Category Astronomy/Space

A small team of engineers and geophysicists from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Central Florida has found, via modeling, that creating millions of metal nanorods from material on the Martian surface and then blasting them into the atmosphere would be a more efficient way to heat the planet than generating greenhouse gases. Their paper is published in the journal Science Advances.

Science fiction writers have for many years envisioned a future when Mars is made habitable through terraforming techniques, allowing humans to survive without the need for special buildings and spacesuits...

A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, led by Assistant Professor of Astronomy Rana Ezzeddine and UF alumnus Jeremy Kowkabany, with collaborators, reports the discovery of a star that challenges astronomers’ understanding of star evolution and formation of chemical elements, and could suggest a new stage in their growth cycle.

It is widely accepted that as stars burn, they lose lighter elements like lithium in exchange for heavier elements like carbon and oxygen, but an analysis of this new star revealed that not only was its lithium content high for its age, but was higher than the normal level for any star at any age.

This star, named J0524-0336 based on its coordinates ...

A groundbreaking study has revealed that red dwarf stars can produce stellar flares that carry far-ultraviolet (far-UV) radiation levels much higher than previously believed. This discovery suggests that the intense UV radiation from these flares could significantly impact whether planets around red dwarf stars can be habitable. Led by current and former astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), the research was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Few stars have been thought to generate enough UV radiation through flares to impact planet habitability...

The Higgs a Particle could have Ended the Universe by now—here’s why we’re still here

Although our universe may seem stable, having existed for a whopping 13.7 billion years, several experiments suggest that it is at risk—walking on the edge of a very dangerous cliff. And it’s all down to the instability of a single fundamental particle: the Higgs boson.

In new research by me and my colleagues, just accepted for publication in Physical Letters B, we show that some models of the early universe, those which involve objects called light primordial black holes, are unlikely to be right because they would have triggered the Higgs boson to end the cosmos by now.

The Higgs boson is responsible for the mass and interactions of all the particles we know of...