A stellar nursery sounds like a placid place where baby stars go about their business undisturbed. But, of course, a stellar nursery is nothing like that. (Babies are noisy and cry a lot.) They’re dynamic places where powerful elemental forces rage mightily and bend the surroundings to their will. And this one, even though its name is the drowsy-sounding Smiling Cat Nebula, is no exception.
Continue reading “A Feline in the Heavens: The Smiling Cat Nebula”A New Way to Measure Distances in the Universe
If we want to understand the Universe, we have to start with its size. Ancient people had no idea there was a Universe the way we understand it now, and no idea of its size. They thought there was the Earth, with everything else rotating around it. It was the only conclusion within reach for a long time.
Continue reading “A New Way to Measure Distances in the Universe”Earth Might Have Formed in Just a Few Million Years
Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago. That simplistic statement is common, and it’s a good starting point for understanding our planet and our Solar System. But, obviously, Earth didn’t form all at once. The process played out for some period of time, and the usual number given is about 100 million years.
New research suggests that Earth formed more quickly than that in only a few million years.
Continue reading “Earth Might Have Formed in Just a Few Million Years”Did Life Need Plate Tectonics to Emerge?
It’s widely accepted that Earth’s plate tectonics are a key factor in life’s emergence. Plate tectonics allows heat to move from the mantle to the crust and plays a critical role in cycling nutrients. They’re also a key part of the carbon cycle that moderates Earth’s temperature.
But new research suggests that there was no plate tectonic activity when life appeared sometime around 3.9 billion years ago. Does this have implications for our search for habitable worlds?
Continue reading “Did Life Need Plate Tectonics to Emerge?”A White Dwarf is Starting to Crystallize into Diamond
White dwarfs are the stellar remnants of stars like our Sun. They’re strange objects, and astrophysicists think their cores can crystallize into enormous diamonds. But they need to find more of these strange objects, and they need to know their ages, to understand how and when it happens.
Continue reading “A White Dwarf is Starting to Crystallize into Diamond”The Tarantula Nebula Shouldn’t Be Forming Stars. What’s Going On?
The Tarantula Nebula is a star formation region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Tarantula is about 160,000 light-years away and is highly luminous for a non-stellar object. It’s the brightest and largest star formation region in the entire Local Group of galaxies.
But it shouldn’t be.
Continue reading “The Tarantula Nebula Shouldn’t Be Forming Stars. What’s Going On?”Geoengineering is Shockingly Inexpensive
Despite decades of warnings and international climate agreements, global carbon emissions are still rising. Carbon emissions seem like an unstoppable juggernaut as energy-hungry humans keep breeding and pursuing more affluent lifestyles. Reducing emissions won’t be enough to confront the climate crisis; we need additional solutions.
Geoengineering, also called climate engineering, could be the solution we seek. But is it financially feasible?
Continue reading “Geoengineering is Shockingly Inexpensive”Is it Time for a New Definition of “Habitable?”
Things tend to move from the simple to the complex when you’re trying to understand something new. This is the situation exoplanet scientists find themselves in when it comes to the term ‘habitable.’ When they were discovering the first tranche of exoplanets, the term was useful. It basically meant that the planet could have liquid water on its surface.
But now that we know of over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets, the current definition of habitable is showing its age.
Continue reading “Is it Time for a New Definition of “Habitable?””JWST Shows How the Early Universe Was Furiously Forming Stars
We can gaze out into regions in our neighbourhood of the Milky Way and find orgies of star birth. The closest region is in the Orion nebula, where astronomers have identified more than 700 young stars. They range from only 100,000 years—mere infancy for a star—to over a million years.
But we’re more than 13 billion years after the Big Bang now. What was star formation like way back when, when conditions in the Universe were so different?
Continue reading “JWST Shows How the Early Universe Was Furiously Forming Stars”JWST Sees Organic Molecules Ludicrously Far Away
When astronomers used the JWST to look at a galaxy more than 12 billion light years away, they were also looking back in time. And when they found organic molecules in that distant galaxy, they found them in the early Universe.
The organic molecules are usually found where stars are forming, but in this case, they’re not.
Continue reading “JWST Sees Organic Molecules Ludicrously Far Away”