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    Category Astronomy/Space

    On Mars or Earth, Biohybrid can turn Carbon Dioxide into New Products

    April 2, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology, Biology/Biotechnology

    A device to capture carbon dioxide from the air and convert it to useful organic products. On left is the chamber containing the nanowire/bacteria hybrid that reduces CO2 to form acetate. On the right is the chamber where oxygen is produced. (UC Berkeley photo by Peidong Yang)

    Bacteria on nanowires convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to organic building blocks. Chemists have created a hybrid system of bacteria and nanowires that captures energy from sunlight and transfers it to the bacteria to turn carbon dioxide and water into organic molecules and oxygen. On Earth, such a biohybrid could remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On Mars, it would provide colonists with raw material to manufacture organic compounds ranging from fuels to drugs...

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    Hubble finds best Evidence for Elusive Mid-sized Black Hole

    April 1, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This illustration depicts a cosmic homicide in action. A wayward star is being shredded by the intense gravitational pull of a black hole that contains tens of thousands of solar masses. The stellar remains are forming an accretion disk around the black hole. Flares of X-ray light from the super-heated gas disk alerted astronomers to the black hole’s location; otherwise it lurked unknown in the dark. The elusive object is classified as an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH), as it is much less massive than the monster black holes that dwell in the centers of galaxies. Therefore, IMBHs are mostly quiescent because they do not pull in as much material, and are hard to find. Hubble observations provide evidence that the IMBH dwells inside a dense star cluster...
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    A Martian mash up: Meteorites tell story of Mars’ water history

    March 31, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A Martian Mash Up: Meteorites Tell Story of Mars’ Water History

    University of Arizona researchers probed Martian meteorites to reconstruct Mars’ chaotic history. Their findings suggest that Mars might not have had a global magma ocean.

    Researchers probed Martian meteorites to reconstruct Mars’ chaotic history. Their findings suggest that Mars might not have had a global magma ocean.

    In Jessica Barnes’ palm is an ancient, coin-sized mosaic of glass, minerals and rocks as thick as a strand of wool fiber. It is a slice of Martian meteorite, known as Northwest Africa 7034 or Black Beauty, that was formed when a huge impact cemented together various pieces of Martian crust.

    Barnes is an assistant professor of planetary sciences in the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Labo...

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    ALMA resolves Gas impacted by Young Jets from Supermassive Black Hole

    March 30, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Reconstructed images of what MG J0414+0534 would look like if gravitational lensing effects were turned off. The emissions from dust and ionized gas around a quasar　are shown in red. The emissions from carbon monoxide gas are shown in green, which have a bipolar structure along the jets.
    Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), K. T. Inoue et al.

    Astronomers obtained the first resolved image of disturbed gaseous clouds in a galaxy 11 billion light-years away by using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The team found that the disruption is caused by young powerful jets ejected from a supermassive black hole residing at the center of the host galaxy. This result will cast light on the mystery of the evolutionary process of galaxies in the early Universe.

    It is commonly k...

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