How Do We Settle on Ceres?
How might humanity go about establishing a colony on Ceres, the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt?
How Do We Settle on the Moon?
Welcome back to our series on Settling the Solar System! Today, we take a look at the closest celestial neighbor to Earth. That’s right, we’re taking a look at the Moon! Chances are, we’ve all heard about it more than once in our lifetimes and even have some thoughts of our own on the subject. …
How Do We Settle on Saturn’s Moons?
The idea of colonization of Saturn’s moons is attractive and presents many benefits, even if it is a challenging and distant prospect.
How Do We Settle on Jupiter’s Moons?
Jupiter’s largest moons – aka. the Galilean Moons – could one day be colonized, providing humanity with limitless resources and incredible opportunities for research.
How Do We Settle on Mercury?
Though it is not considered as such, Mercury is actually a viable candidate for colonization – if you can get around the extreme conditions!
How Do We Settle on Mars?
The idea of colonizing Mars has been explored at length, in fiction and as a real possibility. But what are the challenges and benefits of making Mars a “backup location” for humanity?
Almost a Third of Early Galaxies Were Already Spirals
In the years before the JWST’s launch, astronomers’ efforts to understand the early Universe were stymied by a stubborn obstacle: the light from the early Universe was red-shifted to an extreme degree. The JWST was built with extreme redshifts in mind, and one of its goals was to study Galaxy Assembly. Once the JWST activated …
Continue reading “Almost a Third of Early Galaxies Were Already Spirals”
Don't Get Your Hopes Up for Finding Liquid Water on Mars
In the coming decades, NASA and China intend to send the first crewed missions to Mars. Given the distance involved and the time it takes to make a single transit (six to nine months), opportunities for resupply missions will be few and far between. As a result, astronauts and taikonauts will be forced to rely …
Continue reading “Don't Get Your Hopes Up for Finding Liquid Water on Mars”
Binary Stars Form in the Same Nebula But Aren’t Identical. Now We Know Why.
It stands to reason that stars formed from the same cloud of material will have the same metallicity. That fact underpins some avenues of astronomical research, like the search for the Sun’s siblings. But for some binary stars, it’s not always true. Their composition can be different despite forming from the same reservoir of material, …
Continue reading “Binary Stars Form in the Same Nebula But Aren’t Identical. Now We Know Why.”
Webb Reveals Secrets of Neptune’s Evolution
A twinset of icy asteroids called Mors-Somnus is giving planetary scientists some clues about the origin and evolution of objects in the Kuiper Belt. JWST studied them during its first cycle of observations and revealed details about their surfaces, which gives hints at their origins. That information may also end up explaining how Neptune got …
Continue reading “Webb Reveals Secrets of Neptune’s Evolution”