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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Engineers’ ‘Nanocardboard’ Flyers could serve as Martian Atmospheric Probes

    April 24, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Despite weighing about a third of a milligram, Penn Engineers are now testing their “nanocardboard flyers” ability to lift payloads. In this artist’s conception, fleets of flyers could be launched from ground-based rovers and steered with lasers to collect samples. Planets and moons with thin atmospheres and low gravities would enhance these flyers’ ability to levitate by shooting air through their corrugated channels.

    Engineers are suggesting a new way to explore the sky: tiny aircraft that weigh about as much as a fruit fly and have no moving parts. These flyers are plates of ‘nanocardboard,’ which levitate when bright light is shone on them...

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    Milky Way could be Catapulting Stars into its Outer Halo

    April 23, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Milky Way could be catapulting stars into its outer halo, UCI astronomers say
    A simulated galaxy image from the FIRE-2 project, representing a structure spanning more than 200,000 light years, shows the prominent plumes of young blue stars born in gas that was originally rotating and then blown radially outward by supernova explosions. Courtesy of Sijie Yu / UCI

    Findings may change fundamental thinking about star system formation, dynamics. University of California, Irvine astronomers and others have shown that clusters of supernovas can cause the birth of scattered, eccentrically orbiting suns in outer stellar halos, upending commonly held notions of how star systems have formed and evolved over billions of years.

    Hyper-realistic, cosmologically self-consistent computer simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environments 2 project enabled the scientists ...

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    ALMA reveals unusual Composition of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

    April 22, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. DagnelloArtist impression of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov as it travels through our solar system. This mysterious visitor from the depths of space is the first conclusively identified comet from another star. The comet consists of a loose agglomeration of ices and dust particles, and is likely no more than 3,200 feet across, about the length of nine football fields. Gas is ejected out of the comet as it approaches the Sun and is heated up.
    Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. DagnelloCredit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

    2I/Borisov likely formed in extremely cold environment, high amounts of CO show. A galactic visitor entered our solar system last year — interstellar comet 2I/Borisov...

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    Exoplanet apparently Disappears in Latest Hubble Observations

    April 21, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This diagram simulates what astronomers, studying Hubble Space Telescope observations, taken over several years, consider evidence for the first-ever detection of the aftermath of a titanic planetary collision in another star system. The color-tinted Hubble image on the left is of a vast ring of icy debris encircling the star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away. The star is so brilliant that a black occulting disk is used to block out its glare so that the dust ring can be photographed. In 2008, astronomers saw what they thought was the first direct image of a planet orbiting far from the star. However, by 2014, the planet candidate faded below Hubble’s detection...
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