Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Massive ‘El Gordo’ galaxy cluster suggests dark matter smashes into itself

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Strange behavior in a massive cluster of merging galaxies could be explained if dark matter, the universe’s most mysterious stuff, can collide with itself. However, the most favored model of cosmology right now is the cold dark matter (CDM) model — and it suggests that dark matter, which is effectively invisible because it doesn’t interact with light, is not self-interacting. To get to the bottom of this conundrum, researchers from the Astrophysics and Cosmology group of Italy’s Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) set about simulating what is happening within…

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SpaceX Starship launches nail-biting Flight 4 test of the world’s most powerful rocket (video, photos)

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The fourth test flight of the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built is in the books, and what a dramatic and nail-biting trip for SpaceX it was. SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the fourth time ever today (June 6) at 8:50 a.m. EDT (1250 GMT), sending the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas atop a thundering pillar of fire.  There were two main goals today: bring Starship’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, down for a soft splashdown…

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More people Googled ‘northern lights’ in May 2024 than in any other month in history

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The terms ‘northern lights’, ‘space weather‘ and ‘geomagnetic storm’ were googled more in May 2024 than in any other month in the search engine’s history.  With April’s total solar eclipse, and Mid-May’s widespread aurora show, public interest in the sun has been much higher than usual. As photos and discussions of the eclipse and northern lights flooded social media and secured segments on prime-time news broadcasts, Google search inquiries for these topics shot up significantly.  Using the Google Trends feature, we can utilize Google search statistics to track how public…

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Chang’e 6 mission’s far-side moon samples enter return-to-Earth module in lunar orbit

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China’s Chang’e 6 mission continues to make history, having collected the first samples ever retrieved from the far side of the moon and now transferring those samples between spacecraft in orbit. That transfer was necessary for the next step in the samples’ journey — returning to Earth. According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the successful rendezvous and docking of the Chang’e 6 ascender and its orbital module took place at 2:48 p.m. Beijing time (2:48 a.m. ET; 0648 GMT) on Thursday (June 6). The safe transfer of the…

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Terrifying new ‘Alien: Romulus’ trailer unleashes the facehuggers (video)

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Following a stunning teaser trailer released back in March, Alien: Romulus is kicking things up a notch with its second trailer, which is full of facehuggers, acid blood and zero-gravity thrills. The Alien movie series has been a fun one to follow over the decades, with the quality going up and down, the mythology being expanded in often contradictory ways, and the fearsome xenomorphs clashing against the extraterrestrials from the Predator franchise outside of comic books and video games. After Ridley Scott’s planned prequel trilogy was denied a conclusion and…

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Save $400 on Unistellar smart binoculars: Early bird deal

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Unistellar’s new smart binoculars, called Envision, are currently $400 off on an early bird sale. That’s a saving of 40% on a pair of binoculars that integrate augmented reality to enhance both nighttime and day-time viewing. Save $400 on the Unistellar Envision smart binoculars on pre-sale from their website.  These binoculars work in tandem with their Companion app which helps and enhances the stargazing experience for astronomers, just like when using the eQuinox 2, eVscope 2 and Odyssey smart telescopes. It overlays contextual information in the user’s field of view,…

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Midnight sun: What it is and how to see it

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The midnight sun is a natural summertime phenomenon in which the sun never sets below the horizon, not even at midnight. While this may sound like an otherworldly scenario, for those living in the polar regions, it’s just another summer’s day, albeit one that never ends.  Here, we explore the midnight sun — also known as the “polar day,” “white night” and “nightless night” — in more detail. Learn what causes the strange phenomenon, as well as where and when you can see the midnight sun for yourself.  Related: Goodbye…

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‘Star Trek: The Illustrated Oral History: The Original Cast’ reveals how William Shatner felt about tribbles (exclusive)

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Even if you’re not a hardcore Trekkie, you’re likely familiar with that unscrupulous galactic trader Cyrano Jones and his furry multiplying marvels known as the tribbles from “Star Trek: The Original Series.” That comedic fan-favorite chapter from “The Original Series” Season 2 first aired Dec. 29, 1967 and was written by David Gerrold. Now Titan Books will honor those bountiful balls with a standout section inside its upcoming retrospective hardback, “Star Trek: The Illustrated Oral History: The Original Cast,” and we’ve got an exclusive interview excerpt featuring Gerrold and episode…

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Sun unleashes giant plasma plume and reels it back in apparent ‘failed eruption’ (video)

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The sun erupted in a dazzling spectacle on Monday (June 3), firing off an intense solar flare captured in stunning detail by a NASA solar observatory. But when you look closely at the eruption, it appears that much of the solar material in the vast plasma plume didn’t manage to escape the grasp of the sun. In the video, captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory during an M-class solar flare,  you can see a huge plasma plume rise from the sun’s surface, only to be reeled back in during an…

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Mars is more prone to devastating asteroid impacts than we thought, new study hints

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Mars may face more than twice as many close encounters with potentially dangerous asteroids as Earth does, according to a new study. This could imperil exploratory missions to the Red Planet, but also provide insight into how the inner solar system formed.  Asteroids constitute the biggest threat from space to our planet — the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, for example, generated shock waves that injured over 1,000 people and caused more than $33 million in damage to infrastructure.  Astronomers and citizen asteroid hunters have detected around 33,000 similar space rocks that whiz closely past Earth…

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