Brandon Q. Morris's Blog, page 11

The first spiral galaxy

Well, it may not have been the first spiral galaxy researchers have now discovered in data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), but it was the oldest and most distant (which is synonymous in astronomy) to date. We observed it at a time when the universe was only 1.4 billion years old. Today it is almost ten times as old. The discovery of a galaxy with a spiral structure at such an early date is an important clue to solving the classic questions of astronomy: “How and whe...

Watching a star being born

Starforge is the name of a simulation program developed by an international team of researchers that enables the most realistic and highest-resolution 3D simulation of star formation to date. The result is a visually stunning, mathematically driven marvel that allows viewers to float around a colorful cloud of gas in 3D space as they watch sparkling stars form.

STARFORGE (Star Formation in Gaseous Environments) simulates an entire gas cloud for the first time, with masses 100 times greater than ...

What is hard science fiction, anyway?

Brandon Q. Morris writes hard science fiction. But what does that actually mean? I like to explain it this way: What happens in my books could happen in reality. There are no laws of physics that would prevent it. You could also call it “realistic” science fiction, although the fiction remains, of course. In the end, it is a story that I tell. Apart from the degree of hardness (more on that below), hard science fiction also tends to depict the conflict between the hero and the environment (in th...

The noise of interstellar space

The vacuum between the stars is not empty. The interstellar medium consists of dust and gas, which in turn can be in atomic, molecular and ionized form. Its density varies widely. Interestingly, it is greatest in cool, dense regions where matter is mainly in molecular form and one could count up to 1 million molecules per cubic centimeter. In hot, diffuse regions, on the other hand, matter is mainly ionized and one finds only a single ion per 10,000 cubic centimeters. Compared to, say, the capab...

How to make the invisible visible

Astronomers have a lot in common with forensic scientists. They infer from traces the events that might have led to the formation of these traces. They take photographs and look at what is visible of these events in order to then also be able to capture their invisible parts. Very much remains invisible in the universe: Black holes, dark matter or dark energy, which we all see only through their effects, are certainly the most prominent. But also magnetic fields play an important role. They prov...

What you need to be able to do as a private astronaut at BlueOrigin

BlueOrigin, the space company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has now announced the date of its first manned space flight. The New Shepard capsule will cross the official boundary to space in a suborbital flight. This means that all passengers will subsequently be real astronauts.

You can bid for a seat on the first flight on July 20 at BlueOrigin. The company has now announced the requirements that candidates must meet. Namely these (translated into everyday requirements):

Height between...

Tricorder & Co: Analyzing substances with a cell phone?

In almost all of my novels, the protagonists use devices the size of a smartphone to examine substances they encounter. Current laboratory technology is quite a bit bigger – but that doesn’t have to be the case at all. A team of researchers is now proving this in an article in the Review of Scientific Instruments. The team, led by Peter Rentzepis of Texas A&M, has developed an extension for an ordinary cell phone that allows the device to detect chemicals, drugs, biological molecules and pathoge...

Watching a planet grow

Astronomers usually detect exoplanets based on irregularities in the glow of the parent star. Although more than 4,000 exoplanets have been cataloged to date, only 15 have been imaged directly by telescopes. Even in their best photos, the planets are just dots, simply because they are so far away and quite small. A new technique from the Hubble team is now expected to help image planets directly. The researchers have used it to catch a rare glimpse of a Jupiter-sized planet, still forming, that ...

Older stars rotate faster than expected

Not only humans lose mobility in old age – stars also rotate more slowly then. All stars are born with angular momentum that comes from the rotation of the protostellar cloud. Then, as they get older, their rotation slows in a process called “magnetic braking.” A study published in 2016 by scientists at Carnegie Observatories provided the first evidence that stars at a similar stage of life as the Sun are spinning faster than magnetic braking theories predict. The results of that study were base...

Brown dwarfs at the speed limit

Brown dwarfs are formed when a newborn star does not have enough mass to ignite the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. This is their essential difference to giant gas planets – brown dwarfs form quasi first and in the center of the system, gas giants follow later. As central objects of their system, brown dwarfs naturally inherit the rotation of the protostellar cloud. But some of them apparently give extra gas later. Astronomers at Western University in Canada have now discovered three brown dwarfs th...