Brian Koberlein, Author at Universe Today

July 14, 2020July 14, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Stars Like Our Sun Become Lithium Factories as They Die

This artist’s impression shows the red supergiant star. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, an international team of astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of this, or any star other than the Sun. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

In the beginning, the big bang created three elements: hydrogen, helium, and lithium. But it only produced a trace of lithium. For every lithium atom created, the big bang produced about 10 billion hydrogen atoms, and 3 billion helium atoms. The ratio of primordial elements is one of the triumphs of the big bang model. It predicts the ratio of hydrogen (H) and helium (⁴He) perfectly, and even works for the ratios of other isotopes, such as deuterium (²H) and helium-3 (³He). But it doesn’t work for lithium, and we aren’t sure why.

July 10, 2020July 10, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Earth’s Magnetic Field is Changing Surprisingly Quickly

Visual simulation of the Earth's magnetic field. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

If you’ve ever used a compass, you know that the magnetic needle always points North. Well, almost North. If you just happen to be out camping for the weekend, the difference doesn’t matter. For scientists studying the Earth’s interior, the difference is important. How Earth’s magnetic field changes over time give us clues about how our planet generates a magnetic field in the first place.

July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Amateur Astronomers Find a Brand New Storm on Jupiter

JunoCam took this image during its eleventh close flyby of Jupiter on February 7, 2018. Image credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / David Marriott.

There’s a new storm brewing on Jupiter. The most famous storm on Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, which has been active since at least the time of Galileo. Most of Jupiter’s storms don’t last for hundreds of years. They grow and fade just as they do on Earth. This latest storm was discovered by amateur astronomer Clyde Foster.

July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Might Have Seen a Star Just Disappear. Turning Straight to a Black Hole Without a Supernova

This illustration shows what the luminous blue variable star in the Kinman Dwarf galaxy could have looked like before its mysterious disappearance. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Large stars have violent deaths. As they run out of hydrogen to fuse, the star’s weight squeezes its core to make it increasingly hot and dense. The star fuses heavier elements in a last-ditch effort to keep from collapsing. Carbon to Silicon to Iron, each step generating heat and pressure. But soon it’s not enough. The fusion even heavier elements don’t give the star more energy, and the core quickly collapses. The protons and neutrons of nuclei collide so violently that the resulting shock wave rips the star about. The outer layers of the star are thrown outward, becoming a brilliant supernova. For a brief time, the star shines brighter than its entire galaxy, and its core collapses into a neutron star or black hole. It was thought that all large stars end with a supernova, but new research finds that might not be the case.

June 24, 2020June 24, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Just Detected Either the Least Massive Black Hole, or a Strange and Massive Neutron Star

This graphic shows the latest merger compared to known black holes and neutron stars. Credit: LIGO-Virgo/ Frank Elavsky & Aaron Geller (Northwestern)

Black holes are the ultimate limit of gravitational collapse. Bring enough mass into a small enough volume, and its own weight will squeeze the mass into oblivion. All that remains is a warped pocket of space that it can trap anything that strays too close, even light.

June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

A Repeating Fast Radio Burst Has Been Found. It Flares for 4 Days and then Remains Silent for 12 Days

Artist’s impression of a fast radio burst traveling through space and reaching Earth. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Five hundred million light-years from Earth, there is a deeply unusual object. It is radio silent for 12 days, then erupts in bright radio bursts. These fast radio bursts occur randomly over four days, then the object goes silent for another 12 days. Astronomers have observed this object for 500 days, and the pattern always repeats, like clockwork. We still aren’t sure what the object is.

June 19, 2020June 19, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Japanese Dark Matter Detector is Seeing a “Surprising Excess of Events”

The top PMT array with all of the electric cables. Credit: XENON Dark Matter Project

Dark matter is notoriously difficult to detect. So difficult that we haven’t detected it yet. Evidence for dark matter can be seen in everything from the warping of light near galaxies to the way galaxies cluster together. We are pretty sure dark matter is real, but we also know it can’t be made of any type of particle we currently know. But a new study has found some interesting data that could be evidence of dark matter, or not.

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Evidence is Building that the Standard Model of the Expansion of the Universe Needs some new Ideas

Artist's conception illustrating a disk of water-bearing gas orbiting the supermassive black hole at the core of a distant galaxy. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Once again a new measurement of cosmic expansion is encouraging astronomers to reconsider the standard cosmological model. The problem is the Hubble constant and dark energy. While we have a broad understanding of dark energy, pinning down the value of the Hubble constant has been a problem, since different measurements keep getting different results. Now a new study has been published which further complicates things.

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Neutron Stars Could Have a Layer of Exotic Quark Matter Inside Them

Illustration of a quark core in a neutron star. Credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC - IT Center for Science

Neutron stars are strange things. They can form when gravity kills a star, crushing its remains into a dense ball the size of a small city. They are so dense that only quantum forces and the Pauli exclusion principle keeps it from collapsing into a black hole singularity. The interior of a neutron star is so dense that matter behaves in ways we still don’t fully understand.

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Is the Concept of a Habitable Zone Too Wide?

Planetary system comparison — This size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside our own solar system, plus another planetary system with a habitable-zone planet known as Kepler-186f. The Kepler-186 system has a faint red dwarf star and a planet whose orbit would fit inside the orbit of Mercury.

In our search for exoplanets, we have found more than three dozen potentially habitable worlds. It’s estimated that there are 8 to 20 billion potentially habitable, Earth-like worlds in our galaxy alone. But there is a big difference between potentially habitable and actually habitable, and scientists are starting to narrow their definitions.