Category Archives: Science

Hawking’s Last Article

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Professor Stephen Hawking wrote one final paper which is published posthumously. In this new paper, Hawking and collaborator Professor Thomas Hertog conclude that our Universe sprung from a larger state or “multiverse” that is not infinite. Let us understand what this is all about by stepping back about 13.7 billion years in time. In these early days there is various evidence that our young Universe experienced a rapid period of growth called “inflation.” A very short time later, the inflation stopped and calmed down into the more gentle mode of expansion plus acceleration we see in our Universe today. But what is the situation beyond our Universe, in the multiverse, and how does it behave? The prevailing idea is that inflation is a normal attribute in the multiverse, such that the multiverse is expanding all the time at exponential rates in state called “eternal” inflation. From time to time, a universe such as our own emerges, and potentially even an … Continue reading →

Helicopter-like Drone to Accompany Mars 2020 Rover

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NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars. The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet. “NASA has a proud history of firsts,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars.” U.S. Rep. John Culberson of Texas echoed Bridenstine’s appreciation of the impact of American firsts on the future of exploration and discovery. “It’s fitting that the United States of America is the first nation in history to fly the first heavier-than-air craft on another world,” Culberson said. “This exciting and visionary achievement will inspire young people all over the United States to become scientists and engineers, paving the way for even greater discoveries in the future.” Started in … Continue reading →

The Rise of Sasquatch

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People are believers. A couple of years ago National Geographic did a story with the headline “The World’s Newest Major Religion: No Religion”, which addressed how “the religiously unaffiliated, called ‘nones’, are growing significantly”. However, even the religiously unaffiliated are often believers. Many of my Astronomy 101 students are ‘nones’. When the class touches on early ideas about how the universe works, ideas that might involve religious concepts such as the god Helios being the reason for the rising and setting of the sun, students will often volunteer their lack of belief in any religion, and marvel at how people ever relied on ideas like Helios to explain the world. But when the class moves into the subject of intelligent life on other worlds (where we learn about the historical and scientific track record regarding the idea of intelligent extraterrestrials—and it is not a good track record, as I have recently discussed at length) a surprising number of students reveal … Continue reading →

NASA Space Place: What Is the Asteroid Belt?

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What Is the Asteroid Belt? By Linda Hermans-Killiam There are millions of pieces of rocky material left over from the formation of our solar system. These rocky chunks are called asteroids, and they can be found orbiting our Sun.  Most asteroids are found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They orbit the Sun in a doughnut-shaped region of space called the asteroid belt. Asteroids come in many different sizes—from tiny rocks to giant boulders. Some can even be hundreds of miles across! Asteroids are mostly rocky, but some also have metals inside, such as iron and nickel. Almost all asteroids have irregular shapes. However, very large asteroids can have a rounder shape. The asteroid belt is about as wide as the distance between Earth and the Sun. It’s a big space, so the objects in the asteroid belt aren’t very close together. That means there is plenty of room for spacecraft to safely pass through the belt. In fact, … Continue reading →

Stellar Thief Is the Surviving Companion to a Supernova

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Seventeen years ago, astronomers witnessed a supernova go off 40 million light-years away in the galaxy called NGC 7424, located in the southern constellation Grus, the Crane. Now, in the fading afterglow of that explosion, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first image of a surviving companion to a supernova. This picture is the most compelling evidence that some supernovas originate in double-star systems. “We know that the majority of massive stars are in binary pairs,” said Stuart Ryder from the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) in Sydney, Australia, and lead author of the study. “Many of these binary pairs will interact and transfer gas from one star to the other when their orbits bring them close together.” The companion to the supernova’s progenitor star was no innocent bystander to the explosion. It siphoned off almost all of the hydrogen from the doomed star’s stellar envelope, the region that transports energy from the star’s core to its atmosphere. Millions of … Continue reading →

Earth as Art: Life Along the Nile

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It is easy to see from this image why people have been drawn to the Nile River in Egypt for thousands of years. Green farmland marks a distinct boundary between the Nile floodplain and the surrounding harsh desert. ~USGSDownload this image from USGS (7801 x 8400 px,  51.9 MB). View all the USGS Earth as Art Galleries: Gallery 1, Gallery 2, Gallery 3, Gallery 4. Here are some close-ups from the image above: Landsat 8 is the eighth satellite of the Landsat program. Launched on Feb. 11, 2013. Landsat 8 consists of three key mission and science objectives: Collect and archive medium resolution (30-meter spatial resolution) multispectral image data affording seasonal coverage of the global landmasses for a period of no less than 5 years; Ensure that Landsat 8 data are sufficiently consistent with data from the earlier Landsat missions in terms of acquisition geometry, calibration, coverage characteristics, spectral characteristics, output product quality, and data availability to permit studies of landcover and land-use change over time; … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Tending Towards Paganism

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This entry is part 8 of 161 in the series Across the Universe

This column for The Tablet first ran in May 2006; we first ran it here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015. It has been one of the more popular postings… “Believing that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism,” proclaimed a Scottish newspaper earlier this month [2006], citing as its authority no less than “the Vatican Astronomer, Guy Consolmagno.” I was as surprised as anyone; though I do worry that creationism can tend towards paganism, I don’t remember being so blunt. Well, he was careful not to put those words into quotation marks. But even if it is an accurate statement of what I believe, does it qualify as news? I’m not a theologian, much less a spokesperson for the Vatican. I’m an astronomer who happens to be a Jesuit, who happens to work at the Vatican. Of course, I have my opinions on matters of theology, but are they any more newsworthy than the … Continue reading →

GAIA Opens Our Eyes to the Galaxy

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There is a release of new astronomical data by the European Space Agency satellite called “Gaia.” The main purpose of GAIA is to report accurate distances to stars in the Milky Way. GAIA does this by measuring parallaxes. This method relies on measuring what we might colloquially call “perspective.” The idea is that a high precision snapshot of a nearby star will make a pattern on the sky with respect to its fixed stellar neighbors. If you then wait for six months and take another snapshot image of that same nearby star, you will see a slightly different pattern. The Difference between the two images is called parallax. Physically, what happens is that view of a nearby star against the background of fixed stars change when the Earth is one one side of its orbit compared to when the Earth is on the other side of its orbit. Similar an artist will paint a completely different picture of the same … Continue reading →

The Most Distant Star Ever Seen

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Using the Hubble Space Telescope and gravitational lensing, astronomers have set a new distance record for the farthest individual star ever seen: 9 billion light years! One of those astronomers includes Dr. Brenda Frye from the University of Arizona Department of Astronomy, and blogger for the Catholic Astronomer! Tucson News Now What is Gravitational Lensing? Massive objects in space have gravitational fields associated with them(1); the more massive the object, the stronger its gravitational field. Galaxies are massive objects with large gravitational fields – galaxy clusters even more so. Strong gravitational fields can bend light – much like the lens of a refracting telescope. If a distant galaxy is lined up just right with a galaxy cluster and the Earth, light from the distant galaxy will be bent and magnified by the gravity of the galaxy cluster. Astronomers have found numerous examples of this type of gravitational lensing – many examples appearing as smears or odd elliptical shapes. For the first time, astronomers … Continue reading →

The Company of Black Holes

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A result was announced last week that the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy has company in the form of 10,000 much smaller stellar mass black holes. We think that supermassive black holes are situated in the centers of most galaxies. The one in Milky Way has a mass of about 3-4 million times the mass of the Sun. This “invisible” astronomical body assimilates any object that hits its surface or “event horizon,” with the result being to grow its size. This is similar to how a fan of hamburgers and french fries “assimilates” that tasty fare in the form of a big tummy. It is thought that there are a great many examples of the much smaller stellar mass black hole varieties, which are the ones formed by the explosions of massive stars. Or, at least it is thought that there _were_ many examples of this stellar black hole variety. That is before these unsuspecting small … Continue reading →

Lyrids Meteor Shower 2018

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The Lyrids meteor shower is a medium strength shower that typically produces good rates for three nights centered on the maximum. These meteors usually lack persistent trails, but have been known to produce fireballs. This shower is best seen from the northern hemisphere, where the radiant is high in the dawn sky. This shower can be seen from the southern hemisphere, but at a lower rate. Peak: April 21-22nd Active from: April 16th to April 25th Radiant: 18:04 +34° (see image above) Hourly Rate: 18 Velocity: 30 miles/sec (medium – 48.4km/sec) Parent Object: C/1861 G1 (Thatcher) Source: American Meteor Society The Moon will be a waxing crescent, nearing first quarter. The Moon will set around 2:00 AM, so it should not hinder meteor observing from 3:00-5:00 AM. Here are a couple images of the orbit of the meteor shower’s parent body: comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher). Note how the comet’s aphelion is way out past Neptune at 55.68 AU, and the perihelion is very … Continue reading →

NASA Space Place: What’s It Like Inside Mars?

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What’s It Like Inside Mars? By Jessica Stoller-Conrad Mars is Earth’s neighbor in the solar system. NASA’s robotic explorers have visited our neighbor quite a few times. By orbiting, landing and roving on the Red Planet, we’ve learned so much about Martian canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil. However, we still don’t know exactly what Mars is like on the inside. This information could give scientists some really important clues about how Mars and the rest of our solar system formed. This spring, NASA is launching a new mission to study the inside of Mars. It’s called Mars InSight. InSight—short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport—is a lander. When InSight lands on Mars later this year, it won’t drive around on the surface of Mars like a rover does. Instead, InSight will land, place instruments on the ground nearby and begin collecting information. Just like a doctor uses instruments to understand what’s going on inside your body, … Continue reading →