Paul M. Sutter, Author at Universe Today

August 18, 2022August 14, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Lucy’s Solar Array is Fixed! (Mostly)

Artist’s concept of the Lucy spacecraft flying by Eurybates, one of the six diverse and scientifically important Trojans to be studied. . Credit: SWRI

How do you fix the solar array of a spacecraft millions of miles away from the Earth hurdling through the void at thousands of miles per hour? Very carefully, that’s how.

August 17, 2022August 26, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

R136 is the Most Massive Star Astronomers Have Ever Found. We Just got Some new Images of it

A cluster of massive stars seen with the Hubble Space Telescope. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust called a nebula. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains the central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603. Recent research shows that galactic cosmic rays flowing into our solar system originate in clusters like these. Credits: NASA/U. Virginia/INAF, Bologna, Italy/USRA/Ames/STScI/AURA

Meet R136a1, the most massive star known. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it’s a hulking behemoth weighing somewhere between 150 and 200 times the mass of the Sun. Understanding the upper limit of stars helps astronomers piece together everything from the life cycles of stars to the histories of galaxies.

August 13, 2022August 13, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

MIT Researchers Propose Space Bubbles to Stop Climate Change

Artist's conception of bubbles used to reduce sunlight to combat climate change (Image credit: MIT)

Climate change is a real problem. Human caused outputs of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are the main driver of an unprecedented rise in global average temperatures at a speed never before seen in the Earth’s geologic record. The problem is so bad that any attempts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions may be too little and too late. And so a team based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have proposed a radical new solution: bubbles…in space.

August 10, 2022August 13, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomers Were Fortunate Enough to Catch a Neutron Star Merging With Another Star

A team of astronomers have followed the evolution of a short duration gamma ray burst, one of the most intense explosions in the entire universe. This discovery makes a breakthrough for further observations of these rare events.

August 9, 2022August 13, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Gravitational Waves Near a Neutron Star Could Generate Photons

Artist view of colliding neutron stars. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

In addition to their intense magnetic fields and copious output of x-ray radiation, neutron stars might have one more trick up their sleeves. They might be able to turn gravitational waves into an extra source of photons.

July 21, 2022July 18, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Gravitational Wave Telescopes Could Detect Clumps of Dark Matter Drifting Through the Solar System

This image shows the galaxy MCS J0416.1–2403, one of six clusters targeted by the Hubble Frontier Fields programme. The blue in this image is a mass map created by using new Hubble observations combined with the magnifying power of a process known as gravitational lensing. In red is the hot gas detected by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and shows the location of the gas, dust and stars in the cluster. The matter shown in blue that is separate from the red areas detected by Chandra consists of what is known as dark matter, and which can only be detected directly by gravitational lensing.Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, HST Frontier Fields. Acknowledgement: Mathilde Jauzac (Durham University, UK) and Jean-Paul Kneib (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland).

Attempts to directly detect dark matter have come up empty. A team of physicists have proposed a brand new method: if dark matter exists in clumps that occasionally pass through the solar system, we may be able to detect their slight influence with ultra-sensitive gravitational waves detectors.

July 20, 2022July 18, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Earth has Clouds of Water. Hot Exoplanets Have Clouds of Sand

Artist's impression of a Lava World. The exoplanet K2-141b is so close to its host star that it likely has magma oceans and surface temperatures over 3000 degrees. c. ESO

A team of astronomers studied brown dwarfs to figure out how hot exoplanets form clouds of sand. They found that sand clouds can only exist in a narrow range of temperatures.

July 19, 2022July 17, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

The Gravitational Constant is Tricky to pin Down Accurately. Here’s a new way to Measure it

The central parts of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, as observed in the near-infrared with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The position of Sgr A*,with a mass 4 million times that of the Sun, is marked by the orange cross. The star S2 made a close pass to the region of the black hole in 2018. Courtesy ESO.

A team of physicists have used a pair of vibrating rods to measure the gravitational constant to incredibly fine precision. While the new technique has relatively high uncertainty, they hope that future improvements will provide a new pathway to nailing down this elusive constant.

July 18, 2022July 17, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

A Mission Concept to fly a Solar Neutrino Detector Close to the Sun

This is one of the new images of the Sun from the ESA's Solar Orbiter's closest approach on March 26th, 2022. Image Credit: ESA

Astronomers have proposed a concept mission to fly a neutrino observatory into orbit around the Sun to get a better picture of what’s happening in the Sun’s core.

July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

A new Record for the Strongest Magnetic Field Seen in the Universe: 1.6 Billion Tesla

A massive flare ejected from a magnetar.

A team of astronomers using the Chinese Insight-HXMT x-ray telescope have made a direct measurement of the strongest magnetic field in the known universe. The magnetic field belongs to a magnetar currently in the process of cannibalizing an orbiting companion.