Category Astronomy/Space

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Jason-3 spacecraft onboard is shown at Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 4 East in Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, January 16, 2016. REUTERS/Gene BlevinsSpace …

A $180 million satellite to study the world’s oceans in a changing climate will blast off Sunday atop a Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX will try to land on a floating platform after launch. The satellite, Jason-3 will show how global warming and sea level rise affect wind speeds and currents as close as 1 km from shore, whereas past satellites were limited to ~6.2 miles from the coast. “That is a significant advantage over our predecessors,” said Jim Silva,National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The technology will also monitor global sea surface heights, tropica...

Pluto’s Wright Mons in color Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Scientists with NASA’s New Horizons mission have assembled this highest-resolution color view of one of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. This feature, known as Wright Mons, was informally named by the New Horizons team in honor of the Wright brothers. At ~90 miles across and 2.5 miles high, this feature is enormous. If it is in fact an ice volcano, it would be the largest such feature discovered in the outer solar system.

Mission scientists are intrigued by the sparse distribution of red material in the image and wonder why it is not more widespread...

In this image, a laser beam in an experiment propagates along the two-dimensional surface of a glass object shaped like an hourglass, curling once around the middle of the object. This is an example of an object with negative surface curvature (like a saddle, for example), in contrast to an object with positive surface curvature, such as a sphere. Credit: Vincent Schultheiß

To investigate the influence of gravity on the propagation of light, researchers usually have to examine astronomical length scales and huge masses. However, physicists have shown that there is another way. In a recent study, they find the answers to astronomical questions in the laboratory, shifting the focus to a previously underappreciated material property – surface curvature.

According to Einstein’s general theory...

Artist’s impression of the clouds scattered by an intermediate mass black hole. Credit: Tomoharu Oka (Keio University)

Nobeyama 45-m Radio Telescope data reveals signs of an invisible black hole with a mass of 100,000 times the mass of the Sun around the center of the Milky Way. The team assumes that this possible “intermediate mass” black hole is a key to understanding the birth of the supermassive black holes located in the centers of galaxies.

Prof Tomoharu Oka’s team has found an enigmatic gas cloud, called CO-0.40-0.22, only 200 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. What makes CO-0.40-0.22 unusual is its surprisingly wide velocity dispersion: the cloud contains gas with a very wide range of speeds...