Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 149

To celebrate Black Hole Week, NASA has shared a fact about the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy and how it has a "leak".

NASA explains that at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy is a supermassive black hole with a mass of 4.1 million Suns called Sagittarius A. In the space agency's blog post, NASA writes that black holes draw in material into what is called an accretion disk. Sometimes when some of the material swirling around the black hole falls inside, it's "swept up into outflowing jets that are collimated by the black hole's powerful magnetic fields. The narrow "searchlight beams" are accompanied by a flood of deadly ionizing radiation."

Gerald Cecil of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was able to prove through multiple wavelength observations that the central black hole is "currently powered down" but can sometimes burp or hiccup out mini-jets when it consumes something large such as a gas cloud or an entire star. NASA explains in the below video that observations from Hubble have revealed that the jet is still pushing feebly into a hydrogen cloud, which causes bubbles that can expand as far as 500 light-years.

A group of scientists believes that the compounds found in lunar soil may be able to provide astronauts exploring the surface with oxygen and potentially fuel.

In a new paper published in the journal Jule, a team of scientists analyzed lunar samples obtained by China's Chang'e 5 spacecraft and now plan to develop a system capable of extracting oxygen from the lunar soil. The process is called "extraterrestrial photosynthesis" and includes developing a system that uses solar radiation and lunar soil to electrolyze water from the moon, creating oxygen and hydrogen.

Notably, the scientists also propose that carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts could be combined with hydrogen from the water electrolysis to produce hydrocarbons such as methane. Methane could then be used as fuel, proposed the researchers.

A team of scientists has uncovered fossils of a 33 ft apex predator dinosaur, breaking records in its appropriate category.

A team of Argentinian paleontologists has announced the discovery of what is now considered the largest Megaraptor on Earth today. The newly discovered Apex Predator has been detailed in a new study published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. The dinosaur's scientific name is "Maip macrothorax", and the dinosaur is described in the report as being the "shadow of the death" that "kills with cold wind" throughout the Andes mountains.

The now largest Megaraptor measured around 33 ft in length and featured two sharp curved claws per front paw, each of the talons extended 15.7 inches in length. The researchers write in the study that during its time, Maip's would have fed on smaller dinosaurs slashing at them with its long talons and digging into their torsos to withdraw intestines. Maip's are estimated to have lived about 70 million years ago, nearing the end of the Cretaceous period, and according to researchers, the species went extinct about 66 million years ago, making it one of the last megaraptors to roam Earth.

Lunar samples taken on the Apollo 17 missions from 1972 are finally being studied.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has received the samples after being transported from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where they were brought to and stored in a freezer in December 1972 after Apollo 17 astronauts returned to Earth.

The samples were consolidated at Goddard over four years as researchers from Johnson began designing and retrofitting a facility where the samples could be processed. The samples are being studied as part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program (ANGSA) to produce research to aid the upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon's South Pole.

A study on the binary system titled "A 62-minute orbital period black widow binary in a wide hierarchical triple" has been published in the journal Nature.

MIT astronomers have detected a "black widow binary" star system candidate approximately 3,000 light years from Earth, named ZTF J1406+1222. The star system comprises a pulsar (a rapidly spinning neutron star) and a smaller companion star that the pulsar is slowly consuming, like its namesake, the black widow spider, does to its mate.

Two dozen other black widow binaries have been observed throughout the Milky Way. However, this candidate is unique in that it appears to have a third star associated with the system, circling the two inner stars from afar every 10,000 years. The inner pair of stars also has the shortest orbital period of any known black widow binary, circling each other every 62 minutes.

A study on the Moon titled "Distribution of water phase near the poles of the Moon from gravity aspects" has been published in the journal Nature.

Water has been found on the Moon, and some of this lunar water likely originated from asteroid and comet collisions that brought water to it. However, a new study suggests that another water source is from the Earth itself, up to as much as 3,500 cubic kilometers (840 cubic miles) of it.

Hydrogen and oxygen ions in Earth's upper atmosphere may have passed over to the Moon as the Moon passes through the tail of Earth's magnetosphere for five days out of every lunar month. Solar wind from the Sun breaks the magnetic field lines on one side of Earth, creating the magnetotail the Moon passes through to pick up these ions.

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov was interviewed by Russian news outlet Moskovskii Komsomolets to explain his retirement.

Skvortsov explained that a culmination of factors has led to his decision to retire from the space program, such as his age, and that there isn't a lot of interesting work to keep him busy on the International Space Station (ISS). Therefore, continuing to work aboard the space station would see him working alongside American astronauts, which he has "no proper motivation" to do.

"It would be fine if the program included interesting work on the Russian segment, but there I would have to work for the Americans most of the time, that is, to help them to provide their experiments. Sorry, but there is no proper motivation for this.," Skvortsov told the news outlet.

Boeing's Starliner has had another worrying hiccup on its final stretch to launch.

The Starliner spacecraft is making its way to the Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its second attempt at launching to the International Space Station (ISS). However, in an awkward turn of events, a protective window cover fell off the spacecraft as it made its way there.

Boeing confirmed to William Harwood of CBS that a window cover did indeed fall off, but there is no problem with the spacecraft, and its second unpiloted Orbital Flight Test (OFT-2) is still set to go ahead. OFT-2 is planned to launch at 22:54 UTC on May 19th with docking at the ISS expected for around 11:07 UTC the next day.

US lawmakers are receiving secret briefings on the progress the US military is making in uncovering the origins of mysterious, highly advanced aircraft violating protected airspace.

According to a new report from Politico, members of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Service committees have received classified reports showing the progress the Pentagon and other agencies have made on investigating UFOs reports. The news comes from three people that have direct knowledge of the situation, according to Politico.

An aide of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a member of both the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee, said under anonymity that Gillibrand "believes that the DoD needs to take this issue much more seriously and get in motion. They have had ample time to implement these important provisions, and they need to show us that they are prepared to address this issue in the long-term."

On April 27th, 2022, a fireball into the Earth's atmosphere over southern Mississippi and caused a sonic boom that was heard by dozens.

NASA confirmed the existence of a space rock estimated to be approximately a foot in diameter and entered Earth's atmosphere about 54 miles above the Mississippi River near the town of Alcorn. The space rock was estimated to be traveling at around 55,000 miles per hour, and throughout its journey, it began disintegrating with fragments of it breaking off before it finally exploded.

Previously, NASA estimated that as the meteor heated up, it generated the same amount of energy as 3 tons of TNT. Furthermore, NASA said that this generation of energy created shock waves that propagated to the ground and produced sonic booms/vibrations that were felt by many.