Brandon Q. Morris's Blog, page 2
February 17, 2023
How life could be detected on Enceladus
The mystery of whether microbial alien life exists on Enceladus could be solved by a spacecraft orbiting Saturn’s moon, according to a new study led by University of Arizona researchers. In a paper published in The Planetary Science Journal, the researchers show how a hypothetical space mission could provide definitive answers.
When Enceladus was first surveyed by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1980, it looked like a small, unexciting “snowball” in the sky. Later, between 2005 and 2017, NASA’s C...
January 18, 2023
Rocky planets from the planet factory
Why do rocky planets in a given star system usually look relatively similar? A new theory developed by Konstantin Batygin, professor of planetary science at Caltech, along with Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France, may explain.
“With the increase in exoplanet observations over the past decade, it has become clear that the standard theory of planet formation needs to be revised, starting with the basics. We need a theory that can explain both the formation of terr...
December 13, 2022
This is what a dust storm on Mars sounds like
In “The Martian,” dust storms are quite unpleasant and downright dangerous. This is one of the few scientific inconsistencies of the film and book. In fact, they even seem to be very practical, as researchers have often discovered, because they clean solar panels of the dust that settles over time. But what does a dust devil like this even sound like? When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars, it was equipped with the first working microphone on the planet’s surface. Scientists used it to make ...
December 5, 2022
Megatsunami on Mars
Our arid neighboring world once had seas, too – and with them all the catastrophes our Earth has experienced over its long existence. Right up to a megatsunami like the one after the Chicxulub impact – which contributed to the mass extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs on Earth 66 million years ago. On Mars, however, the last such event was much longer ago. 3.4 billion years, in fact, as some studies have already suggested.
A new study published in Scientific Reports now brings more details to l...
November 22, 2022
Why Venus died the heat death – and the Earth did not
Venus, Earth’s hot little sister, was probably once habitable, too, a long time ago. It basically orbits in the habitable zone. Surface temperatures of 450 degrees would actually not be expected there, were it not for the dense CO2 atmosphere that heats up the planet with its greenhouse effect. But why did this happen on Venus – and not on Earth so far? Volcanism is probably to blame, as researchers show in a new paper. According to the paper, volcanic activity that lasted hundreds to thousands ...
November 14, 2022
October 24, 2022
Neutron star light – or something completely different?
Stars that are at least about three times heavier than the sun suffer a spectacular end. They manage to use all elements up to iron as fuel in different shells in their interior. Their core, which is only 10,000 kilometers across, then usually consists of iron and heavier elements. What happens to the dying star now depends mainly on this core. When it exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.44 solar masses, its matter can no longer resist its own gravity – and the star collapses into a neutron sta...
October 20, 2022
Fluffy planet orbits a cool red dwarf star
Astronomers using the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona have observed an unusual Jupiter-like planet in orbit around a cool red dwarf star. This planet, designated TOI-3757 b, is located about 580 light-years from Earth in the constellation Auriga, the charioteer, and is the lowest density planet ever discovered around a red dwarf star. Researchers estimate that its average density is equivalent to that of a marshmallow.
Red dwarf stars are the smallest and fa...
October 18, 2022
Record: Most severe gamma eruption observed to date
A cosmic explosion of gigantic proportions kept astronomers on tenterhooks in mid-October – the closest and possibly most energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever observed. The GRB, designated GRB 221009A, occurred at a distance of about 2.4 billion light-years in the direction of the constellation Arrow. It was first detected on the morning of Oct. 9 by X-ray and gamma-ray space telescopes, including NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Wind spacecraft....
September 28, 2022
The ashes of the very first stars
The universe was just 100 million years old when the first stars already flared up. Very early on, dark matter amplified inhomogeneities in the structure of the universe in such a way that there were areas with a higher concentration of hydrogen. This clumped together, and as still happens today, a star was formed. With our sun these very first cosmic beacons, which are called “Population III” today, are hardly comparable. They must have consisted mainly of hydrogen and helium – already because ...
