Get ready for one of the greatest scientific news of the century. It seems astronomers will soon be showing the first shot of a black hole. Event Horizon Telescope participants (including a series of telescopes from around the world) have scheduled a number of press conferences around the world on April 10 to make announcement about “a groundbreaking result”. So far, the details are unknown. We can assume, however, that these are the first results of their mission to capture for the first time the event horizon of a black hole. The black hole is a space-time area that has...
US Vice President Mike Pens challenged NASA to send people to the Moon by 2024. Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator, accepted the challenge and announced that the deadline is sufficient. Pens wants a little more dynamics from NASA’s space projects. During a meeting at Alabama Space Center, he announced, that sending astronauts to the Moon, for up to 5 years, is in the goals of the current presidential administration. “Challenge accepted. Now let’s get to work.” Brindenstine said on Twitter. BIG NEWS: President Trump and @VP Pence have directed @NASA to return astronauts to the Moon in the next 5 years.Challenge...
The concept of “day” is so obvious to us, people, that we often get surprised when we realize that the length of the day on other planets can be quite different than here on Earth. Perhaps even more shocking thing is, that so far we did’t know how long is a day on Saturn. Thanks to data collected from the Cassini mission, we have an answer to this long-standing mystery. Saturn spins around its axis for 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal. Planetary scientists often use magnetic fields to determine the...
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is expected to launch sometime next year, so you’d be right to assume that NASA is making strides in manufacturing its next-generation rover and its accompanying landing gear in preparation for the big day. In this video, NASA’s Jennifer Trosper gives us an inside look at the progress that’s being made on the Mars 2020 rover. While the rover doesn’t look like much as of right now, Trosper says it’ll be completed sometime in the next several months. Other critical components, such as the cruise stage, the descent stage, the air shell, and the heat shield,...
British and American scientists have proved that billions of years ago the Earth resembled the modern Titan, a satellite of Saturn with an atmosphere and vast seas, high mountains, rivers, dunes, mists. Everything is like Earth’s, but with one difference: the temperature of Saturn’s largest satellite is minus 180 degrees, and rivers and oceans contain hydrocarbons. The results of their research were published in the new issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to scientists, 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere, like Titan’s, contained huge amounts of methane – a gas produced by microorganisms, the...
SpaceX made history last February when it flew an electric Tesla Roadster supercar into outer space with the help of its Falcon Heavy rocket, which just so happens to be the most powerful production rocket ever built by a commercial space company. But have you ever wondered where that car is and how it’s doing in space? Fun fact: the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX put in outer space is orbiting the Sun as you read this, and more importantly, it has traveled much farther than any other car ever made. In fact, experts estimate that it has traveled a distance equivalent to...
NASA is speeding up its plans to return to the Moon, and this time, the US space agency says it will stay there. Jim Bridstein, a NASA administrator, told reporters on last week, that the agency plans to speed up plans backed by President Donald Trump to return to the moon using private companies. “It is important to get back to the Moon as quickly as possible,” said Bridestin, adding that he hoped astronauts would be sent to Earth’s natural satellite by 2028. “This time, when we go to the moon, we will actually stay, we will not leave any...
Recently processed data from NASA’s Galileo orbiter have allowed spectacular video sequences to be produced from the flyby over Jupiter’s Moon Europa. Europa is the sixth natural satellite of Jupiter in increasing order of distance and the smallest of the four Galilean satellites. It was discovered in 1610 by Galileo and named after Europa, the mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus. Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa is composed mainly of silicates and has an icy crust. It has a core that’s most likely made out of iron and nickel. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed of oxygen,...
Imagine that you can get the energy from every star in a radius of 100 million light-years. Of thousands of galaxies, each of which has billions of stars. Try to imagine that you are capable of taking this kind of energy and using it in the greatest super weapon in the universe. The ruin you will cause is unimaginable. In fact, you do not have to imagine it, because all of this already exists in the form of gamma rays. What are these “space snipers” that shoot the Universe at random intervals. What happens if they hit us? Another interesting...
