Brandon Q. Morris's Blog, page 7

Earth cools faster

Earth is hot: up to 3500 degrees Celsius (6300 °F) in the mantle, 5000 degrees Celsius (9000 °F) in the outer core and 6000 °C (10,800 °F) in the (solid) inner core. This brings us some advantages. Not only us, but all life on Earth. There is, for example, the magnetic field, which is fueled by iron currents in the outer core and protects us from cosmic radiation. But also plate tectonics, which not only gives us mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, but has also favored the emergence of complex...

New candidate for exomoon discovered

Almost all planets in our solar system – and even some dwarf planets – are orbited by moons. In other star systems, however, astronomers have not yet been able to definitively confirm a single moon. Is it because there are no moons there? Certainly not – our observational technology simply isn’t ready yet. But an article published in Nature Astronomy now introduces at least one new candidate for an exomoon. If confirmed as an exomoon, Kepler-1708 b-i – which is 2.6 times larger than Earth – coul...

What does a black hole look like from the inside?

A black hole is an amazing phenomenon. It is invisible because it does not even allow light to escape. Nevertheless, it can be imaged. It concentrates mass in a very small part of space – so small that the conventional laws of physics lose their meaning. Nevertheless, physicists are getting closer and closer to its secrets. One of them is what a black hole looks like inside. Black, it is clear, is not there. Quite the opposite. Inside, all the mass and energy that cannot escape the event horizon...

Why we don’t stick to the ground with our bellies – or why our earth is not a super earth

During the search for exoplanets astronomers notice again and again that our solar system seems to be clearly out of the way. There are neither “hot Jupiters” (gas giants in the proximity of the central star) nor super earths (rock worlds with more than three times earth mass). At first it was thought that this could be due to the way of searching. The techniques used work particularly well with celestial bodies that are very large and orbit close to their star. In the meantime, however, the lis...

The death throes of red supergiants

For the first time, astronomers have imaged the dramatic end of a red supergiant’s life in real time. They observed the rapid self-destruction of a massive star located 120 million light-years from Earth in the galaxy NGC 5731 and its final death throes before collapsing into a type II supernova. Led by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), the team observed the red supergiant during its last 130 days before its fatal detonation.

The dis...

Ice belts at the equator are more common than ice caps at the poles

We like to go south, towards the equator, to escape the cold. At the two poles of the earth there is permanent frost and ice. In terms of the entire universe, this is by no means the rule, as astronomers have discovered in a scientific work.

To do so, a team from the University of Washington and the University of Bern computationally simulated more than 200,000 hypothetical Earth-like worlds – planets that have the same size, mass, atmospheric composition and geography as modern Earth – all in o...

Black holes on a collision course

Do you already have something planned for the year 250,002,000? Then take an evening off and look with your future super telescopic eye at the area around the galaxy NGC 7727 in the constellation Aquarius. There, two super heavy black holes are colliding with each other. Today, they are still 1600 light-years apart, but they are the closest pair of black holes observed so far.

Astronomers found it with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s VLT. “It is the first time we have found two s...

Planets with an eggshell

ou open the airlock door. Your first step onto the surface of a new planet! It is hot, but your spacesuit protects you. A thin layer of clouds hides the sun. But something is wrong. You climb down the ladder. What is it? You spin around your axis. Wherever you look, the horizon is the same distance away. This planet has no elevations at all. It is as if you are standing on the outside of an eggshell.

Such planets probably really exist. “Eggshell planets,” a recent study shows, are to be expected...

In the ultraviolet the sky never turns black

The universe is permeated by a universal light. Don’t worry, it’s not getting esoteric here, and I’m not talking about the cosmic microwave background. It is about a completely different part of the spectrum, on the other side, the ultraviolet range. The so-called Lyman-alpha ultraviolet background was first discovered in the 1960s; its existence was confirmed in 1971. It is formed when light particles of a certain frequency (an excitation frequency of hydrogen) are scattered by neutral hydrogen...

The great barrier is real – for cosmic rays

The great barrier surrounding the core of the Milky Way is encountered in 2287 by the starship NCC-1701-A under the command of Captain James T. Kirk. Supposedly, it is impenetrable, and any ship that nevertheless dares to cross it will be destroyed. Kirk and his squad from the USS Enterprise prove the legend to be false. In fact, there is a kind of barrier around the galactic center – and this barrier is not an impenetrable wall. But, as astronomers have now discovered, it is an obstacle to cosm...