i was looking to write something about the surface geography of pluto and came across this article about a cool geographic feature on the surface of pluto! since the flyby, we’ve had a lot of new information to sift through about the distant icy planet, and now we’ve found a new set of tendrils on the surface of pluto in a pattern that’s like “nothing else we’ve seen in the outer solar system.” the newly released pictures show us 6 cracks which radiate out from a central point, unlike typical cracks we’ve seen in the past which typically run parallel to each other due to the expanding icy crust. they are also red! what would that mean? what caused them? and why are they colored? only time will tell for our distant icy friend!
neutron stars are extremely dense stars – perhaps the densest stars in the known universe! – so dense in fact, that a marble-sized serving of neutron star would weigh about the same as 5 trillion tons of earth rock! they can form as a result of the collapse of a giant star in a supernova event. because they are so compact, thanks to the conservation of angular momentum, they spin really quickly – more than 700 revolutions a second! – which we can detect from earth. based on our estimate of how many supernovae events there have been in the universe, we estimate that there are as many as 100 million neutron stars out there. that’s a lot! as one of my favorite bands muse sing, love is forever, and hearts will combine like a neutron star collision!
Currently, we do not have the technology to travel to even the closest stars. The fastest spacecraft humans have ever built is the Voyager 1, which is currently traveling at roughly 17 km/s. However, even at these speeds it would take the Voyager I nearly 70,000 years to get to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Clearly, this is not even close to the speed we need to obtain to make interstellar space travel feasible. One potential way to reach speeds that would make interstellar travel feasible in an efficient matter would be with a solar sail.
Solar Sails work by using the solar wind to propel an aircraft forward. Every time light hits an object, it changes the object’s momentum ever so slightly. Thus, since a stream of photons is constantly being released by the Sun in all directions, we could use giant sails attached to spacecraft in order to reflect this light and propel the spacecraft. In fact, this technique has already been used for a few satellites. By using this method, we could theoretically accelerate a spacecraft to nearly the speed of light. The only problem with this is that we would need to build a solar sail that is thousands of miles across and is thinner than a human hair. However, as technology progresses, it is certainly feasible to think that we might someday be able to achieve interstellar travel through using a solar sail.
Currently, we do not have the technology to travel to even the closest stars. The fastest spacecraft humans have ever built is the Voyager 1, which is currently traveling at roughly 17 km/s. However, even at these speeds it would take the Voyager I nearly 70,000 years to get to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Clearly, this is not even close to the speed we need to obtain to make interstellar space travel feasible. One potential way to reach speeds that would make interstellar travel feasible in an efficient matter would be with a solar sail.
Solar Sails work by using the solar wind to propel an aircraft forward. Every time light hits an object, it changes the object’s momentum ever so slightly. Thus, since a stream of photons is constantly being released by the Sun in all directions, we could use giant sails attached to spacecraft in order to reflect this light and propel the spacecraft. In fact, this technique has already been used for a few satellites. By using this method, we could theoretically accelerate a spacecraft to nearly the speed of light. The only problem with this is that we would need to build a solar sail that is thousands of miles across and is thinner than a human hair. However, as technology progresses, it is certainly feasible to think that we might someday be able to achieve interstellar travel through using a solar sail.
Watch out, Earth! Scientists have discovered a massive black hole in our universe, one that weighs the equivalent of 17 billions suns! While the size of this black hole is very significant, something that makes it even more unique is it’s location in our universe. According to astronomers, black holes this size are almost always found in the center of galaxies that are located in an area of the universe that is “packed” with other galaxies. One example of this is a massive 21 billion sun size black hole that was found in the crowded Coma Galaxy Cluster which has consists of well over 1 thousand galaxies! The black hole recently found is located in a cluster with just 20 other galaxies.
This is significant as it tells us that there may be more black holes out there than we thought! As one scientist put it, “maybe there are more monster black holes out there that don’t live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall building somewhere in the Midwestern plains.” The black hole is located about 200 million light years from Earth, and don’t worry, we are not likely to run into it any time soon
Launched in 2006, the New Horizons Space Probe set out with the mission to get the best view of Pluto that we humans have ever seen. And it just so happens that we succeeded! We are now seeing the absolute best images that we have ever seen of the famed dwarf planet. Recently, Pluto has been getting the spotlight for an interesting feature found by New Horizons.
A recent image of the planet shows a spider shaped feature on the surface of the planet. What do I mean by spider shaped? Take a look at this image yourself:
Interestingly, astronomers do not know exactly what they are looking at. “The pattern these fractures form is like nothing else we’ve seen in the outer solar system, and shows once again that anywhere we look on Pluto, we see something different” said Oliver White, part of the New Horizons geology team. So for now, all we know is that they are fractures in the surface of the “dwarf planet” that happen to be in a very interesting shape. It will be interesting to see what we learn about this oddity in the future!
Around 63 light years away form Earth sits the exoplanet HD 189733b. The planet has a mass of 1.13 Jupiter masses and orbits its star closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. Seen from afar, this planet is blue in color and has bands of white haze in its atmosphere that resemble clouds. Though HD 189733b might look similar to Earth, it is in no way habitable to life as we know it.
Although the planet is close to its star, it is actually a gas planet and can be classified under the category of “Hot Jupiters.” Since HD 189733b is so close to its star, its average temperature is roughly 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Furthermore, the planet is gravitationally locked. Since one side of the planet is so much hotter than the other side, extreme winds whip across the planet at 4,000 miles per hour. These, however, are not even the planet’s deadliest attributes. Due to the immense pressure of the atmosphere, glass is created in the planet’s atmosphere. Due to the winds, glass constantly flies sideways around the planet at around 4,0000 miles per hour, which is faster than the speed of a bullet. To put it simply, the prospect of life on this planet is grim at best.
Around 63 light years away form Earth sits the exoplanet HD 189733b. The planet has a mass of 1.13 Jupiter masses and orbits its star closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. Seen from afar, this planet is blue in color and has bands of white haze in its atmosphere that resemble clouds. Though HD 189733b might look similar to Earth, it is in no way habitable to life as we know it.
Although the planet is close to its star, it is actually a gas planet and can be classified under the category of “Hot Jupiters.” Since HD 189733b is so close to its star, its average temperature is roughly 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Furthermore, the planet is gravitationally locked. Since one side of the planet is so much hotter than the other side, extreme winds whip across the planet at 4,000 miles per hour. These, however, are not even the planet’s deadliest attributes. Due to the immense pressure of the atmosphere, glass is created in the planet’s atmosphere. Due to the winds, glass constantly flies sideways around the planet at around 4,0000 miles per hour, which is faster than the speed of a bullet. To put it simply, the prospect of life on this planet is grim at best.
Gravity? We’ve heard a lot about exoplanets lately. To me, one of the more fascinating classes is the “Hot Jupiter” class (of which the first exoplanet to be discovered orbiting a main sequence star- 51 Pegasi b- is considered to belong). So what makes an exoplanet a Hot Jupiter and why are they interesting?
Artist’s rendition of 10 Hot Jupiters-done to scale relative to each other. Bottom Left is the size of Jupiter (Wikipedia)
Hot Jupiters generally:
Have a mass that is greater than or equal to that of Jupiter
Have high surface temperatures
Caused by their close orbits to their stars (they average a distances in the range of 0.015-0.5 AUs from their parent stars)
Interesting to note, there are generally low differences between the day sides and the night sides because high speed winds distribute the heat across the surface.
Have highly circular orbits (because of tides)
Migrated to their current position because there would not have been enough material to form in their current locations
It is this last characteristic that makes Hot Jupiters so interesting. Not only are we not entirely sure how they get their current locations, but also why aren’t they eaten by their parent star? One theory is that the planet star’s gravitational forces stabilize the orbit before this can happen.
Exoplanets are an exciting field leading us to confirm or question what we think we know about space!
We read about them in our textbooks. They’re the giants with discoveries that make our understandings of moon phases and seasonal changes seem minuscule and insignificant. We stand on their shoulders when we learn about atmospheric conditions on different planets. We hold their hands while launching expensive equipment into the hardly-known (space). We sometimes name this equipment after them.
Galileo. Copernicus. Hubble. James Webb.
Carl Sagan.
The former names have been turned into enterprises, garnering funds for missions unlike past endeavors into space – names often including a lot of propaganda. While of great importance (and enough to geek any somewhat educated person out), the latter, Carl Sagan, has remained a humble reminder of the passion that is astronomy.
Sagan pushed the limits of astronomical discoveries, disregarding the status quo when it came to studying space. He’s been an advisor to NASA since the birth of its missions around 1950. For example, he advised the Apollo mission and its astronauts, and he has been a part of the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo missions. His work has even extended into more recent endeavors, like the pursuit of understanding why Venus’s conditions are so hot.
This American astronomer put much of his focus on the communication of science. He published several works, was decorated with several awards (i.e. NASA’s “Apollo Achievement Award” and the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society), and was even a Pulitzer Prize winner. Sagan didn’t have reservations about his musings about life on other planets, somewhere out there in the vastness of space. Aside from his publication about the progression of human intelligence, “The Dragons of Eden,” he even went so far as to send the song “Dark Was The Night” by Blind Willie Johnson into the great unknown, hoping for some kind of communication between life forms (if another were out there).
His ambition and paramount success, though it seems impossible, are surpassed – surpassed by his deep love for astronomy and the possibilities of information we can’t yet understand. He was a pioneer in developing and communicating spatial discoveries, as well as sparking curiosity among scientists and civilians alike.
