Category Astronomy/Space

Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

All living beings need cells and energy to replicate. Without these fundamental building blocks, living organisms on Earth would not be able to reproduce and would simply not exist. Little was known about a key element in the building blocks, phosphates, until now. University of Hawaii at Manoa researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in France and Taiwan, provide compelling new evidence that this component for life was found to be generated in outer space and delivered to Earth in its first one billion years by meteorites or comets. The phosphorus compounds were then incorporated in biomolecules found in cells in living beings on Earth.

The breakthrough research is outlined in “An Interstellar Synthesis of Phosphorus Oxoacids,” authore...

A global dust storm completely obscured the surface of Mars. Images from May 28 and July 1.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

When dust filled the Martian atmosphere during the recent planet-wide dust storm, observations were plentiful – even from unlikely instruments. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provided the earliest insights on May 30 when it observed an accumulation of dust in the atmosphere near Perseverance Valley, where NASA’s Opportunity rover is exploring. The increasingly hazy storm, the biggest since 2007, forced Opportunity to shut down science operations by June 8, given that sunlight couldn’t penetrate the dust to power the rover’s solar panels. Scientists are anxiously waiting for the roving explorer to regain power and phone home.

Meanwhile, on June 5, evidence quiet...

A snapshot from a simulation of the churning gas that blankets a star 80 times the sun’s mass. Intense light from the star’s core pushes against helium-rich pockets in the star’s exterior, launching material outward in spectacular geyser-like eruptions. The solid colors denote radiation intensity, with bluer colors representing regions of larger intensity. The translucent purplish colors represent the gas density, with lighter colors denoting denser regions. Credit: Joseph Insley/Argonne Leadership Computing Facility

New, 3D simulations reveal the inner workings of one of the universe’s most mysterious stars...

The weak lensing surveys such as HSC prefer a slightly less clumpy Universe (left) than that predicted by Planck (right). The pictures show the slight but noticeable difference as expected from large computer simulations.
Credit: Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey

An international group of researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University’s Rachel Mandelbaum, has released the deepest wide field map of the 3D distribution of matter in the universe ever made and increased the precision of constraints for dark energy with the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey (HSC).

The present-day universe is a pretty lumpy place...