DART Showed We Can Move an Asteroid. Can We Do It More Efficiently?

This illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
This illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Like many of you, I loved Deep Impact and Armageddon. Great films, loads of action and of course, an asteroid on collision course with Earth. What more is there to love!  Both movies touched upon the options for humanity to try and avoid such a collision but the reality is a little less Hollywood. One of the most common options is to try some sort of single impact style event as was demonstrated by the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission but a new paper offer an intriguing and perhaps more efficient alternative.

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Planets Orbiting Pulsars Should Have Strange and Beautiful Auroras. And We Could Detect Them

Artist's impression of auroras on a planet orbiting a pulsar
Artist's impression of auroras on a planet orbiting a pulsar

We have been treated to some amazing aurora displays over recent months. The enigmatic lights are caused by charged particles from the Sun rushing across space and on arrival, causing the gas in the atmosphere to glow. Now researchers believe that even on exoplanets around pulsars we may just find aurora, and they may even be detectable. 

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Solar Storms Could Cause Mayhem to Trains

Solar storm. Image credit: NASA
Solar storm. Image credit: NASA

The rail service here in the UK is often the brunt of jokes. If it’s not the wrong type of rain, or the leaves are laying on the tracks the wrong way then it’s some other seemingly ludicrous reason that the trains are delayed, or even cancelled. A recent study by scientists at the University of Lancaster suggest that even the solar wind might cause train signals to be incorrectly triggered with potentially disastrous consequences.

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15 Years of Data Reveal the Events Leading Up to Betelgeuse’s “Great Dimming”

Betelgeuse's dimming over the years. Image: ESO's Very Large Telescope
Betelgeuse's dimming over the years. Image: ESO's Very Large Telescope

Anyone who regularly watches the skies may well be familiar with the constellation Orion the hunter. It is one of the few constellations that actually looks like the thing it is supposed to look like rather than some abstract resemblance. One prominent star is Betelgeuse and back in 2020 it dimmed to a level lower than ever before in recorded history. A team of astronomers have been studying the event with some fascinating results.

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What Could a Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Do?

Image of the M87 black hole by EHT and a CGI image photon ring. Image credit: EHT, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Image of the M87 black hole by EHT and a CGI image photon ring. Image credit: EHT, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Telescopes have come a long way in a little over four hundred years! It was 1608 that Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey who was said to be working with a case of myopia and, in working with lenses discovered the magnifying powers if arranged in certain configurations. Now, centuries on and we have many different telescope designs and even telescopes in orbit but none are more incredible than the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Images las year revealed the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy and around M87 but now a team of astronomers have explored the potential of an even more powerful system the Next Generation EHT (ngEHT).

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Iran Sent a Capsule Capable of Holding Animals into Orbit.

Image of the launch of the Salaman rocket by the Iranian Space Agency
Image of the launch of the Salaman rocket by the Iranian Space Agency

Despite popular opinion, the first animals in space were not dogs or chimps, they were fruit flies launched by the United States in February 1947. The Soviet Union launched Laika, the first dog into space in November 1957 and now, it seems Iran is getting in on the act. A 500kg capsule known as the “indigenous bio-capsule” with life support capability was recently launched atop the Iranian “Salman” rocket. It has been reported by some agencies that there were animals on board but no official statement has been released.

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Another Fast Radio Burst is Coming from a Hypernebula. Also, Hypernebulae are a Thing

Radio image of the potential hypernebula powered by the repeating FRB 20190520B. The nebula is billions of lightyears from Earth, but a global network of radio telescopes has placed strong constraints on its size.
Image of Fast Radio Burst 20190520B

If nothing else catches your attention in the title then surely ‘hypernebula’ does! There are some amazing processes scattered around the cosmos, of particular interest are the fast radio bursts (FRB). These brief flashes of radiation happen without warning…until now. A team in the Netherlands have identified a second FRB as coming from within a hyper nebula – a dense and highly magnetised cloud of plasma that is illuminated by a powerful but unknown source!

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Will Wide Binaries Be the End of MOND?

Artist view of an orbiting binary star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

It’s a fact that many of us have churned out during public engagement events; that at least 50% of all stars are part of binary star systems. Some of them are simply stunning to look at, others present headaches with complex orbits in multiple star systems. Now it seems wide binary stars are starting to shake the foundations of physics as they question the very theory of gravity. 

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Does Betelgeuse Even Rotate? Maybe Not

Image showing Betelgeuse (top left) and the dense nebulae of the Orion molecular cloud complex (Rogelio Bernal Andreo)
Orion and the molecular cloud covering the region. Betelgeuse is the red star in the upper left. (Credit : Rogelio Bernal Andreo)

Betelgeuse is the well known red giant star in the corner of Orion the hunter. The name translated in some languages means ‘armpit of the giant’ which I think of all the star names, is simply the best! Betelgeuse has been fascinating observers of late not only because it unexpectedly faded a few years ago but more recently a study shows it’s super fast rotational speed which is, when compared to other supergiants, is like nothing seen before. 

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We Should Hit Peak Solar Activity Next Year

SDO Sol
NASA SDO's view, of our tempestuous host star. NASA/SDO

You may be familiar with the solar cycle that follows a 22 year process shifting from solar minimum to maximum and back again.  It’s a cycle that has been observed for centuries yet predicting its peak has been somewhat challenging.  The Sun’s current cycle is approaching maximum activity which brings with it higher numbers of sunspots on its surface, more flares and more coronal mass ejections. A team from India now believe they have discovered a new element of the Sun’s magnetic field allowing them to predict the peak will occur early in 2024.

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