Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 1

NASA's Sun probe has captured a stunning video of it passing through one of the Sun's most powerful eruptions ever recorded.

The above GIF is footage captured by NASA's Parker Solar Probe, and it shows an event that took place late last year in September. The video was released by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and showcases a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is an eruption of solar plasma. CMEs can come in a variety of intensities, with most being billions of tons of plasma and shooting a wave of charged particles into a specific direction in space.

These charged particles travel at ridiculous speeds, with the Parker Solar Probe recording during this event particles accelerating "up to 840 miles per second". Recordings such as these are exactly what the Parker Solar Probe was designed for - providing critical data of solar events that are then relayed back to researchers on Earth to study patterns and, hopefully, learn more about our Sun so more accurate space weather predictions can be made.

The Sun hurled a wave of charged particles at Earth, resulting in a powerful solar storm that pushed auroras much closer to the equator than usual.

Jo Majko, Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada

The event began on September 16 when a solar filament caused a coronal mass ejection (CME) to launch out from the Sun toward Earth. A CME is essentially a wave of solar particles that can collide with our planet's magnetic field. This interaction between the charged particles and molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes molecules in Earth's atmosphere to be charged, producing incredible colors commonly called auroras.

Our planet funnels the Sun's charged particles toward the poles, hence the Northern and Southern Lights only appearing near the planet's top and bottom. However, during a solar storm, these auroras can be spotted much closer to the equator due to the abundance of charged particles interacting with the atmosphere. Each time the Sun smacks Earth with a CME, photographers have a prime opportunity to capture some incredible photographs of the natural phenomena, and this time was no different. Below are some incredible photographs.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has snapped an incredible image of a "bridge" between two colliding galaxies located nearly 500 million light years away from Earth.

Arp 107

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the image of Arp 107, a pair of galaxies that are slowly but surely merging to form a massive galaxy. Using its Advanced Camera for Surveys, NASA and the ESA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped an image showcasing the faint "bridge" linking the two galaxies.

The galaxy on the left is a Seyfret galaxy, which is a galaxy that houses an active galactic nuclei, or supermassive black hole at its core. The black hole-consuming matter results in a strong glow, as displayed by the image.

Archaeologists have made an incredible discovery on a river bank in Zambia, a discovery that may change how ancient human history is viewed forever.

Ancient wooden tool

A new study published in the scientific journal Nature details a discovery of ancient wooden logs that appear to have been used for a small wooden hut. The University of Liverpool scientist Professor Larry Barham led the project called Deep Roots of Humanity, which was responsible for the excavation of the sample and the follow-up analysis. The study states that the ancient logs are approximately 476,000 years old. Additionally, the team discovered ancient human wooden tools such as digging sticks.

The researchers pointed out one of the tools was discovered at right angles to each other. These pieces of wood had been clearly cut by stone tools to fit together with the goal of making a bigger structural object. These samples may be the oldest ancient wooden tool discovery found so far, with the BBC reporting 400,000-year-old samples were found in prehistoric sands at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in 1911.

NASA has announced that the first asteroid sample collected in space by the agency will be arriving on Earth by the end of the week.

The space agency took to its website and social media channels to announce when it will begin its live coverage of the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx capsule, NASA's mission to collect a sample from the surface of an asteroid. The target was asteroid Bennu, and the collection process was successful as the sample was obtained from Bennu's surface in 2020.

Since then, the capsule has been on a return journey back to Earth, where it's expected it will touch down in the U.S. Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range on September 24, 2023. For this precise landing to be achieved, NASA explains that spacecraft operators will need to make sure that OSIRIS-REx enters the planet's atmosphere at a specific angle and speed.

The winners of the Royal Observatory Greenwich's 15th year of astronomy photography have been announced, and the images are nothing short of incredible.

The world's largest astrophotography contest consists of more than 4,000 separate submissions from 64 different countries, with each of the submissions going into a selection of different categories. The winners of 2023 were announced via a shortlist that was published in July, and now we able to see all of the notable submissions. The contest features 11 categories and below you will find winners for; Overall Winner, Auroras, Our Moon, Our Sun, and Stars & Nebulas.

The first image below is the winning photograph of 2023's astrophotography contest, and it showcases the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. The image titled "Andromed, unexpected" was snapped by an amateur astronomer team led by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty. Notably, the plasma streak on the left-hand side of the image was a unique discovery, with researchers now studying it as its believed it could be largest discovered streak of its kind.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released an image snapped by the famous Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing the galaxy officially called NGC 3156.

A large lenticular galaxy

The space agency explains that NGC 3156 is a lenticular galaxy, which is a galaxy that falls between an elliptical and spiral galaxy. Notably, this great galactic disk is located 73 million light-years away from Earth within the constellation Sextans, which belongs to the Hercules family of constellations. So, what makes this galaxy so special? Lenticular galaxies are believed to have used up or have lost most of their interstellar matter, leading researchers to believe they are home to much older stellar populations.

The ESA also explains that the equatorial constellation known as Sextans was named after the astronomical instrument, and not the instrument that was commonly used for nautical navigation. "Sextants are often thought of as navigational instruments that were invented in the 18th century. However, the sextant as an astronomical tool has been around for much longer than that: Islamic scholars developed astronomical sextants many hundreds of years earlier in order to measure angles in the sky," writes the ESA.

Following the release of NASA's official UFO report, the space agency has named the new director of the group dedicated to analyzing Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

NASA released its highly anticipated UFO report last week, where it came to multiple conclusions based on data provided by the US government. One of the main conclusions was the data used in the study wasn't clear enough for researchers to determine the origin of the UFOs, which resulted in the team calling for improved instruments to collect data, along with better pipelines for data collection. Additionally, the report called for the implementation of AI-powered tools to siphon through data.

The report outlines many more improvements that can be taken by NASA to shed more light on the UFO phenomena, and the full independent study can be viewed here. Notably, NASA appointed Mark McInerney as the director of UAP research. McInerney previously served as a NASA liaison to the Department of Defense, covering limited UAP activities. The role of the director will be to devise data analytical capabilities to establish a robust database for the evaluation of future UAPs.

NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on the surface of the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, and since then, it has been documenting its exploration while simultaneously looking for any evidence of past microbial life.

Mars avocado

Throughout the time Perseverance has spent on the surface of Mars, it has run into some pretty interesting objects, most of them are rocks in unique shapes and sizes. According to NASA's official website, which publishes all of Perseverance's photographs, the Mars rover stumbled across an avocado-shaped rock on September 8.

The image was snapped using Perseverance's Mastcam-Z and shows a rock that resembles an avocado cut in half. One half of the avocado laying in the foreground of the image, with the second half laying upright with a nut still in the center.

A US fighter pilot ejected from an F-35 jet over South Carolina, and now the military is asking the public to help them find the jet that's still flying around on autopilot.

Multiple reports indicate the fighter pilot safely ejected from the F-35 at approximately 2 p.m. on Sunday local time over North Charleston, and landed in a neighborhood. Since the ejection was confirmed, multiple military officials have taken to social media and the wider public to gather any information on the F-35 that's still, at the time of writing, reportedly flying around the region on autopilot.

The ABC reports that an investigation has been launched into why the pilot was forced to eject from the vehicle, with Major Melanie Salinas saying the pilot has been taken to a local hospital in a stable condition. So far, estimates have put the $80 F-35 Lightning II jet somewhere between Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, according to Senior Master Sergeant Heather Stanton, at Joint Base Charleston.