Latest news with #astrophysics
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
James Webb Space Telescope marks 3rd anniversary: What to know about observatory
Three years into its cosmic mission, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope continues to dazzle and inspire awe. Since July 2022, the advanced observatory has scoured the cosmos in otherwise invisible infrared light to uncover corners of our solar system and the wider universe that have long eluded detection. For NASA and astronomers the world over, Webb's observations have been an indispensable source of scientific discovery – yielding 550 terabytes of data and leading to the publication of more than 1,600 research papers. For the rest of us, we've been treated to some stunning photos and have perhaps learned a thing or two about the cosmos and Earth's place among the stars. And for its three-year anniversary, Webb again provided a gift to humanity with a never-before-seen look at a distant nebula fittingly known as Cat's Paw. "Three years into its mission, Webb continues to deliver on its design – revealing previously hidden aspects of the universe, from the star formation process to some of the earliest galaxies,' Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the astrophysics division at NASA's Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. Here's everything to know about the James Webb Space Telescope, and what it captured on its three-year anniversary observing the cosmos. To mark Webb's third year of operations, NASA shared an image the observatory gathered showcasing the thick, dusty layers of a section that's known as the Cat's Paw Nebula. Located approximately 4,000 light-years from Earth, the Cat's Paw Nebula is a massive star-forming region in the constellation Scorpius. Webb's recent infrared observation of the nebula focused on a single section of the astral feature, so-named because it resembles a feline's paw pad. Webb's observation of the nebula lends unprecedented detail to a region previously observed by other space telescopes, including Hubble, NASA said. The section appears to contain young stars shaping the surrounding gas and dust, and it progresses from a large molecular cloud to massive stars. Billed by NASA as "the largest, most powerful and most complex telescope ever launched into space," the James Webb Space Telescope far surpasses the abilities of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory is named for NASA's second-ever administrator. Orbiting the sun rather than Earth, Webb is outfitted with a gold-coated mirror more than 21 feet in diameter and powerful infrared instruments to observe the cosmos like no instrument before. Hubble, by the way, recently reached its own milestone in April when it marked its 35th year since launching in 1990 on the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Webb launched on Christmas Day in 2021 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency's Ariane Space Spaceport in French Guiana. Webb, which then began its cosmic operations in July 2022, was designed to operate for up to 10 years. But as fortune would have it, the mission team determined the observatory should have enough propellant to allow it to operate in orbit for more than 20 years. Since reaching the cosmos, Webb has not only facilitated countless scientific breakthroughs in astrophysics, but it also has produced gorgeous images of planets and other celestial objects, including star-forming regions. Earlier this year, Webb's data also was crucial in allowing scientists to determine that a menacing asteroid known as 2024 YR4 posed no threat to Earth during an upcoming flyby. 'As it repeatedly breaks its own records, Webb is also uncovering unknowns for new generations of flagship missions to tackle," Domagal-Goldman said. "The questions Webb has raised are just as exciting as the answers it's giving us.' In March, NASA also deployed into orbit its SPHEREx telescope to collect data on more than 450 million galaxies. The telescope got off the ground on March 12, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California. Scientists say the SPHEREx observatory, which became operational in May, will be able to get a wider view of the Milky Way galaxy – identifying objects of scientific interest that telescopes like Hubble and Webb can then study up close. For the next 25 months, the SPHEREx observatory will orbit Earth more than 11,000 times while surveying and imaging the surrounding sky. When SPHEREx takes pictures of the sky, the light is sent to six detectors that can capture different wavelengths of light, or exposures. By the mission's end, NASA will weave hundreds of thousands of SPHEREx's images into digital sky maps. There's also the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has spent more than 25 years detecting exotic environments in the cosmos to help astronomers understand the structure and evolution of the universe. The space telescope, which launched in 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, continues to provide data allowing scientists to make new cosmic discoveries. But now, Chandra's future remains uncertain after it was among the missions in President Donald Trump's proposed budget for NASA that could be cut. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: On its 3rd anniversary, James Webb Space Telescope captures Cat's Paw
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Are people at the South Pole upside down?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@ Are people on the South Pole walking upside down from the rest of the world? – Ralph P., U.S. When I was standing at the South Pole, I felt the same way I feel anywhere on Earth because my feet were still on the ground and the sky was still overhead. I'm an astrophysicist from Wisconsin who lived at the South Pole for seven weeks from December 2024 to January 2025 to work on an array of detectors looking for extremely high energy particles from outer space. I didn't feel upside down, but there were some differences that still made the South Pole feel flipped over from what I was used to. As someone who loves looking for the Moon, I noticed that the face of the man on the Moon was flipped over, like he went from 🙂 to 🙃. All the craters that I was used to seeing on the top of the Moon from Wisconsin were now on the bottom – because I was looking at the Moon from the Southern Hemisphere instead of the Northern Hemisphere. After noticing this difference, I remembered something similar in the night skies of New Zealand, a country near Antarctica where my fellow travelers and I got our big red coats that kept us warm at the South Pole. I had looked for Orion, a constellation that in the Northern Hemisphere is viewed as a hunter holding a bow and drawing an arrow from his quiver. In the night sky of New Zealand, Orion looked like he was doing a handstand. Everything in the sky felt upside down and opposite, compared with what I was used to. A person who lives in the Southern Hemisphere might feel the same about visiting the Arctic or the North Pole. To understand what's happening, and why things are really different but also feel very much the same, it might be useful to back up a bit from Earth's surface. Like into outer space. On space missions to the Moon, astronauts could see one side of the Earth's sphere at once. If they had superhero vision, an astronaut would see the people at the South Pole and North Pole standing upside down from each other. And a person at the equator would look like they were sticking straight out the side of the planet. In fact, even though they might be standing on the equator, people in Colombia and Indonesia would also look like they were upside down from each other, because they would be sticking out from opposite sides of the Earth. Of course, if you asked each person, they would say, 'My feet are on the ground, and the sky is up.' That's because Earth is essentially a really big ball whose gravitational pull on every one of us points to the center of the planet. The direction that Earth pulls us in is what people call 'down' all over the planet. Think about holding a baseball between your pointer fingers. From the perspective of your fingertips on the ball's surface, both are pointing 'down.' But from the perspective of a friend nearby, your fingers are pointing in different directions – though always toward the center of the ball. These relationships between people on the Earth's surface are good for a little bit of fun, though. While I was at the South Pole, I pointed my body in the same direction as my friends in Wisconsin – by doing a handstand. But if you look at the picture the other way around, it looks like I'm holding up the entire planet, like Superman. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Abigail Bishop, University of Wisconsin-Madison Read more: How many bones do penguins have? IceCube neutrino detector in Antarctica spots first high-energy neutrinos emitted in our own Milky Way galaxy Waiting for an undersea robot in Antarctica to call home Abigail Bishop receives funding from National Science Foundation Award 2013134 and has received funding from the Belgian American Education Foundation.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Dark Matter Search Could Lead Us to a New Kind of Star
Dark dwarfs could be lurking out in the cosmos, according to a new study. These hypothetical, effectively eternal bodies would be powered by dark matter annihilation, and though dim, there is a way we could spot them. Dark matter is expected to pervade the Universe, but being… well, dark, it's hard to find. It doesn't reflect or emit light – its existence is only inferred through its interactions with regular matter via gravity. No direct evidence of it has been found, despite decades of searching. Now, astrophysicists in the UK and US propose a new place we might find dark matter – hiding in the hearts of brown dwarfs. Bigger than gas giant planets but smaller than stars, these substellar objects never gather enough mass to kickstart the nuclear fusion process that powers stars. Instead, they float around space as large, dim, cold worlds. Related: But in some cases, the new study proposes, brown dwarfs might transform into something more intriguing. In areas with a higher density of dark matter, the strange stuff could accumulate in the brown dwarf's core. And if it's a certain type of dark matter, the particles could interact with each other to produce energy that powers the brown dwarf. The team calls these theoretical bodies "dark dwarfs". "These objects collect the dark matter that helps them become a dark dwarf," says Jeremy Sakstein, astrophysicist at the University of Hawai'i. "The more dark matter you have around, the more you can capture. And, the more dark matter ends up inside the star, the more energy will be produced through its annihilation." A hypothesis is only as strong as its testability, and the researchers include a way astronomers could verify the existence of dark dwarfs: look for lithium-7. This particular isotope burns away quickly inside stars due to their intense heat. But in cooler objects like brown dwarfs, lithium-7 can stick around. Astronomers already use the presence of lithium-7 as a signal to confirm that an object is a brown dwarf. However, if the extra energy from dark matter annihilation is powering a brown dwarf, it could appear larger and brighter than even red dwarfs of the same mass. So if you find something that looks like a red dwarf but has a lithium-7 signature, you might just have a black dwarf – and confirmation of dark matter. Of course there are a lot of ifs. For one, dark matter would need to exist in a specific theorized form, made up of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). One of the leading candidates, WIMPs would barely interact with regular matter, besides its gravitational influence, but would interact with themselves. WIMPs would be their own antiparticles, meaning if two of them touch, they'd annihilate each other in a burst of energy. When you cram them densely into a confined place – like the core of a brown dwarf – the energy released from all those collisions would power the object. Not to the extent of a star, of course, but more than your garden-variety brown dwarf. Because this process gives them a constant size, temperature, and brightness, dark dwarfs would be effectively eternal, the team says. However, if dark matter happens to take on a different form, like axions or dark photons, there'd be no way to tell from the outside that it's accumulating inside brown dwarfs. That's if dark matter exists at all – there's always the chance that the effects we attribute to it are caused by some other unknown physics. Still, it's important to come up with various ideas about what dark matter could be and how we might detect it. Different observatories and experiments can look out for different potential signatures of dark matter, allowing us to investigate a wide range of possibilities at once. In this case, the researchers say that the best place to look for dark dwarf signatures would be toward the center of our galaxy, where dark matter would gather most densely. The research is available on preprint server arXiv and will be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 3D Time Could Solve Physics' Biggest Problem, Says Bizarre New Study Physicists Catch Light in 'Imaginary Time' in Scientific First Not All Uranium Can Be Used in Weapons. Here's What 'Enrichment' Means.
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Science
- Washington Post
Citizen scientists pinpoint 10,000 eclipsing star pairs
Citizen scientists have successfully located thousands of previously unknown pairs of 'eclipsing binary' stars, NASA announced in June. The ongoing initiative helps space researchers hunt for 'eclipsing binary' stars, a rare phenomenon in which two stars orbit one another, periodically blocking each other's light. These star pairs offer important data to astrophysicists, who consider the many measurable properties of eclipsing binaries — and the information they bear about the history of star formation and destruction — as a foundation of the field.
Daily Mail
03-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Scientist warns shortest day in history is coming in weeks
A scientist has warned that Earth's rotation is unexpectedly accelerating, leading to the shortest day in history in just a few weeks. Graham Jones, an astrophysicist at the University of London , says Earth's rotation could speed up noticeably on one of three dates this summer, either July 9, July 22, or August 5. Since 2020, scientists have noticed that Earth has been spinning slightly faster than usual, but the cause remains a mystery to this day. Before that, the planet was slowing down over time, due to the moon's gravitational pull, which stretched days into the 24-hour cycle we now live by. Earth normally takes 24 hours, or exactly 86,400 seconds, to complete one full rotation, which is called a solar day. Earth's rotation is not always perfect, as it can shift by a tiny amount over time, a few milliseconds. That is likely due to the Earth's spin being influenced by natural forces, like earthquakes and ocean currents. Melting glaciers, movement in Earth's molten core, and large weather patterns like El Niño can also slightly speed up or slow down the planet's rotation. These changes are measured using atomic clocks, which track time more accurately than regular watches. The recent spin-up has surprised researchers. The fastest day recorded so far was on July 5, 2024, when Earth spun 1.66 milliseconds faster than the standard 24 hours. Although the scientist does not know the exact reason for the acceleration, they are studying what's happening inside the Earth. That includes shifting molten layers in the core, ocean currents, and high-altitude winds as they affect the Earth's spin. Earth is not solid all the way through. Its core is made of hot, swirling liquid metal. As that molten metal moves, it can change the planet's shape and balance, similar to how a figure skater spins faster by pulling in their arms. Ocean currents and jet streams, fast-moving ribbons of air in the atmosphere, also shift mass around the planet, causing small wobbles or changes in spin speed. Scientists are looking at all these pieces together, the moon's orbit, core activity, ocean flow, and wind patterns, to figure out what's going on. Starting in 2020, Earth began breaking its records for the shortest day . That year, July 19 came in 1.47 milliseconds short. On July 9, 2021, there was a 1.47 millisecond drop. In 2022, Earth recorded its shortest day on June 30, shaving off 1.59 milliseconds from the usual 24 hours. In 2023, the rotation slowed slightly, and no new records were set. But in 2024, the speed picked up again. Several days broke the previous records, making it the year with the most consistently short days ever measured. These estimates are based on past observations and computer models, and include systematic corrections and smoothing to account for natural fluctuations. Jones used information from the US Naval Observatory and international Earth rotation services. Atomic clocks track the numbers, and the tools measure what's called 'Length of Day,' or LOD. That's the time it takes Earth to rotate once, down to the millisecond. Even tiny changes in day length matter. GPS, phone networks, and financial systems rely on split-second accuracy. A shift of just a few milliseconds can cause tech glitches. Right now, the world keeps time using Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC. Sometimes we add a leap second to stay in sync with Earth's slow shifts. If the Earth keeps rotating faster, experts may have to remove a second, called a negative leap second . It's never happened before. The long-term trend is more familiar. Billions of years ago, Earth spun so fast that a day lasted only a few hours. It happened due to the moon's gravitational pull. Now, something inside Earth may be speeding it back up. But researchers say current models of the atmosphere and oceans don't explain what's happening. 'Sooner or later, Earth will decelerate,' Zotov said. But for now, the spin continues to speed up.
