Recent Comments

    Category Astronomy/Space

    Mysterious Energy Source unlike anything Astronomers have seen before

    January 27, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist’s impression of what the object might look like if it’s a magnetar. Magnetars are incredibly magnetic neutron stars, some of which sometimes produce radio emission. Known magnetars rotate every few seconds, but theoretically, “ultra-long period magnetars” could rotate much more slowly. Credit: ICRAR.

    A team mapping radio waves in the universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it’s unlike anything astronomers have seen before.

    The team that discovered it think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf—collapsed cores of stars—with an ultra-powerful magnetic field...

    Read More

    Liquid Water Beneath Martian South Polar Cap?

    January 27, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/SwRI An SwRI scientist studied the antifreeze properties of exotic salts that exist on Mars, which could allow brines to remain liquid down to -103 degrees Fahrenheit. The studies show how a mile below the Martian south polar cap, brines between the grains of ice or sediments could produce the strong reflections detected by the radar instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter.

    Geophysical radar reflections, laboratory experiments point to slushy brines. A Southwest Research Institute scientist measured the properties of ice-brine mixtures as cold as -145 degrees Fahrenheit to help confirm that salty water likely exists between grains of ice or sediment under the ice cap at Mars’ south pole. Laboratory measurements conducted by SwRI geophysicist Dr...

    Read More

    Consistent Asteroid Showers rock previous Thinking on Mars Craters

    January 26, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    New Curtin University research has confirmed the frequency of asteroid collisions that formed impact craters on Mars has been consistent over the past 600 million years.

    The study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, analysed the formation of more than 500 large Martian craters using a crater detection algorithm previously developed at Curtin, which automatically counts the visible impact craters from a high-resolution image.

    Despite previous studies suggesting spikes in the frequency of asteroid collisions, lead researcher Dr Anthony Lagain, from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said his research had found they did not vary much at all for many millions of years.

    Dr Lagain said counting impact craters on a planetary surface was the only way to a...

    Read More

    Scientists make First Detection of Exotic X Particles in Quark-Gluon Plasma

    January 25, 2022, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    Caption:Physicists have found evidence of rare X particles in the quark-gluon plasma produced in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The findings could redefine the kinds of particles that were abundant in the early universe.
    Credits:Image: iStockphoto

    The findings could redefine the kinds of particles that were abundant in the early universe. Physicists have found evidence of X particles in the quark-gluon plasma produced in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, based near Geneva, Switzerland.

    In the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was a roiling, trillion-degree plasma of quarks and gluons – elementary particles that briefly glommed together in countless combinations before cooling and settling int...

    Read More