Space

Has Earth’s oxygen rusted the Moon for billions of years?0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 10, 2020
To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon.

By David Aragorn
Grains of dust revise Solar System history 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 9, 2020
Scientists study the chemical composition of meteorites.

By David Aragorn
Across 10 Million Stars, Not a Single Whisper of Alien Technology 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 9, 2020
In a comprehensive search of a patch of the Southern sky, not even a hint of alien technology has been detected at low radio frequencies.

By David Aragorn
Are aliens hiding in plain sight?0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 8, 2020
Several missions this year are seeking out life on the red planet. But would we recognise extraterrestrials if we found them?

By David Aragorn
Nasa to study impact of ‘space weather’ on Earth 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 5, 2020
Mission proposals include analysis of sun’s atmosphere and its unseen polar regions

By David Aragorn
‘It just sounds like a thud’: astronomers hear biggest cosmic event since big bang 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 4, 2020
Researchers believe noise was two black holes colliding around 7 billion years ago, creating a previously unseen class of stellar object

By David Aragorn
Scientists spot a triple-star system shredding its planet-forming disk in a cosmic first 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 4, 2020
Groups of stars can tear their planet-forming disk to shreds, leaving behind warped, misaligned rings, scientists find in a breakthrough study.

By David Aragorn
A ‘bang’ in LIGO and Virgo detectors signals most massive gravitational-wave source yet 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 4, 2020
A binary black hole merger likely produced gravitational waves equal to the energy of eight suns

By David Aragorn
New Study Expands Breakthrough Listen Initiative’s Search for Intelligent Life 0
- From Around the Web, Science & Technology, Space
- September 4, 2020
In a new study to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a research team led by University of Manchester astronomers extended a sample of 1,327 stellar systems recently observed by the Breakthrough Listen Initiative by including additional 288,315 stars that also reside within the target fields of the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in Australia — increasing the number of stars analyzed by a factor of more than 200. Their results suggest that less than 0.04% of stellar systems have the potential of hosting advanced civilizations with the equivalent or slightly more advanced radio technology than 21st century humans.

By David Aragorn
Astronomers Witness Birth of Intermediate-Mass Black Hole 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 3, 2020
Astronomers using the twin LIGO detectors located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and the Virgo detector located near Pisa, Italy, have detected gravitational waves from the most massive binary black hole merger ever discovered. The two spinning black holes merged when the Universe was only about 7 billion years old, which is roughly half its present age, and formed a larger black hole weighing a whopping 142 times the mass of the Sun — a so-called intermediate-mass black hole.

By David Aragorn