Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 109

A new study that has yet to be peer-reviewed has explored the capabilities of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and whether it's possible the world's most powerful space telescope will be an instrument that reveals alien life on other worlds.

The best way researchers can find alien life on other worlds is by collecting information about a planet and comparing that information to how humans evolved on Earth. Humans produce quite a lot of chemicals into the atmosphere, as well as large amounts of heat, and if researchers were hunting for intelligent alien life, they would observe the atmosphere of a planet look for evidence of chemicals that wouldn't be in the atmosphere without some kind of external intervention.

It's possible that since humans are using chemical detection in the atmosphere to search for life that aliens are doing so as well, which means that the chemicals humans produce into the biosphere that are, not only slowly killing the planet, may also be acting as a cosmic flare to anyone looking. Within the new pre-print study, researchers proposed how scientists would search for these chemical compounds that wouldn't usually be in the atmosphere of planets, and suggested specifically searching "potent greenhouse agents with long atmospheric residence times".

NASA has published a short movie shot by one of its Mars rovers of Martian clouds drifting high sky, allowing scientists to understand the planet more.

If you have ever wondered if there are clouds on Mars, you now have your answer as NASA has recently published a short movie showcasing Martian clouds drifting over the agency's Curiosity rover. NASA's Mars rover used its navigation camera to take eight images of the sky on December 12, 2021, and the 3,325th Martian day of the mission.

While these images are certainly a spectacle, they also provide researchers with information to understand Mars better. NASA explains that from the video, scientists are able to calculate the altitude of the clouds, and according to NASA's Mars blog, these clouds are nearly 50 miles above the surface of Mars. It's extremely cold at that altitude, which is why NASA researchers believe that these clouds are composed of carbon dioxide ice.

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to showcase an image captured by its famous Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA has posted the image to its blog where the space agency explains that Hubble has snapped an image of a distant galaxy merger called IC 2431 that's located approximately 681 million light-years away from Earth within the constellation Cancer. The space agency writes that IC 2431 is three galaxies merging in slow motion with a thick cloud of dust residing in the center of the image.

However, light from the background galaxy is able to pierce the other regions of the galaxy where the density of dust is minimal. Additionally, NASA mentions that lots of star formation is happening within IC 2431 as the galaxies slowly collide, mixing all of their elements. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has published a first-of-its-kind image that showcases a giant solar eruption.

The ESA has taken to its website to publish an image captured by the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter that showcases what is called a "solar prominences", which are "large structures of tangled magnetic field lines that keep dense concentrations of solar plasma suspended above the Sun's surface." These solar prominence's often appear as long filaments that look like arching loops. Additionally, the ESA says these eruptions are regularly associated with coronal mass ejections (CME).

The ESA explains that on February 15 a coronal mass ejection occurred on the Sun, which resulted in a large amount of charged particles being ejected out of the Sun. These CMEs can cause geomagnetic storms on Earth if the blast is directed towards our planet, but in the instance of the CME that occurred on February 15, it was heading in the opposite direction.

One astronaut aboard the floating laboratory called the International Space Station (ISS) has snapped an image of Earth's closest neighbor, the moon.

NASA astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei took to his personal Twitter account to post a picture he snapped of the moon, with the Vande Hei writing that it was looking "shockingly bright as I opened our shades". The NASA astronaut goes on to say that "soon we'll be exploring our neighbor again", which is no doubt a reference to the upcoming Artemis mission that will take the first woman and person of color to the surface of the moon.

The upcoming Artemis mission will be the first crewed mission to the moon since the Apollo missions more than 50 years ago. As for Vande Hei, the NASA astronaut is currently scheduled to break the record for the longest stay in orbit with a 355-day stay, which will beat the previous record of 340-days set back in 2016 by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. Notably, the record for the longest single space visit was set by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov who spent 437 days and 18 hours aboard the Mir space station.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) peered down at Earth and witness an erupting volcano that was spewing lava and smoke.

Being 250 miles above the surface of the Earth provides a fantastic vantage point for viewing the surface of the Earth, and while astronauts are unable to see objects such as cars and people, they can observe natural events such as hurricanes and volcanoes. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer posted to Twitter an image of Mount Etna erupting and the image showcases a plume of smoke billowing from the volcano's summit.

Maurer wrote in his post that "Etna is clearly smoking (and spitting lava as I learnt from the news)". Maurer wasn't the only astronaut aboard the ISS to spot the active volcano as Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov reported on the event, writing, "Red-hot lava flows out of the crater, and clouds of ash and smoke are in the sky over Sicily. The activity of the volcano then stops, then resumes with a series of powerful explosions." Space.com reports that Mount Etna was extremely active throughout 2021 and as a result grew by about 100 feet in just 6 months.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter (SolO) witnessed the giant solar prominence on February 15th, 2022.

According to the ESA, solar prominences are "large structures of tangled magnetic field lines that keep dense concentrations of solar plasma suspended above the Sun's surface." They are commonly associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can disrupt technology and life on Earth if directed towards us.

The CME from the February 15th event is traveling in the opposite direction to Earth, originating on the side of the Sun facing away from Earth. While the Solar Orbiter did not witness the eruption on the Sun's surface, its Full Sun Imager (FSI) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instruments allowed it to capture the solar prominence as it extended millions of kilometers beyond the Sun in the satellites field of view.

A new study on space-related brain changes has been published in the journal Frontiers in Neural Circuits.

The European Space Agency (ESA), Roscosmos, and researchers from the University of Antwerp in Belgium have collaborated to explore how cosmonauts' brains were affected by spaceflight and living aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The research studied twelve male cosmonauts who, on average, spent 172 days (five and a half months) in space, examining their brains shortly before leaving Earth, soon after returning, and again seven months after returning.

The researchers imaged the cosmonauts' brains using fiber tractography, a brain imaging technique that uses diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) scans to make a three-dimensional reconstruction of the brain. They found that the brain's gray matter and white matter structures were altered by the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) shift caused by space. They also found structural changes in the corpus callusom, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain, and changes in the "neural connections between several motor areas of the brain."

The Hunga Tonga volcano eruption occurred on January 15th, 2022.

Two weather satellites in a geostationary orbit overhead witnessed the eruption; the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's (NOAA) GOES-17 and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Himawari-8. According to NASA, the event was the largest volcanic eruption since satellites have been monitoring Earth.

Scientists from NASA's Langley Research Center analyzed the data from these two satellites and determined the plume of volcanic ash from the eruption reached 58 kilometers (36 miles) at its highest point. The plume reached into the mesosphere, the third layer of Earth's atmosphere, and reached its peak height around 30 minutes after the eruption. A secondary plume followed the first and reached more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) high.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has captured a beautiful shot of the galactic merger IC 2431.

IC 2431 is found 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer and appears to be a triple galaxy merger in progress, though a thick cloud of dust somewhat obstructs the view of the center. The image was taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and targeted the IC 2431 merger identified by the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project.

The original Galaxy Zoo project consisted of more than 100,000 volunteers and classified 900,000 unexamined galaxies and was the largest galaxy census ever conducted. The project achieved a year's worth of work for a professional astronomer in 175 days and has since led to a consistent stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects.

A study on the newly discovered species has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The new dinosaur species is called Guemesia ochoai and was discovered in the Los Blanquitos Formation near Amblayo, in the north of Argentina, through the finding of a partially complete skull. It is the first species to be identified for the Guemesia genus. The fossils were found in rocks between 65 and 75 million years old, meaning G. ochoai lived just before the mass extinction that marked the end of the Cretaceous period.

G. ochoai is an abelisaurid dinosaur belonging to the Abelisauridae family, a clade of carnivorous dinosaurs that lived in what is now Africa, South America, and India. These abelisaurids had front limbs even smaller than the Tyrannosaurus rex and were effectively useless.

A new study published in the journal Nature models future outcomes for the Earth's climate.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) have created computer simulations of a hundred thousand different futures with various outcomes of climate change. The models incorporate social and political factors that help and hinder progress in combating climate change, not just technical, environmental, and economic factors.

The models consider historical data about the public's view of climate change and cognitive biases like the shifting-baseline effect. A previous study by Moore shows that people tend to compare weather anomalies experienced recently to memories in the last eight years instead of more historical weather.

A paper describing the android child has been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Researchers from Japan's RIKEN institute created the android child, named Nikola, as part of the Guardian Robot Project. The android could successfully replicate six emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The research team assessed the quality of facial expression by seeing how easily volunteers could determine the emotion the android was attempting to express.

The android's face contains 29 pneumatic actuators, used to drive the movement of its artificial muscles, with six more actuators that move its head and eyes. The actuators are air-powered to enable quieter and smoother operation for a more realistic experience. Using an existing system known as the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), the research team placed the actuators in the most appropriate places to recreate facial expressions.

Researchers from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) were responsible for the finding the specimen.

The NIWA researchers found the chimaera, known as "ghost sharks," near New Zealand's South Island. The chimaera is a neonate, meanly newly hatched, about 1200 meters (4,000 feet) deep on the Chatham Rise while surveying the area to estimate the local populations of Hoki, another fish. They are cartilaginous relatives of sharks and rays, meaning fish with skeletons made of cartilage and not bone.

Chimaeras lay their embryos on the seafloor, where they feed on the yolk within their egg capsule before hatching. The team will be conducting further tests and genetic analyses to determine which chimera species the catch belongs to, as there are currently fifty-two known species living in the deep ocean.

A study on the new atomic clock breakthrough has been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers from JILA have measured an aspect of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity using two atomic clocks, separated by only a millimeter. They measured the clocks ticking at different rates, which can be attributed to time dilation due to gravity, which Einstein's theory predicted. Atomic clocks at different elevations in a gravitational field tick at different rates, moving more slowly the stronger the gravity, in this case, closer to Earth.

In 2010, NIST physicists demonstrated the effect for two independent atomic clocks where one was positioned 33 centimeters above the other. Now, JILA researchers have measured a reduction in the frequency of radiation, or redshift, in atomic clocks comprising strontium atoms in an optical lattice.

A new paper describing the galaxy's discovery has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Researchers from Leiden University have discovered the largest known radio galaxy ever, about 16.3 million light-years in length, or about five megaparsecs. The giant plumes of plasma visible in the photo, visible in bright orange, glow with radio light and are likely the result of a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The black holes at the center of a galaxy can create two jet streams, ejecting material out of the galaxy and emitting radio waves, creating scenes like those seen here.

These kinds of astronomical observations are only viewed from Earth, and hence they do not contain any depth information. Therefore, it is difficult to know how far the galaxy's sphere of influence expands in the third dimension. Still, at more than 16 million light-years across, the radio galaxy is comparable to one hundred Milky Ways in a row.

A study on the new conversion process has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have used a material known as a covalent organic framework (COF), which is porous and can absorb sunlight very efficiently. With the addition of a catalytic complex to the COF, the researchers could use the COF to convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide without the need for additional energy to complete the conversion.

The sun's daily solar energy that hits the Earth's surface is roughly equivalent to humanity's energy usage annually. Many researchers are currently developing ways to capture greenhouse gases by using this solar energy. The Lund University team hopes that their approach can be scaled up and used globally to help combat climate change by capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into other useful products.

A new study on the protective effects of caffeine has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Previous studies have shown a reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease among habitual caffeine-consuming adults, equivalent to 400-600 milligrams of caffeine (roughly two or three cups of coffee) daily. Until now, a biochemical explanation hadn't been found by scientists.

Canadian researchers have identified how caffeine initiates a cascade effect to reduce LDL cholesterol levels in the bloodstream. High levels of LDL cholesterol are correlated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The researchers found that caffeine consumption was associated with decreased PCSK9 levels in the bloodstream. PCSK9 is a protein that inhibits the liver's ability to process excess LDL cholesterol. Therefore, caffeine's ability to reduce PCSK9 allows the liver to remove more LDL cholesterol from the bloodstream.

NASA's Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) has captured its first images following its launch last year.

Initially launching on December 9th, 2021, the IXPE has since completed its month-long commissioning phase and confirmed all instruments are in working order. The first object of IXPE's attention is Cassiopeia A, a supernova remnant left behind by a star that exploded sometime in the seventeenth century. The saturation of the magenta color in the above image corresponds to the intensity of X-ray light observed by IXPE, overlayed with high-energy X-ray data, shown in blue, from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

IXPE captures polarization data, which scientists can use to see how X-ray light is oriented as it travels through space. IXPE allows scientists to see for the first time how polarization varies across supernovae remnants like Cassiopeia A, which is about ten light-years in diameter. Researchers are currently working to create the first-ever X-ray polarization map of a supernova remnant, Cassiopeia A, and determine how it produces X-rays.

A new report from a variety of government agencies has predicted the sea levels across US coastlines for the next 30 years.

The report comes from NASA along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and states that sea levels across US coastlines are expected to rise by a foot (10 - 12 inches), which means in the next 30 years, the ocean levels will rise as much as they have in the last 100 years. According to NOAA administration Rich Spinrad, who spoke during a news conference on February 15, this newly released report is the "most up-to-date, long term sea-level rise projections of all of the United States and Territories", adding "what we're reporting out today is historic."

During the same news conference, NASA administrator Bill Nelson backed up the report by stating that "the science is very clear" and urged that now is the time to take action against the "climate crisis." Nelson went on to explain that the rapid increase in sea levels rising is generated by humans, and that the "science of the last 20 years has settled the question of human behavior that is driving this climate change."