Category: Solar System

Our solar system

‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ season 5 episode 8 flips the script and visits the ‘Upper Decks’

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The latest “Lower Decks” episode, “Upper Decks”, reveals what the command crew gets up to when Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and T’Lyn aren’t hogging all that main character energy. So, as the lead quintet gets busy “mutilating gourds” for Halloween — everyone but T’Lyn would describe it as carving pumpkins — “Upper Decks” shows that the bridge crew doesn’t just “fade into the background” when the junior officers are elsewhere. It turns out that alien invasions, potential engineering disasters, and metaphysical crises are all in an average day’s work, in…

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How ‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ uses Spielberg magic to capture the spirit of the original trilogy

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All those spaceships, droids, lightsabers, and scoundrels had a big part to play in capturing the imaginations of a generation back in 1977. Even so, there’s a much subtler moment that arguably defines the original ‘Star Wars’ movie better than any other. Young farmer Luke Skywalker, told by his uncle that he needs to stay on Tatooine for one more harvest, steps outside the homestead to stare at a gorgeous binary sunset. It’s a moment that captures the feeling that your current humdrum existence is preventing you from experiencing the…

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Trump may cancel NASA’s powerful SLS moon rocket – here’s what that would mean for Elon Musk and the future of space travel

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Since Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory, rumors and speculation have circulated that NASA’s giant moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), could be under threat. The rocket is one of several key elements needed for the US space agency’s Artemis programme, which aims to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. For the first lunar landing mission, called Artemis III, the SLS will launch four astronauts on NASA’s Orion crew capsule. Orion will then travel to the moon. Once in lunar orbit, Orion will dock with…

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Why we can’t just name a quasi-moon ‘Moony McMoonface’

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During the summer of 2022, just after the James Webb Space Telescope started sending us a steady stream of deep-space postcards, astronomer Stephen Finkelstein and his team found a mysterious red splotch in one of those data deliveries. They’d spotted one of the earliest galaxies humans have ever laid eyes on — a realm that represented a distant pocket of the universe our species once couldn’t dream of seeing. And, importantly, they found it on Finkelstein’s daughter’s birthday, a serendipity that blessed this blob with a name: Maisie’s Galaxy. But…

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See the moon and Venus take a sunset stroll through the night sky tonight

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Wednesday evening will be another one of those special occasions when the two brightest objects in the night sky will get together and likely will attract a lot of attention, even from those who normally do not spend much time gazing up at the sky. If you face south-southwest about 45 minutes after sunset during mid-twilight you’ll see a beautiful crescent moon. And floating about 3 degrees above it will be the dazzling Evening Star: the planet Venus. Remember that your clenched fist is roughly equal to 10 degrees when…

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Watch Europe’s Vega-C rocket launch today on 1st flight since 2022 (video)

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Watch live! Vega-C rocket to launch Sentinel-1C satellite in return to flight – YouTube Watch On For the first time since the launch vehicle’s catastrophic mission failure in 2022, Europe’s Vega-C rocket is poised to return to flight today. The European Space Agency (ESA) is scheduled to launch the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite today, lifting off from Kourou, French Guiana, during an instantaneous launch window Dec. 4, at 4:20 p.m. EST (2120 GMT, 22:20 CET — local time). This will be the third mission for ESA’s medium-lift rocket, and its first…

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Handle on history: Knives embedded with rocket parts honor 45 years of Ariane launches

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A French company that crafts knife handles from leftover rocket metal and the wood from trees surrounding the rocket’s launch pad has created a limited-edition piece celebrating the anniversary of Europe’s venerable expendable heavy-lift vehicle. SpacePep’s has introduced its “45 Years of Ariane” folding knife. Each of the 100 individually-numbered knives is made with metal from the production of an Ariane 5 rocket, which is embedded in the snakewood handle. “It was indeed on Dec. 24, 1979, that the first Ariane launcher in history took off from the ELA1 launch…

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Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars

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Scientists have discovered that mysterious blasts of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be created when asteroids slam into ultradense extreme dead stars called neutron stars. Such a collision releases enough energy to supply humanity’s power needs for 100 million years! FRBs are transient pulses of radio waves that can last from a fraction of a millisecond to a few seconds. In this period, an FRB can release the same amount of energy that it would take the sun several days to radiate. The first FRB was observed in…

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Could dark matter have been forged in a ‘Dark Big Bang?’

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Our common understanding of the universe tells us that all matter and energy were created at the beginning of time during a period of rapid inflation called the Big Bang. However, in 2023, Katherine Freese, director of the Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, and Martin Wolfgang Winkler of the University of Texas suggested a radical new idea: a “second Big Bang.” This “Dark Big Bang” would have given rise to the universe’s most mysterious “stuff,” known as dark matter. Now, two scientists from Colgate University have expanded on…

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Cyber Monday Meta Quest 3 deal: Get a free Batman game and a three-month trial of Meta Quest Plus.

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There’s a Cyber Monday Meta Quest 3 deal available and you’ve still got time to get it: A free game and a free three-month trial of Meta Quest+ included. We love the Quest 3 and it sits at the top of our best VR headset deals guide. Get Batman: Arkham Shadow and a three-month free trial of Meta Quest+: Included with the Meta Quest 3. You can check out our Meta Quest 3 review for a more in-depth look at it but we found that it’s the best overall VR…

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