A powerful solar flare erupted from a giant unstable sunspot last night, triggering radio blackouts on Earth and firing a hot plasma plume through the sun’s atmosphere at speeds of 900,000 mph (400 km/s). The long-duration solar flare from the sunspot region AR3575 began on Monday (Feb 5) at 8:30 p.m. EST (0130 GMT on Feb 6) and peaked at 10:15 EST (0315 GMT on Feb 6), according to solar physicist Keith Strong who posted details about the eruption on X. The eruption also released a coronal mass ejection (CME)…
Read MoreZoozve — the strange ‘moon’ of Venus that earned its name by accident
About a year ago, Latif Nasser was having a pretty ordinary evening. The day was done, the sun had set, and he was standing in front of his two-year-old son’s crib, tucking him in. It was the same room he’d visited tons of times before, performing the same duties, looking at the same wall decorated with the same solar system poster he’d seen from the same … wait. What was that? For the first time, Nasser did a double take of the artfully illustrated poster. And, for the first time,…
Read MoreNASA Tests New Spacecraft Propellant Gauge on Lunar Lander
3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander for the company’s first Commercial Lunar Payload Services delivery is positioned before being encapsulated inside its launch fairing. The Nova-C lander will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than mid-February. Credit: Intuitive Machines It’s easy to measure fuel in tanks on Earth, where gravity pulls the liquid to the bottom. But in space, the game changes. Quantifying fuel that’s floating around inside a spacecraft’s tank isn’t…
Read MoreWhat is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe
11 min read What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with a rapid expansion we call the big bang. After this initial expansion, which lasted a fraction of a second, gravity started to slow the universe down. But the cosmos wouldn’t stay this way. Nine billion years after the universe began, its expansion started to speed up, driven by an unknown force that scientists have named dark energy. But what exactly is dark energy? The short answer is: We don’t…
Read MoreWhat’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays!
3 min read What’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays! A flash of lightning. A roll of thunder. These are normal stormy sights and sounds. But sometimes, up above the clouds, stranger things happen. Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has spotted bursts of gamma rays – some of the highest-energy forms of light in the universe – coming from thunderstorms. Gamma rays are usually found coming from objects with crazy extreme physics like neutron stars and black holes. So why is Fermi seeing them come from thunderstorms? About a thousand times a…
Read MoreNASA Ingenuity Mars helicopter, broken and alone, spotted by Perseverance rover on Martian dune (photo, video)
NASA’s Perseverance Rover took a photo of its broken companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, as it sat alone on a dune. In this most recent photo of Ingenuity, the dual-rotor ‘copter can be seen motionless on a sandy dune in the background, as a barren, rocky Mars landscape fills the foreground. The photo was taken on Feb. 4, 2024, at 1:05 p.m. local mean solar time, a little over two weeks since it suffered its mission-ending damage. Related: NASA to ‘wiggle’ broken Ingenuity Mars helicopter’s blades to analyze damage NASA and…
Read MoreUniversity High School Wins Regional Science Bowl at NASA’s JPL
The 2024 National Science Bowl regional competition hosted by JPL included 21 schools, with this team from Irvine’s University High School taking first place. From left, coach David Knight, Feodor Yevtushenko, Yufei Chen, Nathan Ouyang, Wendy Cao, and Julianne Wu. NASA/JPL-Caltech After months of preparation, more than 100 students competed at the fast-paced annual academic competition hosted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For the second year in a row, a team from Irvine’s University High School claimed victory at a regional competition of the National Science Bowl, hosted Saturday, Feb.…
Read MoreEarth isn’t the only planet with seasons, but they can look wildly different on other worlds
Spring, summer, fall and winter – the seasons on Earth change every few months, around the same time every year. It’s easy to take this cycle for granted here on Earth, but not every planet has a regular change in seasons. So why does Earth have regular seasons when other planets don’t? I’m an astrophysicist who studies the movement of planets and the causes of seasons. Throughout my research, I’ve found that Earth’s regular pattern of seasons is unique. The rotational axis that Earth spins on, along the North and South poles, isn’t…
Read MoreNASA’s Laser Navigation Tech Enables Commercial Lunar Exploration
5 Min Read NASA’s Laser Navigation Tech Enables Commercial Lunar Exploration Navigation Doppler Lidar is a guidance system that uses laser pulses to precisely measure velocity and distance. NASA will demonstrate NDL’s capabilities in the lunar environment during the IM-1 mission. Credits: NASA / David C. Bowman Later this month, NASA’s commercial lunar delivery services provider Intuitive Machines will launch its Nova-C lunar lander carrying several NASA science and technology payloads, including the Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL). This innovative guidance system, developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia,…
Read More‘Halo’ Season 2 charges back onto Paramount Plus this week with plenty to prove
Few TV shows have incited the ire of loyal fanbases more than Paramount+’s live-action, non-canon adaptation of Bungie and 343 Industries’ revered “Halo” gaming franchise, when their helmet-less Master Chief first appeared in March 2022 dragging major revisions to the property’s core mythology with him. Using the overarching narrative of “Halo’s” dense sci-fi worldbuilding as a starting point and launching into an alternate timeline with revised characters and story elements that enflamed hardcore gamers out of their Mjolnir power armor, the show’s executive producers went their own way with a…
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