Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Tiny black holes left over from the Big Bang may be prime dark matter suspects

NeRD

When it comes to primordial black holes being dark matter suspects, their alibi may be falling apart. Tiny black holes, created seconds after the birth of the universe, may survive longer than expected, reigniting a suspicion that primordial black holes could account for dark matter, the universe’s most mysterious stuff. Dark matter currently represents one of the most pressing problems in physics. That is because, despite making up an estimated 85% of the matter in the cosmos, dark matter remains effectively invisible to our eyes because it doesn’t interact with…

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‘You could feel the energy and wonder’: Despite clouds, totality wows crowds during solar eclipse in Syracuse

NeRD

Syracuse, N.Y. — On Monday morning (April 8), a crowd began gathering on the lawn of the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology (MOST), hoping to witness a total solar eclipse. “I’ve seen a number of partial [solar] eclipses, but this is my first total eclipse,” said Lindsay Hays, a program scientist in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “So I’m very excited for it.” Hays answered questions from eclipse viewers as a part of the museum’s Solar Eclipse Festival, which lasted from 12 p.m. to 4…

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ULA chronicles the rise of Vulcan rocket in new employee-drawn comic book

NeRD

Vulcan, United Launch Alliance‘s (ULA) new heavy-lift rocket, was not the result of having to flee an exploding planet, being exposed to gamma rays or even surviving the bite of a radioactive spider, but it does have an origin story compelling enough to warrant it having its own comic book. Or so struck Cory Wood, ULA’s senior graphic designer, who led the creation of “Ignition! The Origin Story of the Vulcan Centaur Rocket,” the first (and perhaps only) issue of the aerospace company’s new celebratory graphic novel. Related: ULA’s 1st…

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Watch an exclusive clip from the CNN’ ‘Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight’ finale (video)

NeRD

Other than the national tragedy of the Apollo 1 command capsule fire that took the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee on Jan. 27, 1967 during a launch rehearsal at Cape Kennedy, NASA’s darkest hour up to that point occurred 19 years later when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch on Jan. 28, 1986, causing the deaths of all seven astronaut aboard.  Then on Feb. 1, 2003 disaster struck once again after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during its reentry flight over…

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‘Fly Me to the Moon’ trailer mixes real-life Apollo history with moon landing hoax

NeRD

If you are even a casual space history enthusiast, watching the new trailer for the upcoming movie “Fly Me to the Moon” might leave you thinking that it is an entire work of fiction. And for the most part, you would be correct. As the trailer reveals and Columbia Pictures and Apple Original Films’ synopsis reads, “Fly Me to the Moon” is a “comedy-drama set against the high-stakes backdrop of NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing.” Scarlett Johansson plays the fictional Kelly Jones, a marketing maven who is brought in…

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My formal 2024 solar eclipse apology

NeRD

Since April 8, when I witnessed a total eclipse of the sun, I’ve been feeling progressively more melancholy. It isn’t because I was underwhelmed, or because my vantage point wasn’t ideal, or because of some depressing epiphany I had while watching the moon turn our planet’s star into a wispy white halo. I’ve actually been struggling to find the right words to explain my sullenness all week. I’ve been scribbling random thoughts in my iPhone notes app as they’ve emerged. They’ve come up as I sat in a Lyft, ate…

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Achoo! Baby star ‘sneezes’ tell astronomers a lot about their development

NeRD

Every new parent knows the cold anxiety that grips them when their baby sneezes for the first time. That’s when a litany of possible issues and ailments probably begin to irrationally race through your mind. Researchers now know baby stars also “sneeze,” but these infinitely more powerful post-natal sneezes launch gas, dust, and magnetic energy. In other words, they’re more useful to the cosmos than stressful.  These eruptions from so-called “protostars” are actually a vital part of stellar development, and can tell scientists a great deal about that stellar body’s evolution…

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A NASA spacecraft spotted something weird orbiting the moon. It was just a lunar neighbor (photos)

NeRD

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) snapped a perfectly timed photo as it crossed paths with another spacecraft orbiting the moon.  The LRO, which has been orbiting the moon for 15 years, captured several images of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Danuri lunar orbiter as the two spacecraft, traveling in nearly parallel orbits, zoomed past each other in opposite directions during three orbits between March 5 and March 6, according to a statement from NASA.  Danuri, the Republic of Korea’s first moon-explorer, has been in lunar orbit since December 2022. At…

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Why Peter Higgs leaves a massive legacy in the field of physics

NeRD

On April 8, 2024, British theoretical physicist Peter Ware Higgs passed away at the age of 94. It was almost 12 years ago, on July 4, 2012, in a fairly inauspicious lecture hall located in Geneva, Switzerland, when Higgs became an iconic figure in modern science. That was the day it was announced that collisions between particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility — arguably the most ambitious and audacious science experiment ever — revealed the existence of the Higgs Boson. The discovery of the Higgs boson, named for…

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See Jupiter close to a crescent moon (Mars near Saturn, too) in the ‘View a Planet Day’ night sky

NeRD

In an unofficial sense, I would like to dub today (April 10) as “View a Planet Day.”  In the early morning hours will be two planets that will appear very close to each other and then later that same day, in the early evening sky we’ll have a chance to see Jupiter hovering near to a slender waxing crescent moon, making for a rather eye-catching sight. And there will be other celestial objects out there to see and find as well among the brightest planets in the night sky. Here…

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