Solar Winds

Posted on March 30, 2020 by fermifurby

Solar winds are arguably one of the most destructive forces in our solar system. As a kid, I never took these forces into account when thinking about space travel. In my mind, as long as you avoided flying your space ship directly into the sun (which I thought was on fire, of course), our star was not to be worried about. Unfortunately, solar winds have to be taken into account when traversing space.

A rendering of solar winds and the sun’s corona

Here on earth, tornadoes and hurricanes are some of mother natures most immediately damaging phenomenon. One of the things that make these occurrences so scary, is that they can seem to appear out of nowhere. Just recently, Nashville was hit by a devastating tornado. There was little to no warning for those that were affected by it. Tornadoes can have wind speeds up to 300 mph, the recent Nashville tornado is estimated to have had 165 mph winds. Comparatively, solar winds can reach speeds up to 500 miles per second. That’s a top speed of 1.8 million mph!

This incredible speed leads to a large transfer of energy into whatever the winds collides with, and luckily for us, we have our magnetosphere to protect us. I mentioned the magnetosphere in my previous post about the northern lights, but there are other things that occur when the wind makes contact with our magnetosphere. The near invisible collisions can cause the magnetosphere to become deformed, leading to turbulence. this turbulence can lead to a number of things, interference in terrestrial communications, satellite malfunctions, and even issues in our power grids. Solar wind is a part of our local space weather, which we need to be conscious of, whether we are traveling in space or living here on Earth.

An awesome photo by NASA on solar wind!
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How’s the Weather Up There? ⛅

Posted on March 29, 2020 by vsli
A beautiful picture of our weatherless Moon!
Captured by u/ajamesmccarthy

On an especially brutally stormy day, you may have thought to yourself, “Why does it have to be this way? Why do we have to be so inconvenienced?” Well, if we colonize Mars or the Moon someday, your wish may come true. That’s because weather stems from the presence of an atmosphere! Weather is mostly caused by heat from the Sun and movement of air.

Without an atmosphere, there are no air molecules to be affected by the planet’s heating. Without these moving particles due to temperature differentials, there is nothing to cause wind. In fact, wind simply cannot occur without an atmosphere because it IS air. Clouds would also be unable to form, because they are masses of liquid droplets suspended in the atmosphere. (There’s the additional problem of requiring water to evaporate!) Even if clouds could form without an atmosphere, they would be blown away by the solar wind due to the lack of protection an atmosphere would normally provide. Thus, rain cannot occur, nor snow, sleet, and other precipitation.

Though, that would probably be the least of your problems, since you’d be physically unable to breathe in such a place without assistance of some kind. Earth’s atmosphere is made of precisely the right amounts of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases that we need to survive normally. (Probably because we have only ever known living on Earth, and developed on Earth as a species.) Oh, and the lack of atmospheric pressure on your body would quickly start making your insides feel like they’re becoming your outsides…

Long story short, while not having to deal with rainy day traffic may seem like a blessing, not having an atmosphere at all makes things much, much worse!

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The Lesser Known Planetary Rings

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Lily

The rings of Uranus, which are not easily visible.

When quizzed about planetary characteristics in elementary school, the typical questioned asked when referring to Saturn is, “Which planet in the solar system has rings?” While answering Saturn is not incorrect, it isn’t completely correct either. Other planets with rings in our solar system are Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. A more accurate way to ask this question is, “Which planet in our solar system is known for having visible rings?”

The rings of Neptune.

            Planetary rings are, essentially, orbiting disks around a planet that are comprised of debris and other materials. These planets that are lesser known for their rings are all gas giants. Due to their size, gas giant planets, which are Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune, have a higher gravitational pull compared to the terrestrial planets and it all has to do with size. Gas giants have more moons and more objects that get stuck in orbit around these planets, which explains how these rings form. The only outstanding feature that makes Saturn’s rings stand out more than other rings present in our solar system are the size and the brightness that makes them more visible. 

The rings surrounding the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter.
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The beautiful tails of comets

Posted on March 29, 2020 by caseycao

What distinguishes comets from other celestial bodies is their beautiful tails. Comets, with nuclei made of ice and dust, go through a process called outgassing as they move toward the sun. The icy part of a comet becomes gaseous due to the fast warm-up and brings dust away from the comet’s body.

What’s most interesting is that a comet has multiple tails. The tail we usually refer to are the gas tail, which points straight away from the Sun. However, if we look closely, we can see the dimmer dusty tail, which curves toward the comet’s orbit and thus deviates itself away from the gas tail.

Even though each typical comet has a gas tail and a dusty tail, there is still another reason for which comets can have multiple tails. Since comets have irregular shapes and rotate irregularly, a comet’s surface is not heated uniformly. Therefore, there exists the possibility that different regions of the same comet emit tails at the same time. How luck y we will be if we can witness it in our lifetime!

A comet can have multiple tails

References:

1.What Are Comet Tails?

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Exoplanet’s Exotic Weather

Posted on March 29, 2020 by abriannarhodes00

Scientist thought that Venus’s weather was bad. From the planet’s acid rain, to the horrendous temperatures and pressures to the clouds that smother the planet in sulfuric acid. It’s the closest image that scientist have to depicting hell. But what if there’s something that may be even worse? What if Earth’s raging twin actually has a calm temperament compared to other planets.

This was found to be exactly the case with exoplanet WASP 7-B. This gas giant exoplanet has completely expelled anything in our solar system from being “the possible scariest/worse.” During the day, WASP 7-B reached scorching temperatures of up to 2,400 degrees Celsius (enough to vaporize metal). The night gives off a picture that’s just as daunting: iron rain. Found in the Pisces constellation, this planet rest about 640 light-years from out solar system. It has been nicknamed a “hot Jupiter” because while being only slightly smaller than Jupiter, it sits ten times closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun! This extreme proximity has caused WASP 7-B to be a tidally locked star, with one side of the planet living in an eternal day while the other side never sees the end of the night. The proximity also causes WASP 7-B to get about 1000 times more radiation than the Earth does from the Sun.


This is an artist depiction of the iron rain from https://astronomy.com/news/2020/03/astronomers-find-an-exoplanet-where-iron-rains-from-the-sky.
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Living on Titan?

Posted on March 29, 2020 by seths1

Could human beings inhabit Titan, one of Saturn’s moons? Titan is one of the least hostile places for humans in the outer solar system. Titan has liquid methane lakes and oceans on its surface, and even has weather. Titan’s atmosphere is very dense – 95% nitrogen and 5% methane. The gravity on Titan is slightly weaker than the gravity on the moon. The pressure is quite similar to that on Earth. This very interesting article explores the possibility on living on Titan or Enceladus, another one of Titan’s moons.

A composite image of Saturn’s moon Titan taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

Scientists are investigating if methane based life exists on Titan. If a human being was on titan, they would only need an oxygen mask and protection from the weather. Could humans inhabit titan some day?

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Why is Pluto No Longer a Planet?

Posted on March 29, 2020 by dannydonofrio217

It’s no secret Pluto has been out of the privileged circle of celestial bodies to be considered planets for over a decade now. But many don’t realize what events led to this ousting, and the reasonings for doing so.

Pluto had long since been considered a planet since its discovery in the 1930’s. Yet starting in 1992, discoveries were made which put this status in jeopardy. Several celestial objects were found in the Kuiper belt which were as large, if not larger, than Pluto. Naturally this lead to the question: should these be planets? Or should Pluto not be a planet?

This debate was fueled even more by the 2005 discovery of Eris, a dwarf planet in the scattered disc which was found to be 27% more massive than Pluto. This was the final nail in the coffin for Pluto’s membership to the planet club, with the International Astronomical Union establishing guidelines on what is considered a planet that explicitly dropped Pluto from the roster in 2006 at their General Assembly. Although Pluto may not be batting in the big leagues anymore, it will always be a planet in my heart.

2015 high resolution image of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.
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Could There be Life on Europa?

Posted on March 29, 2020 by phildowd
This is a picture of Europa, one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons. Europa is considered one of the most likely places where life in our universe that isn’t on Earth might exist, and you can read more about that here!

Europa is one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, meaning it’s one of the four largest moons that orbit Jupiter. What makes it particularly special is that it is considered one of the most likely places in our solar system (outside of Earth) that might contain life. Now, at a glance, it seems like that shouldn’t be possible. People often learn about how Earth is in a “sweet spot,” not being too close to the sun that life couldn’t exist due to the heat, or being too far away that all life would freeze away and die. Now, while things like atmosphere and other factors also contribute to whether a plant can sustain life, not just distance from the sun, it does remain true that Europa, even at it’s closest distance to the sun, is still well past the solar frost line, which makes one assume life wouldn’t be possible. Yet in reality, it being so far away is part of the reason there could be life present. NASA describes the three things needed for life as water, chemistry, and energy. Water appears to be plentiful on Europa, with the surface being completely frozen, and underneath the frozen crust, astronomers believe there is a huge ocean, kept warm by the moving core and colossal tidal shifts due to the mass of Jupiter. The “chemistry” means there needs to be a plentiful supply of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and a few other elements that scientists believe reside on Europa. The tricky part is the energy. On Earth, the “energy” comes from the sun, but since Europa is so far away from the sun, it can’t rely just on that. Scientists theorize that much of the energy that could create life on Europa is radioactive energy from Jupiter. Now, at a glance even this is confusing, as Jupiter give off so much radioactive energy that it should kill any life that would form on Europa’s surface. Yet as mentioned earlier, the surface of Europa is frozen, and scientists believe that if life exists, it exists in the ocean that is underneath the ice cover. It’s impossible to know if life actually exists on Europa until we get there, but there is enough evidence to show it could be there, and that by itself, is still incredibly exciting.

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Large Asteroid Flyby on April 29th

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Phillip Yoon

If you’ve been scrolling through random news articles over the past few weeks, you may have come across an article about a large asteroid that may end human civilization if it strikes the Earth. Just to be clear, this asteroid will not hit Earth and will barely have any effect on civilization.

NASA is currently tracking this asteroid that is headed our way. The asteroid  (52768) 1998 is about 4 km wide, making it the biggest asteroid to pass Earth this year. The asteroid will come closest to Earth on April 29th – it will be about 6 million kilometers away from us, a large enough distance for us to not worry about a potential collision. The asteroid will travel at about 31,320 km/hr and will appear as a slow-moving star to observers here on Earth. Astronomers around the world are already tracking this asteroid – below is an image of the asteroid taken by a robotic telescope called Elena on March 6th.

Image of Asteroid by Elena

Although this asteroid will have no effect on us, it’s still cool to see a moving object in space. The movement cannot be detected with a naked eye, but the asteroid’s flyby will be streamed online for viewers all over the world on the 29th.

Sources Used: EarthSky, CNN

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The Interiors of the Giants of the Solar System

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Jonah
The four Jovian planets in the Solar System

The giants of our solar system, other than the Sun of course, are quite different from the terrestrial planets whether it comes to the atmospheres, the surfaces, size, or other planetary features. One key difference is the interior of these giant planets. Terrestrial planets, for context, have a very dense core followed by a rocky mantle and ultimately a thin crust (or surface). When it comes to the giants, or Jovian, planets, the interiors are similar in that they have layers but the compositions are quite different.

The interiors of the four Jovian planets

As you can see in this visual, the layers are present but the compositions are what make these planets distinct from the terrestrials. The cores consist of rock, metals, and different gases. Jupiter and Saturn are similar to one another while Uranus and Neptune resemble one another more.
Jupiter’s and Saturn’s cores are surrounded by layers of hydrogen transforming from a solid to a liquid to a gaseous form. What we see from Earth are the surfaces of the planets which are primarily clouds of gas swirling around as the planets rotate. Uranus’ and Neptune’s inner cores consist of rock and metals while the outer core is made of water, methane, and ammonia. The core is then surrounded by gaseous hydrogen covered by clouds that we see from Earth.
I just wanted to share this with you all since we tend to hear so much about the terrestrial planets. Hopefully, you learned a little something about the Jovian planets and will dig deeper to maybe understand them more.

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