Evan Gough, Author at Universe Today

September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 by Evan Gough

Galaxies Breathe Gas, and When They Stop, No More Stars Form

Artist concept of how a galaxy might accrete mass from rapid, narrow streams of cold gas. These filaments provide the galaxy with continuous flows of raw material to feed its star-forming at a rather leisurely pace. Credit: ESA–AOES Medialab

For most of the history of astronomy, all we could see were stars. We could see them individually, in clusters, in nebulae, and in fuzzy blobs that we thought were clumps of stars but were actually galaxies. The thing is, most of what’s out there is much harder to see than stars and galaxies. It’s gas.

Now that astronomers can see gas better than ever, we can see how galaxies breathe it in and out. When they stop breathing it, stars stop forming.

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 by Evan Gough

When did the First Continents Appear in the Universe?

Continents might be necessary for life, especially complex life. This image shows super-continent Pangaea during the Permian period (300 - 250 million years ago). Credit: NAU Geology/Ron Blakey

On Earth, continents are likely necessary to support life. Continents ‘float’ on top of the Earth’s viscous mantle, and heat from the planet’s core keeps the mantle from solidifying and locking the continents into place.

The core is hot because of the presence of radioactive elements that came from neutron star collisions. It should be possible to calculate when the first continents formed in the Universe.

So that’s what one researcher did.

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 by Evan Gough

It’s Like Looking at the Infant Sun: Webb Captures Image of an Energetic Young Star

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s high resolution, near-infrared look at Herbig-Haro 211 reveals exquisite detail of the outflow of a newly forming young star, an infantile analogue of our Sun. Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, Tom Ray (Dublin)

Ever wondered what our young Sun might have looked like in its infancy some five billion years ago?

The audacious JWST has captured an image of a very young star much like our young Sun, though the star itself is obscured. Instead, we see supersonic jets of gas. Young stars can blast out jets of material as they form, and the jets light up the surrounding gas. The luminous regions created by the jets as they slam into the gas are called Herbig-Haro Objects.

September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 by Evan Gough

Strong Evidence that Supermassive Black Holes Affect Their Host Galaxy’s Chemistry

This is a composite image of the spiral galaxy Messier 77 (NGC 1068), as observed by ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Red and blue are different chemicals. Red are cyanide radicals concentrated mostly in the center and a large-scale ring-shaped gas structure, but also along the bipolar jets extending from the center towards the northeast (upper left) and southwest (lower right). Blue is carbon monoxide isotopes which avoid the central region. Image Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, T. Nakajima et al.

Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) are impossible to ignore. They can be billions of times more massive than the Sun, and when they’re actively consuming stars and gas, they become luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN.) A galaxy’s center is a busy place, with the activity centred on the SMBH.

New research provides strong evidence that while going about their business, SMBHs alter their host galaxy’s chemistry.

September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 by Evan Gough

Engineers Want to Make Methanol by Pulling Carbon Right Out of the Air

Researchers at Western Virginia University are working on a method of extracting carbon out of exhausted air from office buildings and using it to make methanol. Image Credit: WVU Illustration/Savanna Leech

Methanol is one of our most extensively used raw materials. It’s used as a solvent, a pesticide, and in combination with other chemicals in the manufacture of plastic, clothing, plywood, and in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.

It’s also used as a fuel.

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023 by Evan Gough

Mini-Subs Could One Day Ply the Seas Under Europa’s Ice

This is a model of the miniature underwater vehicle being developed at MARUM with partners from industry. It will have a diameter of around ten cm and a length of about 50 cm. The tiny submarines will be placed inside a melt probe then released in the subglacial lakes under Antarctica. Image Credit: MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen.

The most promising places to look for life in the Solar System are in the ocean moons Europa and Enceladus. But all that warm, salty, potentially life-supporting water is under thick sheets of ice: up to 30 km thick on Europa and up to 40 km thick for Enceladus.

The main obstacles to exploring all that water are the thick ice barriers. Assuming a spacecraft can be designed and built to melt its way through all that ice, what then?

Submarines can do the actual exploring, and they needn’t be large.

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023 by Evan Gough

How Can We Bring Down the Costs of Large Space Telescopes?

Our space telescopes are becoming more and more powerful. But they're also enormously expensive. Can we bring the cost down? Image Credit: STScI/NASA/ESA/CSA

We’re all basking in the success of the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s fulfilling its promise as our most powerful telescope, making all kinds of discoveries that we’ve been anticipating and hoping for. But the JWST’s story is one of broken budgets, repeated requests for more time and money, and near-cancellations.

Can we make space telescopes less expensive?

September 13, 2023September 13, 2023 by Evan Gough

Could We Find Aliens Terraforming Other Worlds?

Artist's conception of a terraformed Mars. Credit: Ittiz/Wikimedia Commons

The first early humans to use fire had no inkling of what it would lead to.

Fire was one of our first technologies, and humans have been making changes to their environments since the advent of controlled fire hundreds of thousands of years ago. Fast forward to current times, and our modern technological and global civilization is changing the Earth’s entire biosphere. From carbon emissions that acidify the oceans and weaken the shells of marine life to microplastics that find their way into organisms’ bloodstreams, our technology is intersecting, or combining, with the biosphere.

This has spawned a useful word: biotechnosphere.

September 12, 2023September 12, 2023 by Evan Gough

Lucy Has its First Asteroid Target in the Crosshairs

This image shows the tiny main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh. Lucy captured this image from 23 million km away. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft launched almost one year ago, in October of 2021. Its journey is an ambitious one, and long. It’ll visit eight different asteroids in its planned 12-year mission. Two of them are main belt asteroids, and the other six are Jupiter Trojans, which share the gas giant’s orbit around the Sun.

Lucy’s first, and smallest, target asteroid is now in the spacecraft’s sights.

September 12, 2023September 12, 2023 by Evan Gough

The Hubble Imaged Some Globular Clusters in an Unusual Place: Near the Milky Way’s Centre

Most globular clusters are found in the Milky Way's halo. But some, like the glittering globular cluster Terzan 12, are near the galactic centre. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen (Rutgers University)

Our galaxy has about 200 Globular Clusters (GCs,) and most of them are in the galaxy’s halo. Astronomers think most GCs were taken from dwarf galaxies and merged with the Milky Way due to the galaxy’s powerful gravity. That explains why so many of them are on the outskirts of the galaxy. But they’re not all in the halo. Some are towards the Milky Way’s galactic bulge. What are globular clusters doing there?