Mark Thompson, Author at Universe Today

January 24, 2025January 24, 2025 by Mark Thompson

NASA is Testing Shape Memory Alloy Wheels

A test rover with shape memory alloy spring tires traverses rocky, Martian-simulated terrain. Credit: NASA

Rovers on alien worlds need to be built of strong stuff. The dry rugged terrain can be punishing on the wheels as they explore the surface. In order to prevent the damage to the wheels, NASA is testing a shape memory alloy material that can return to its original shape after being bent, stretched, heated or cooled. NASA has already used this material for years but never in tires, in what may be its perfect application.

January 24, 2025January 24, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Astronomers Release a Huge Survey of Exocomet Belts

All 74 exocomet belts, as imaged in this study. Image: Prof. Luca Matrà.

The study of exoplanets is challenging enough with the immense distances and glare from the host start but astronomers have taken planetary system explorations to the next level. A team of astronomers have recently announced that they have observed belts of icy pebbles in systems with exoplanets. Using a radio telescope they have been able to detect wavelengths of radiation emitted by millimeter-sized pebbles created by exocomet collisions! Based upon this survey, they have found that about 20% of planetary systems contain these exocometary belts.

January 23, 2025January 23, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Life Would Struggle to Survive Near Wolf 359

Red dwarfs always make me think of the classic British TV science comedy show in the 90’s that was named after them. The stars themselves better little resemblance to the show though. They are small, not surprisingly red stars that can generate flares and coronal mass ejections that rival many of the much larger stars. A team of astronomers have recently used the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to study Wolf 359 and found it unleashes brutal X-ray flares that would be extremely damaging to life on nearby planets.

January 23, 2025January 23, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Rubin Will Find Millions of Supernovae

This illustration depicts NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory capturing light from supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars. These cosmic beacons are important for studying the expansion of the Universe. In particular, Type Ia supernovae serve as “standard candles” to measure cosmic distances. By observing thousands of supernovae across vast regions of the sky, Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will provide the largest sample of Type Ia supernovae yet, helping scientists refine the Universe's expansion rate and gain deeper insights into the mysterious “dark energy” driving its acceleration.

The discovery of a few thousand type 1a supernovae over the last few decades has helped measure the expansion of the Universe. The new Vera Rubin Observatory will soon to start scour the skies looking for more. Astronomers hope that the discovery and observations of millions more exploding stars will allow the universal expansion to be mapped in unprecedented detail. If all goes to plan, the survey will begin in a few months with the entire southern sky being scanned every few nights.

January 22, 2025January 22, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Hot Jupiters Can Co-Exist with Other Planets

The WASP-132 system was know to harbour WASP-132b, here in the foreground, a hot Jupiter planet orbiting around a K-type star in 7.1 days. New data confirms the system has more planets, including an inner super-Earth, here seen transiting in front of the orange host-star. Visible as a pale blue dot near the top right corner is also the giant planet WASP-132d discovered in the outskirts of the system.

Exoplanets come in a variety of forms and one particular type, the Hot Jupiters have recently captured the attention of astronomers. They are usually found orbiting extremely close to their host star, completing an orbit in a few days or even hours. It has been thought that they migrated further out from the star, bullying other planets out of their way. Sometimes hurling them into the star or throwing them out of the system entirely. A new study however, suggests their evolution is not quite so violent since a Hot Jupiter has been found in a system with a Super-Earth and an icy giant.

January 22, 2025January 22, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Two Lunar Landers are Off to the Moon

Creating a golden streak in the night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander soars upward after liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Jan. 15, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. The Blue Ghost lander will carry 10 NASA science and technology instruments to the lunar surface to further understand the Moon and help prepare for future human missions. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

Back in the 60’s and 70’s it was all about the Moon. The Apollo program took human beings to the Moon for the first time and now over 50 years later things are really hotting up again. The latest mission to head toward our celestial neighbour is a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching Blue Ghost Mission 1 and the HAKUTO-R lander. The Blue Ghost is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and it carries a total of 10 NASA payloads, the other is a private Japanese enterprise to explore the Moon. The launch went well and both landers will arrive shortly.

January 21, 2025January 21, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Curiosity Finds Ancient Wave Ripples on Mars

Images taken by the Curiosity rover of wave ripples on Mars, annotated by the researchers. Credit: Mondro et al. Science Advances, Jan 2025

NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been exploring Mars since 2012 and, more recently has found evidence of ice-free ancient ponds and lakes on the surface. The rover found small undulations like those seen in sandy lake-beds on Earth. They would have been created by wind-driven water moving back and forth across the surface. The inescapable conclusion is that the water would have been open to the elements instead of being covered by ice. The discovery suggests the ripples formed 3.7 billion years ago.

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Mark Thompson

This Quasar Helped End the Dark Ages of the Universe

(AI-generated image created with researcher illustration, edited by Michael S. Helfenbein)

After the Big Bang came the Dark Ages, a period lasting hundreds of millions of years when the universe was largely without light. It ended in the epoch of reionization when neutral hydrogen atoms became charged for the first time and the first generation of stars started to form. The question that has perplexed astronomers is what caused the first hydrogen atoms to charge. A team of researchers have observed an early quasar that pumped out enormous amounts of x-ray radiation helping to drive the reionization.

January 14, 2025January 18, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Astronomers Reveal the 3D Structure of the Ring Nebula

The Ring Nebula as captured in visible light by Hubble Space Telescope, left; in radio emission from CO molecules by the Submillimeter Array (SMA), center; and in the infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), right. The image is overlaid with contours of emission from CO that is moving perpendicular to our sight line, showing how the molecular gas imaged by the SMA envelopes the ionized gas imaged by JWST.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have seen the Ring Nebula. It’s a favourite amongst stargazers around the globe and is surely one of the most well known objects in the night sky. The remains of a Sun-like star, its outer layers have drifted out into space leaving behind a the stellar corpse, a white dwarf. It looks like a giant smoke ring in the sky but what is its true shape? A team of astronomers have mapped carbon monoxide that surrounds the nebula and built a 3D model to reveal its shape.

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Mark Thompson

LIGO Has Detected Unusual Black Holes Merging, But they Probably Don’t Explain Dark Matter

The traditional theory of black hole formation seems to struggle to explain how black holes can merge into larger more massive black holes yet they have been seen with LIGO. It’s possible that they may have formed at the beginning of time and if so, then they may be a worthy candidate to explain dark matter but only if there are enough of them. A team of researchers recently searched for microlensing events from black holes in the Large Magellanic Cloud but didn’t find enough to account for more than a fraction of dark matter.