Evidence of Water Vapor at Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. This water vapor forms when ice from the moon’s surface sublimates — that is, turns from solid to gas. Scientists used new and archival datasets from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to make the discovery. Previous research has offered circumstantial evidence that …

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Black Hole and Neutron Star Collisions Detected Twice in Ten Days

Two instances of black hole-neutron star collision events have been detected using the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors, details of which have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Previous gravitational wave detections have spotted black holes colliding, and neutron stars merging, this is the first time that scientists have detected a collision …

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arecibo telescope

Arecibo Telescope Will Be Dismantled Before it Collapses

For most of the last 57 years, the Arecibo radio telescope was the largest telescope in the world. Two cable breaks over the past few months. The telescope will be dismantled before it collapses. The 900-ton instrument platform is suspended 137 meters above the 305-meter wide dish. Arecibo Had Breakthrough Discoveries of Pulsars and Other …

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ESA Ariel Space Telescope Will Survey Atmospheres of 1000 Exoplanets Starting in 2029

ESA’s exoplanet mission Ariel, scheduled for launch in 2029, has moved from study to implementation phase, following which an industrial contractor will be selected to build the spacecraft. Ariel, the Atmospheric remote-sensing infrared exoplanet large-survey mission, addresses one of the key themes of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme: What are the conditions for planet formation and …

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40,000 Square Kilometers of the Lunar Surface Can Hold Water

A new study finds 40,000 square kilometers of the lunar surface has the capacity to hold water, which is about double previous estimates. 0.15% of the lunar surface is permanently shadowed, with ~10% of this area distributed in patches smaller than 100 m, that is at scales smaller than previously mapped by LOLA topography-based illumination models. …

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NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water in Sunlit Parts of the Moon

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This means water could all over the moon and not just in permanently shadowed craters mostly near the north and south poles. This illustration highlights the Moon’s Clavius Crater with an illustration depicting water …

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Roger Penrose Shares Nobel Prize in Physics and Pushes His Cyclic Universes Theory

Roger Penrose has shared in the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution with models of Black Holes. Penrose has used the renewed attention to push his 30-year old concept of Hawking Points and cyclic universes. This theory challenges the theory of cosmic inflation. Above – CMB sky, marking 6 most prominent raised-temperature circular spots, …

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24 Exoplanets Would Be Better for Supporting Life Than Our Earth

Washington State University researchers have identified 24 top contenders for super habitable exoplanets that would be better at supporting life than the Earth. The exoplanets are all over 100 light-years away. There is now a database of 4500 exoplanets from the ongoing surveys of other stars. Superhabitable exoplanets have the following features: * are in …

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Entanglement Between Distant Macroscopic Objects Could Improve LIGO Gravity Measurements

Researchers have demonstrated entanglement between distant objects (millimeters in size and with billions atoms in a magnetic field) in a hybrid system consisting of a mechanical oscillator and an atomic spin ensemble. This constitutes a new milestone for hybrid macroscopic entanglement and for demonstration of noiseless trajectories in the negative-mass reference frame. Future applications of …

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Gravitational Lens Mission Proof of Concept Mission Proposed for 2023

NASA NIAC 2020 virtual meetings has an update on the affordable SGL (Solar Gravitational Lens) mission architecture design. National nonprofit The Aerospace Corp the Solar Gravity Lens concept received a phase III $2 million grant by NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program. They described a roadmap for building the required SGL mission capability, beginning with a …

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