to Earth) are likely to have been subjected to gravitational ejection from the system. A paper published in 2023 even suggests that those FFPs are likely to outnumber those bound planets across the Galaxy!

Detecting such wandering objects among the stars is rather more of a challenge than you might expect. Their limited emission (or reflection) of electromagnetic radiation makes them pretty much impossible to observe. Enter gravitational microlensing, a technique that relies upon an FFP passing in front of a star, it’s gravity then focussing light from the distant star resulting in a brief brightness change as the planet moves along its line of sight. To date, only three FFPs have been detected from Earth using this technique. 

A team of astronomers have been using TESS to search for such microlensing events. TESS was launched in April 2018 and whilst in orbit, scans large chunks of sky to monitor the brightness of tens of thousands of stars. The detection of light changes may reveal the passage of an FFP as it drifts silently in front of the star. It’s not an easy hunt though as asteroids in our Solar System, exoplanets bound to stars and even stellar flares can all give false indications but thankfully the team led by Michelle Kunimoto have algorithms that will help to identify potential targets. 

Illustration of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The team published their findings recently in the Astrophysical Journal and reported one FFP candidate event associated with the star TIC-107150013 which is 3.2 parsec away. The event lasted 0.074 days +/- 0,002 and revealed a light curve with features expected of a FFP. This marks the first FFP discovered by TESS, an exciting step along the way to start to unravel the mysteries surrounding these strange alien worlds.

Source : Searching for Free-Floating Planets with TESS: I. Discovery of a First Terrestrial-Mass Candidate

The post TESS Finds its First Rogue Planet appeared first on Universe Today.

3 min read

Sols 4166-4167: A Garden Full of Rocks This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4164 (2024-04-23 16:43:09 UTC).NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earth planning date: Wednesday April 24, 2024

Here on Earth (in Toronto, specifically), it’s a very typical April which can’t quite make up its mind about whether or not it wants to be spring. On Mars (in Gale Crater), we’re well into spring, and Curiosity is enjoying the (relatively) warmer weather. As the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, I find myself with lots of energy, itching to get outside and play in my garden. Curiosity seems to feel similar – we’ve been flush with power recently, and today’s touch-and-go plan is no exception. This means lots of opportunity for Curiosity to play in its own kind of garden – albeit one a bit less green than my own.

The first sol of the plan starts with contact science on ‘Twin Peaks,’ which is a small, darker block on top of a lighter block (which you can see the edge of in the image above). This is followed by a two hour long science block packed full of ChemCam and Mastcam observations. ChemCam is starting up close with LIBS on ‘Gilber Lake’ (in the centre of the image above) followed by two long distance mosaics of our long-time companions, the upper Gediz Vallis Ridge and Kukenan. Mastcam has its own mosaic of Pinnacle Ridge and then turns its sights to two closer blocks – ‘Hawk’s Head Notch’ and ‘Cleaver Notch.’ We’re then back for more contact science – this time with MAHLI – before driving on towards Pinnacle Ridge. It’s a geology-heavy sol, but the atmosphere and environment science theme group (ENV) will sneak in to take a tau measurement at the end of the sol to keep an eye on the changing atmospheric dust.

As is often the case in these kinds of plans, the second sol is a bit more sedate, but Curiosity will still manage to squeeze in nearly an hour and a half of science. Most of this is given over to environmental monitoring. Because we don’t need to be in a certain location to check out dust and clouds, we can let the geology and minerology science theme group (GEO) have their fun before the drive and save our observations for the ‘untargeted’ portion of the plan. On the dusty side of things, we have another tau as well as a line of sight scan towards the crater rim. A long dust devil movie will look out for dust lifting in the middle distance, and a deck monitoring observation will check out how dust grains on the rover’s deck might have moved. We’re also looking north above the horizon for clouds. GEO isn’t entirely left out of this sol though – they’ll wrap up the plan with a ChemCam AEGIS observation.

Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University

Share

Details Last Updated Apr 24, 2024 Related Terms

• Blogs
• Curiosity (Rover)
• Mars
• Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)

Explore More 2 min read Sols 4164-4165: What’s Around the Ridge-bend? Article 1 day ago 2 min read Sols 4161-4163: Double Contact Science Article 2 days ago 5 min read Why is Methane Seeping on Mars? NASA Scientists Have New Ideas Article 2 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars

Mars is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s dry, rocky, and bitter cold. The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars…

All Mars Resources

Rover Basics

Mars Exploration Science Goals

Scientists have discovered one of the largest molecules ever seen in space in the Cat's Paw nebula. The discovery hints at how chemical complexity emerges as stars form.

The full trailer of Netflix's 'Atlas' is a bit spoiler-y, but does a better job of selling the Jennifer Lopez-led sci-fi adventure.