Matt Williams, Author at Universe Today

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Matt Williams

Mars Could Have Been wet for Much Longer Than Previously Believed

Artist's impression of Mars during the Noachian Era. Credit: Ittiz/Wikipedia Commons

Billions of years ago, Mars was a much different place than it is today. During the same period when life was first emerging on Earth, Mars had a thicker atmosphere, warmer surface temperatures, and flowing water on its surface. Evidence of this warmer, wetter past is preserved on the planet’s surface today in the form of river channels, lakebeds, alluvial fans, and sedimentary deposits. When this period began, and how long it lasted, remains the subject of much debate for scientists.

Knowing how long this period lasted helps establish how big the window of opportunity was for life on Mars. But according to new NASA-funded research from the Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC), Mars may have been wetter longer than previously expected. According to recently published results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mars may have had a northern ocean as recent as three billion years ago.

February 5, 2022February 5, 2022 by Matt Williams

The Space Shuttle was Originally Hoped to be a Fully Reusable two-Stage Rocket

For anyone old enough to remember the 1980s, the Space Shuttle was an iconic symbol of spaceflight. For thirty years (1981-2011), this program flew 135 missions, which consisted of orbital science experiments, deploying satellites, launching interplanetary probes, participating in the Shuttle-Mir program, deploying the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and constructing the International Space Station (ISS). There were also tragedies along the way, such as the Challenger (1986) and Columbia disasters (2003).

But here’s an interesting and little-known fact: the actual design of the Space Shuttle could have been entirely different. Rather than the reusable Space Transportation System (STS) and expendable external tank (E.T.) and solid rocket boosters (SRB) we all remember, there was also a concept for a fully-reusable two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane (DC-3). In a lovely video by spaceflight animator Haze Gray Art (YouTube handle Hazegrayart), viewers get a chance to see what a full take-off and landing would have looked like.

February 3, 2022February 4, 2022 by Matt Williams

Ice Cores Tell the Tale of an Incredibly Powerful Solar Storm That Hit the Earth 9,200 Years Ago

For decades, climate researchers and Earth scientists have used cores from ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic to better understand Earth’s climate history. Given how sensitive our atmosphere and climate are to the Sun, these ice cores are also a record of Solar activity. In a recent analysis of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, a research team led by Lund University in Sweden found evidence of an extreme solar storm that occurred about 9,200 years ago – when solar activity was believed to be one of the Sun’s more “quiet” phases.

The team consisted of researchers from Lund’s Department of Geology & Quaternary Sciences, the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research, the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics at ETH Zürich, and the Ice Dynamics and Paleoclimate team (part of the British Antarctic Survey) at Cambridge University. Their results appeared in a paper that was recently published by Nature Communications.

February 3, 2022February 3, 2022 by Matt Williams

NASA and HeroX Want Your Ideas for How to Deal with Space Waste!

Space agencies worldwide have some very ambitious plans that will take place in this decade and the next. For starters, NASA and its agency and commercial partners plan to return to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. Beyond that, they also intend to build the infrastructure that will allow for a “sustained program of lunar exploration,” such as bases on the surface and the Lunar Gateway. Once all of that is in place, NASA will be contemplating sending crewed missions to Mars.

This raises many challenges, including logistics, energy requirements, and the health and safety of astronauts. One crucial concern that is not often thought of by the general public is what to do about the waste generated along the way. To address this, the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) has partnered with HeroX once again to launch the NASA Waste Jettison Mechanism Challenge. With a prize purse of $30,000, NASA is seeking solutions for safely and effectively jettisoning waste that cannot be recycled.

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 by Matt Williams

A Highly Eccentric Black Hole Merger Detected for the First Time

In February 2016, scientists with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed the first-ever detection of a gravitational wave event. Originally predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, GWs result from mergers between massive objects – like black holes, neutron stars, and supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Since 2016, dozens of events have been confirmed, opening a new window to the Universe and leading to a revolution in astronomy and cosmology.

In another first, a team of scientists led by the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG) announced that they may have detected a merger of two black holes with eccentric orbits for the first time. According to the team’s paper, which recently appeared in Nature Astronomy, this potential discovery could explain why some of the black hole mergers detected by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration are much heavier than previously expected.

January 31, 2022January 31, 2022 by Matt Williams

The Big Spaceflight Stories You Should be Watching in 2022

Credit: (clockwise from upper left) NASA/NASA/SpaceX/ESA/VCRO/Saggitarius A; Wikimedia/

The year 2021 was a big one as far as stories from space are concerned! From start to finish, 2021 witnessed innumerable milestones and groundbreaking missions mounted by space agencies and the commercial space industry. Among them, the long-awaited launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the arrival of the Perseverance mission, the launch of Double-Asteroid Redirect Test (DART), multiple test flights with the Starship, and the inauguration of space tourism. There was something for everyone!

However, looking at what’s planned for the year ahead, one might get the impression that 2021 was the appetizer and 2022 is the main course! That may sound like an idle boast, but not when you consider all of the ambitious missions, programs, and developments that are scheduled and anticipated for the next twelve months! So exactly what’s in store for space in 2022? We’ve provided a helpful list below:

January 29, 2022January 29, 2022 by Matt Williams

Want to Know What James Webb Looks Like in Powerful Earth Telescopes? Prepare to be Underwhelmed

The past month has been an exciting time for the James Webb Space Telescope! After launching on Christmas Day, the telescope spent the next few weeks deploying its mirrors, checking the individual segments, and then maneuvering to L2, where it will spend the next ten to twenty years unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos. According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the Chief Science Communications Officer (CSCO) for the JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for the ESA, James Webb will begin collecting light this summer.

To mark the occasion, the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP) captured images of James Webb to give people a sense of what it looks like in orbit. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to see there, other than a bright dot in the night sky. But like Carl Sagan’s famous “Pale Blue Dot” picture of Earth (taken by Voyager 1 on its way out of the Solar System), or Cassini’s “The Day Earth Smiled” image, there’s a tremendous amount of significance in that small point of light.

January 28, 2022January 28, 2022 by Matt Williams

What is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?

Einstein Lecturing — Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. Credit: National Library of Austria/F Schmutzer/Public Domain

In the history of science and physics, several scholars, theories, and equations have become household names. In terms of scientists, notable examples include Pythagoras, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Planck, and Hawking. In terms of theories, there’s Archimede’s “Eureka,” Newton’s Apple (Universal Gravitation), and Schrodinger’s Cat (quantum mechanics). But the most famous and renowned is arguably Albert Einstein, Relativity, and the famous equation, E=mc². In fact, Relativity may be the best-known scientific concept that few people truly understand.

For example, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity comes in two parts: the Special Theory of Relativity (SR and the General Theory of Relativity (GR). And the term “Relativity” itself goes back to Galileo Galilee and his explanation for why motion and velocity are relative to the observer. As you can probably tell, explaining how Einstein’s groundbreaking theory works require a deep dive into the history of physics, some advanced concepts, and how it all came together for one of the greatest minds of all time!

January 26, 2022January 31, 2022 by Matt Williams

Finally, an Explanation for the Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background

Map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky produced by the Planck satellite. The Cold Spot is shown in the inset, with coordinates and the temperature difference in the scale at the bottom. Credit: ESA/Durham University.

According to our current Cosmological models, the Universe began with a Big Bang roughly 13.8 billion years ago. During the earliest periods, the Universe was permeated by an opaque cloud of hot plasma, preventing atoms from forming. About 380,000 years later, the Universe began to cool and much of the energy generated by the Big Bang converted into light. This afterglow is now visible to astronomers as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), first observed during the 1960s.

One peculiar characteristic about the CMB that attracted a lot of attention was the tiny fluctuations in temperature, which could provide information about the early Universe. In particular, there is a rather large spot in the CMB that is cooler than the surrounding afterglow, known as the CMB Cold Spot. After decades of studying the CMB’s temperature fluctuations, a team of scientists recently confirmed the existence of the largest cold spots in the CMB afterglow – the Eridanus Supervoid – might be the explanation for the CMB Cold Spot that astronomers have been looking for!

January 25, 2022January 25, 2022 by Matt Williams

Missing Mass? Not on our Watch—Dr. Paul Sutter Explains Dark Matter

Do you have a few minutes to spare and a thirst for knowledge about one of the greater mysteries of the Universe? Then head on over to ArsTechnica and check out the new series they’re releasing titled Edge of Knowledge, starring none other than Dr. Paul Sutter. In what promises to be an enlightening journey, Dr. Sutter will guide viewers through an eight-episode miniseries that explores the mysteries of the cosmos, such as black holes, the future of climate change, the origins of life, and (for their premiere episode) Dark Matter!

As far as astrophysicists and cosmologists are concerned, Dark Matter is one of the most enduring, frustrating, and confusing mysteries ever! Then, one must wonder why scientists are working so tirelessly to track it down? The short answer is: the most widely accepted theories of the Universe don’t make sense without out. The long answer is… it’s both complicated and long! Luckily, Dr. Sutter manages to sum it all up in less than 15 minutes. As an accomplished physicist, he also explains why it is so important that we track Dark Matter down!