Category Astronomy/Space

Watch the evolution of a stealth CME in this simulation. Differential rotation creates a twisted mass of magnetic fields on the sun, which then pinches off and speeds out into space. The image of the sun is from NASA’s STEREO. Colored lines depict magnetic field lines, and the different colors indicate in which layers of the sun’s atmosphere they originate. The white lines become stressed and form a coil, eventually erupting from the sun. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ARMS/Joy Ng, producer

A kind of solar storm has puzzled scientists for its lack of typical warning signs: They seem to come from nowhere, and scientists call them stealth CMEs. Now, scientists have developed a model simulating their evolution...

Konstantinos Giapis has shown how molecular oxygen may be produced on the surface of comets using lab experiments. He and his postdoctoral scholar Yunxi Yao fired high-speed water molecules (left) at oxidized silicon and iron surfaces, observing the production of a plume that included molecular oxygen. Oxygen atoms are red, and hydrogen, blue. Giapis says similar conditions exist on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, where the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission detected molecular oxygen.
Credit: Caltech

A Caltech chemical engineer has figured out how to explain a nagging mystery in space – why comets expel oxygen gas. The discovery that comets produce O2 – was announced in 2015 by researchers studying the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with the Rosetta spacecraft...

The new device must only be exposed to light in order to purify air and generate power. Credit: UAntwerpen and KU Leuven

University of Antwerp and KU Leuven researchers have succeeded in developing a process that purifies air and, at the same time, generates power. The device must only be exposed to light in order to function. “We use a small device with two rooms separated by a membrane,” explains professor Sammy Verbruggen (UAntwerp/KU Leuven). “Air is purified on one side, while on the other side hydrogen gas is produced from a part of the degradation products. This hydrogen gas can be stored and used later as fuel, as is already being done in some hydrogen buses, for example. ”

In this way, the researchers respond to two major social needs: clean air and alternative energy production...

Light curve of OGLE-2013-BLG-0132. The inset shows the enlargement of the caustic crossing parts of the light curve. The lower panel shows the residuals from the best-fit model. Credit: Mróz et al., 2017.

An international team has detected 2 new giant alien worlds circling distant stars. The newly found planets are estimated to be as massive as Saturn and are orbiting M dwarfs beyond the snow line. The planets were discovered by researchers working as part of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) group and the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) collaboration. OGLE uses the 1.3-m Warsaw Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, while MOA utilizes the 1.8-m MOA-II telescope at the Mount John University Observatory, located in New Zealand...