A substance called antimatter is at the heart of one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. We know that every particle has an antimatter companion that is virtually identical to itself but with the opposite charge. When a particle and its antiparticle meet, they annihilate each other — disappearing in a burst of light. ...
After a journey of billions of kilometers, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has culminated in a small black capsule blazing through the sky before touching down in the Utah desert. Inside is likely to be the largest-ever sample of dust and rock returned from an asteroid. Extracted and brought back with great technical ingenuity from an asteroid ...
Of all the objects in the Solar System, perhaps the most spectacular are the great comets that occasionally grace our skies. If you’ve been on social media in the past few days, you’ve probably seen articles proclaiming we have such a comet in our skies right now: C/2023 P1 (Nishimura). As I write this, comet ...
Are we alone? This question is nearly as old as humanity itself. Today, this question in astronomy focuses on finding life beyond our planet. Are we, as a species, and as a planet, alone? Or is there life somewhere else? Usually, the question inspires visions of weird, green versions of humans. However, life is more ...
A galaxy can come in many shapes and sizes, from giant, slowly rotating ovals and fast-whirling spiral disks to faint ball-shaped blobs and dwarf irregulars. Most large, bright galaxies — including our own Milky Way — are orbited by a gang of much smaller dwarf galaxies. Most of this we know from optical images, whether ...
In May 2020, some unusual rocks containing distinctive greenish crystals were found in the Erg Chech sand sea, a dune-filled region of the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. On close inspection, the rocks turned out to be from outer space: lumps of rubble billions of years old, left over from the dawn of the Solar ...
Early universe observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cannot be explained by current cosmological models. These models estimate the universe to be 13.8 billion years in age, based on the Big Bang expanding universe concept. My research proposes a model that determines the universe’s age to be 26.7 billion years, which accounts for ...
The Russian space agency Roscosmos had hoped to return to the Moon after an absence of nearly 50 years. Instead, on Saturday, August 19th, it lost control of its Luna-25 lander. The agency explained the spacecraft “switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.” ...
In 2019, India attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon — and ended up painting a kilometres-long streak of debris on its barren surface. Now, the Indian Space Research Organisation has returned in triumph, with the Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touching down near the south pole of Earth’s rocky Moon neighbor. India’s success came just ...
What do you feel when you see an aurora, and what does this have to do with solar activity? Otherwise known as the northern or southern lights, an aurora is light emitted by upper atmospheric particles as they interact with energized ones from the magnetosphere. It’s an awe-inspiring and otherworldly event that those living at ...
© 2024 nspirement. All rights reserved
