Latest news with #MilkyWay
New York Times
6 hours ago
- Science
- New York Times
This Is Not the Way We Usually Imagine the World Will End
If our species manages to hang on for a few billion additional years, we might be in for a wild ride — stars passing in the vicinity of the sun could cause planets in our solar system to collide or even be ejected, according to a paper published last month in the journal Icarus. The findings even suggest a scenario in which our world ends not consumed by the sun, but in a carom prompted by the powers of gravity. The Milky Way is home to hundreds of billions of stars. Each one is in motion, zinging in its own orbit around the galactic center. Consider a long enough span of time — something astronomers are wont to do — and it's inevitable that another star will pass closer to the sun than Proxima Centauri, currently our nearest stellar neighbor. In fact, calculations based on orbits of stars cataloged by the Gaia spacecraft suggest that, every million years, 33 stars, give or take a few, do just that. But for another star's gravitational effects to have a sizable impact on our solar system, you need a much closer shave than that, according to Nate Kaib, an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. 'Once you get a couple hundred times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, you can really start to destabilize stuff,' he said. Dr. Kaib and Sean Raymond, an astronomer at the Bordeaux Astrophysical Laboratory in France, set about determining the likelihood and effects of such cosmic near misses. The researchers ran thousands of computer simulations, modeling the gravitational effects of passing stars on the solar system's eight planets and Pluto. The team considered stars with masses, velocities and orbits representative of objects in our stellar neighborhood. Each simulation modeled the passage of five billion years. Dr. Kaib said that such a long-term perspective is necessary because it often takes tens of millions of years or even longer for a planet's orbit to be perturbed by a passing star. 'You don't see the effects for a long, long time,' he said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Hello, neighbor! See the Andromeda galaxy like never before in stunning new image from NASA's Chandra telescope (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The galaxy next door to the Milky Way, Andromeda, has never looked as stunning as it does in a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope. The image of the galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), was created with assistance from a range of other space telescopes and ground-based instruments including the European Space Agency (ESA) XMM-Newton mission, NASA's retired space telescopes GALEX and the Spitzer Space Telescope as well as the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, COBE, Planck, and Herschel, in addition to radio data from the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. All these instruments observed Andromeda in different wavelengths of light across the electromagnetic spectrum, with astronomers bringing this data together to create a stunning and intricate image. The image is a fitting tribute to astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who was responsible for the discovery of dark matter thanks to her observations of Andromeda. As the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way, at just around 2.5 million light-years away, Andromeda has been vital in allowing astronomers to study aspects of galaxies that aren't accessible from our own galaxy. For example, from inside the Milky Way, we can't see our galaxy's spiral arms, but we can see the spiral arms of Andromeda. Every wavelength of light that was brought together to create this incredible new image of Andromeda tells astronomers something different and unique about the galaxy next door. For example, the X-ray data provided by Chandra has revealed the high-energy radiation released from around Andromeda's central supermassive black hole, known as M31*. M31* is considerably larger than the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). While our home supermassive black hole has a mass 4.3 million times that of the sun, M31* dwarfs it with a mass 100 million times that of the sun. M31* is also notable for its occasional flares, one of which was observed in X-rays back in 2013, while Sgr A* is a much "quieter" black hole. Andromeda was chosen as a tribute to Rubin because this neighboring galaxy played a crucial role in the astronomer's discovery of a missing element of the universe. An element that we now call dark matter. In the 1960s, Rubin and collaborators precisely measured the rotation of Andromeda. They found that the speed at which this galaxy's spiral arms spun indicated that the galaxy was surrounded by a vast halo of an unknown and invisible form of matter. The mass of this matter provided the gravitational influence that was preventing Andromeda from flying apart due to its rotational speed. The gravity of its visible matter wouldn't have been sufficient to hold this galaxy then, astronomers have discovered that all large galaxies seem to be surrounded by similar haloes of what is now known as dark matter. This has led to the discovery that the matter which comprises all the things we see around us — stars, planets, moons, our bodies, next door's cat — accounts for just 15% of the "stuff" in the cosmos, with dark matter accounting for the other 85%. The finding has also prompted the search for particles beyond the standard model of particle physics that could compose dark matter. Thus, there's no doubt that Rubin's work delivered a watershed moment in astronomy, and one of the most important breakthroughs in modern science, fundamentally changing our concept of the universe. Related Stories: — How did Andromeda's dwarf galaxies form? Hubble Telescope finds more questions than answers — The Milky Way may not collide with neighboring galaxy Andromeda after all: 'From near-certainty to a coin flip' — Gorgeous deep space photo captures the Andromeda Galaxy surrounded by glowing gas June 2025 has been a brilliant month of recognition of Rubin's immense impact on astronomy and her lasting legacy. In addition to this tribute image, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images of the cosmos as it gears up to conduct a 10-year observing program of the southern sky called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Additionally, in recognition of Rubin's monumental contributions to our understanding of the universe, the United States Mint recently released a quarter featuring Rubin as part of its American Women Quarters Program. She is the first astronomer to be honored in the series.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA offers dazzling new sights (and sounds) of the Andromeda galaxy
Even a century after Edward Hubble confirmed its existence, astronomers learn new details about the Andromeda galaxy that help us better understand our cosmic neighborhood and the wider universe. Earlier this week, NASA released its latest detailed images of the Milky Way's spiral sibling, as well an ethereal sonification of its energy wavelengths. Attaining an outside view of the Milky Way galaxy is a bit like trying to examine the entire planet from your backyard—that is to say, it's impossible from humanity's current vantage point. The next best option for astronomers is gazing at similar nearby spiral galaxies, the closest of which is Messier 31. Also known as Andromeda, the Milky Way's most immediate neighbor is about 2.5 million light-years away, and provides an excellent option for studying how spiral galaxies form and evolve over time. It's also where a team led by astronomer Vera Rubin first detected the anomalous material now known as 'dark matter' in the 1960s. The newest glimpses at Andromeda are based on composite data collected by an international array of the world's most powerful telescopes, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the ESA's XMM-Newton, and even optical information from a pair of astrophotographers. The various kinds of light span the visible, infrared, radio, and ultraviolet wavelengths. When layered, they depict a vibrant and active galaxy reminiscent of our own—and the information is already helping experts expand on Andromeda's ongoing life story. 'For example, Chandra's X-rays reveal the high-energy radiation around the supermassive black hole at the center of M31 as well as many other smaller compact and dense objects strewn across the galaxy,' NASA explained in its announcement. Astronomers aren't limited to studying visual representations of Andromeda's energy; they can also assess them through sound. In addition to the images, NASA researchers compiled the galaxy datasets into a sonification by separating out each wavelength, rotating them, and stacking them on top of one another in order of their frequency. From top to bottom, that means X-rays, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and finally radio waves. These are next assigned a range of corresponding notes, with brightness designating volume while spectrum location determines pitch. The result is a dreamlink chorus of tones as the space telescopes traverse Andromeda's 152,000 light-year diameter. There's still an untold wealth of information to learn from the Milky Way's neighbor, possibly even the means to finally understand the dark matter first detected by Rubin. That's at least what NASA hopes to achieve with the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope currently scheduled to go into operation in 2027.
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
New Images Show Andromeda Galaxy as You've Never Seen It Before
Andromeda lies 2.5 million light-years away from the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy similar to our own that has allowed scientists to better understand our galactic home. A new composite image reveals our closest galactic neighbor in five different wavelengths of light, combined together to create a stunningly detailed view of Andromeda. Telescopes capture images in different wavelengths by observing a specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum, from low-frequency radio waves to extremely high-frequency gamma rays. By using different wavelengths, astronomers are able to see far more of the cosmos, whether it be glowing dust and stars or colliding galaxies. For the latest image of Andromeda, also known as M31, astronomers featured X-ray data from NASA's Chandra Observatory, revealing the high-energy radiation around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The X-ray data, captured by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, is shown in red, green, and blue. Ultraviolet data from NASA's retired GALEX is in blue; infrared data from NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, COBE, Planck, and Herschel is in red, orange, and purple; and radio data from the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope is in red-orange, according to NASA. Astrophotographers Jakob Sahner and Tarun Kottary provided some optical data using ground-based telescopes. Andromeda is a classic spiral, with graceful arms that rotate around a central bulge. It stretches across 220,000 light-years, twice the size of the Milky Way. The two galaxies are on an unfortunate collision course with one another and are expected to merge in about 4.5 billion years. Or maybe not, as research published earlier this month suggested. Astronomers also converted the multi-wavelength data to sound, creating a beautiful tune from Andromeda's dust lanes and star clusters. To create Andromeda's new song, scientists separated the layers captured by each telescope and stacked them on top of each other horizontally, beginning with X-rays at the top and then moving through ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio at the bottom. Each type of light is mapped to a different range of notes, from lower-energy radio waves all the way through the high energy of X-rays. The brightness of each source controls the volume of the galactic song, and the vertical location dictates the pitch. The latest composite image of Andromeda was released in honor of legendary astronomer Vera Rubin, who discovered evidence for dark matter by measuring the velocity of stars in the spiral galaxy. In the 1960s, Rubin carefully observed Andromeda and determined that unseen matter was affecting how the galaxy's spiral arms rotated. Earlier this week, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named after the pioneering astronomer, released its very first images of the cosmos.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers thought a mysterious radio burst came from deep space. It was actually a dead NASA satellite
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A powerful and mysterious blast of radio waves that astronomers believed was a fast radio burst (FRB) from far beyond the limits of the Milky Way has turned out to be an emission from a long-dead NASA satellite called Relay 2. The now-discounted FRB or "pseudo-FRB" was initially detected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in June 2024 as this radio telescope scanned the sky over the southern hemisphere. It was remarkable because this burst of radio waves lasted less than 30 nanoseconds, much shorter than most FRBs, and yet it was strong enough to drown out all other signals from the sky. "This was a chance discovery made when looking for FRBs, which originate in distant galaxies," team member and Swinburne University of Technology astrophysicist Adam Deller told "Funnily enough, despite them being known for almost 20 years, we still don't actually know what generates FRBs, but most of the plausible theories involve a 'magnetar', which is a highly magnetized neutron star." The Relay 2 satellite was launched in 1964 as part of NASA's Relay program. Sitting in a medium Earth orbit, the spacecraft operated until 1965, but by 1967, its systems had completely failed. "It's part of space history, being one of the first ever communications satellites. There won't be many older satellites still up there," team member Clancy W. James from Curtin University's Institute of Radio Astronomy told "But we're also sure that this was not a transmission by the satellite. None of its systems would have been capable of producing this nanosecond signal."James explained that at the time of the event, Relay 2 was just around 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) from Earth. While this might seem like a vast distance, consider that FRBs are thought to originate from cosmic sources as distant as 9.1 billion light-years away. In fact, the closest FRB source, and the only one ever seen within our galaxy, is still located an estimated 30,000 light-years away. "So, although it appeared extremely bright to our telescope, this was just because it was much closer than the astronomical signals we were looking for," James continued. "It was difficult to get an image of it - it came out all blurry. This meant that it was close to the telescope. So, no astronomical object. Darn." Since the discovery of the first FRB in 2007, astronomers have discovered over 1,000 FRBs, yet they remain one of the most fascinating and curious signals in the cosmos. So, finding out an exceptional example of such an FRB is actually a "pseudo-FRB" caused by a defunct piece of NASA equipment may initially be a little disappointing. Surprisingly, team member and University of Edinburgh astronomer Marcin Glowacki wasn't disappointed at all that this signal turned out to be a signal from a man-made satellite. "It was like an interesting puzzle for us to be able to localize this result from such a relatively close object to what we are used to! It certainly took some time and effort, as we had to adjust how we measured the signal with ASKAP to account for it being so close. It's like how phone cameras can struggle to focus on something very close to them," Glowacki told "While we are mostly interested in astrophysical systems, this discovery is important for monitoring satellites in the future with ASKAP and other radio telescopes." Glowacki further explained how a man-made object so close to Earth could have been mistaken for a cosmic blast of radio waves in the first place."It was a very bright radio signal that we saw once. Most FRBs have been found only once thus far, and are also exceedingly bright compared to other radio transients, such as from pulsars," he told "However, this is on a shorter timescale than any known FRB. Signals from FRBs typically last from microseconds to several millisecond-timescales, rather than only a few 10s of nanoseconds. "It was indeed good luck that ASKAP happened to be looking at the same part of the sky that the Relay 2 satellite was in when it gave off that signal - that allowed us to investigate further and determine the origin of the signal." Thus, any initial disappointment can be offset a little by the fact that this observation was an amazing chance discovery. Additionally, this opens up an entirely new mystery; the team still can't quite explain how Relay 2 managed to fire off a signal that could be mistaken for an FRB. As mentioned above, the team is certain that this "pseudo-FRB" signal wasn't an intentional emission, as not only has Relay 2 been inoperative for 58 years, but even when it was working, its transmission signal wasn't capable of generating such short-lived radio pulses. "What caused this signal from Relay 2? That's a good question. We don't know!" Glowacki explained. "One theory is electrostatic discharge (ESD) – a build-up of electricity that results in a spark-like flash. Another is that a micrometeorite had struck the satellite and produced a cloud of charged plasma, right as ASKAP was observing the part of the sky it was in. " James elaborated that ESD is a spark that is almost exactly the same as the effect generated when you rub your feet on carpet and shock your friend (or enemy). "Spacecraft get charged with electricity when they pass through ionized gas or 'plasma' above the atmosphere, and when enough charge builds up, they generate a spark," James continued. "New spacecraft are built with materials to reduce the build-up of charge, but when Relay 2 was launched, this wasn't well-understood. "Hence, perhaps it produced such a big spark because it was old." The problem with this theory is that all expectations for how sparks should behave suggest they should last tens of microseconds or longer. That's over a thousand times longer than this signal lasted. Additionally, the spacecraft charging described by James occurs mostly during active periods of the sun, and thus so too does the resulting sparking. That activity also impacts the Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, and at the time of this "pseudo-FRB," the magnetosphere was extremely quiet. As for micrometeorite impacts as the culprit, James explained that there are predictions that these tiny flecks of space dust, which weigh no more than a thousandth to a billionth of a gram, can produce flashes of radio waves when they impact a satellite. However, to do this, James said, micrometeorites need to be travelling at about 44,000 miles per hour (around 70,000 km per hour). "Based on one estimate, we think a 22 microgram micrometeorite might have been able to produce a flash such as the one we saw," James said. Again, the issue with this explanation is that predictions suggest the signal should have lasted microseconds, not milliseconds. Additionally, 22 micro-gram micrometeoroids are not common. James and colleagues estimated only about a 1% chance that they would have been pointing ASKAP toward a satellite at the same time as one hit it. "We slightly favor the ESD scenario, because the now-collapsed Arecibo telescope once saw similar signals from GPS satellites, albeit lasting 1000 times longer than ours," James added. "But we don't know." If you are an FRB-nerd like we are at there may be a concern clawing at the back of your mind right now. The team was quick to put our minds at rest that other FRBs may be revealed as "pseudo-FRBs." "The short answer is that's not at all a possibility," James said. "Most telescopes detecting FRBs now also measure exactly where they come from, and can pinpoint their host galaxy, which a satellite wouldn't have. These instruments are very good at identifying the direction of such a signal and getting rid of it. "If a satellite did miraculously produce an FRB imposter, somebody in charge of the satellite programmed it to produce an artificially dispersed signal just to troll us! In that case, we could always pinpoint the direction of origin and check if there was a satellite there or not." The biggest clue that an FRB is an artificial signal is its dispersion measure, which Glowacki explains is the effect of a time delay at lower frequencies of radio signals coming from FRBs and pulsars. It is due to ionized electrons slowing the signal at lower frequencies as FRBS travel through space, encountering plasma. This gives astronomers a good indication of how far signals have travelled. "For FRBs, there is such a large delay, due to the amount of ionized electrons between us and what creates the signal, that the only possible explanation is that they nearly always originate from another galaxy, sometimes billions of light years away," Glowacki said. "The signal we had detected barely had any measurable time delay. It had to have come from very close by, relatively speaking."Deller added that it is certainly possible that there are many more such bursts happening from this or other satellites. However, he said that a lack of dispersion is a dead giveaway that a signal came from much closer to Earth than an FRB so cases of mistaken identity aren't likely. This doesn't mean that this research hasn't highlighted a possible problem that needs to be considered. "We do need to be wary of confusing such signals with potential sources that are within or very close to our solar system," Glowacki said. "For example, there may be other satellite signals to be detected that may be harder to differentiate." Related Stories: — Scientists find universe's missing matter while watching fast radio bursts shine through 'cosmic fog' — Mysterious fast radio burst traced back to massive 'cosmic graveyard' of ancient stars — Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars For James, the big question going forward is how this research could help use radio telescopes to monitor satellites. These instruments could be particularly useful for detecting ESD."ESD is a huge problem for satellites, and can cause all kinds of damage," James said. "The problem is that ESD is very difficult to monitor. Mostly, it is only ever a 'suspected' cause, since it's extremely difficult to just go up to check on a satellite and work out what went wrong. So if that can be monitored from the ground relatively easily, that's great!" Deller agrees, adding there is a lot more to learn about the phenomenon discovered by the team. "Everyone is still surprised that it was possible to generate such a short-duration pulse," Deller concluded. "I'm hoping that we or some other group detect some more in the coming years and are able to come up with a model for how it happens. "It would be great if that turned out to be useful in terms of helping to avoid damage to satellites." The team's research is published on the paper repository site arXiv.
