Table of contents for No. 139 in All About Space

The colourful, wispy remains of a star’s violent death glow like fireworks in a spectacular image captured by NASA’s venerable Hubble. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the debris forms delicate sheets and intricate filaments of orange and blue. The stunning strands in the Hubble image are the remnants of a supernova, a powerful explosion triggered when a massive star reaches the end of its life. Called DEM L 19 or LMC N49, the stellar remains are located around 160,000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Dorado and represent the brightest supernova remnant within the Large Magellanic Cloud. The light from this explosion would have washed over Earth thousands of years ago, and the sheets and fine ropes of material that…

A marsquake detected by NASA’s InSight lander in May last year was at least five times larger than the next-largest seismic event recorded on the planet. The quake occurred on 4 May and registered at a magnitude of 4.7. Another indication of the scale of the event is that InSight continued detecting waves from the record-breaking quake for around ten hours, while the after-effects of all previous marsquakes had subsided within an hour. “The energy released by this single marsquake is equivalent to the cumulative energy from all other marsquakes we’ve seen so far,” John Clinton, a seismologist at the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zürich, said. “Although the event was over 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) distant, the waves recorded at InSight were so large they almost saturated our seismometer.”…

FUTURE TECH A team of scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, are devising a concept mission which could see a swarm of mini-robots exploring worlds beyond our own – and top of the list is Saturn’s moon Titan. This swarm will be like no other mission before it, as it will consist of a team of up to 12 robots that can morph into different shapes to help them roll, fly, float and swim. This team of robots has appropriately been named ‘Shapeshifter’. When NASA’s Cassini mission flew past Titan and dropped the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe onto the surface, it revealed a world of lakes, rivers and oceans – flowing with liquid ethane and methane instead of water – as well as…

LEVEL 1 Where an identical Earth exists The simplest multiverse is one that most certainly exists – the Big Bang model of cosmic origins predicts that every point in the universe has a ‘Hubble volume’ around it, limited by the expansion of the universe and the distance light has been able to travel in the 13.8 billion years since the infant universe became transparent. In practice, this means our Hubble volume is a sphere 93 billion light years across, but there are many more Hubble volumes extending far beyond what we can see. If the universe has a closed geometry, the number is limited as space curves back around on itself, but if the universe is open, as seems most likely, there may be an infinite number of Hubble volumes,…

There was a time, about 180 years ago, when Eta Carinae became the second-brightest star in the southern sky. Observed around 1843 in the constellation of Carina (the Keel), the supermassive star experienced an enormous celestial outburst, the cause of which has long since been a mystery. Occurring between 1837 and 1858, the event became known as the ‘Great Eruption’, causing the star to become ever brighter until it eventually faded to the point it could no longer be seen by the naked eye. Intriguingly, it released as much visible light as a supernova explosion, but unlike novae and supernovae, the brightness remained for some time. The star also didn’t die. Over the years we’ve come to learn more about Eta Carinae, the star once known as Eta Argus. Having…

Jargon buster Conjunction An alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. Declination (Dec) How high an object will rise in the sky. Like Earth’s latitude, Dec measures north and south in degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds. There are 60 arcseconds in an arcminute and 60 arcminutes in a degree. Opposition When a celestial body is in line with Earth and the Sun. During opposition, an object is visible for the whole night, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise. At this point in its orbit, the celestial object is closest to Earth, making it appear…

1 Hyades (Caldwell 41) The Hyades is a distinctive V-shaped star cluster representing the shoulder of Taurus, the Bull. It’s only 142 light years away, contains between 300 and 400 stars and is easy to see with the naked eye. However, dazzling bright-red Aldebaran is not a cluster member, as it lies between us and the cluster. 2 Messier 35 Messier 35 is an open star cluster 3,000 light years away and more than 24 light years wide. It contains perhaps 3,200 stars, and although it can be seen as a tiny smudge to the naked eye, it is a striking sight in binoculars and most small telescopes. 3 Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris) Magnitude +0.3 Procyon is the eighthbrightest star in the sky. Its name means ‘before the dog’ in Greek,…

A stunning new image of a stellar nursery tells a cosmic tale of death and rebirth. This photo of the Orion Nebula, the closest starforming region to Earth, captures the transformation that occurs as massive stars die within the region, leaving the building blocks of the next generation of stellar objects. The image was created using data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the European Space Agency’s retired Herschel Space Observatory. Located in Orion, named after the Greek mythological hunter who was killed by the sting of a scorpion, the dust cloud has a creation story that’s perhaps equally worthy of a place in mythology. Within the starforming region, which is about 30 to 40 light years wide and located around 1,300 light years…

KEEP IN TOUCH /AllAboutSpaceMagazine @spaceanswers space@spaceanswers.com Detecting life on Enceladus could be achieved without even landing on the moon, but D it wouldn’t be easy. A team of researchers has found that it would require more than 100 flybys through a geyser plume from Enceladus with an orbiting spacecraft to capture signs of a cell – acrucial indicator to confirm the presence of life. This finding could help in designing future space missions to Saturn and Enceladus and to optimise scientific returns, especially if life isn’t detected. In 2015, NASA’s Cassini flew through geysers spewing out of Enceladus’ surface. Data from numerous flybys showed that the plume contained abundant dihydrogen (H2), hinting at the presence of hydrothermal vents on the moon’s seafloor, not unlike on Earth. The data also reflected…

NASA has cancelled the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb), a collaboration with the University of Oklahoma and Lockheed Martin that intended to put a greenhouse gas–monitoring satellite into geostationary orbit. GeoCarb would have measured levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere about 4 million times per day. The mission was selected by NASA in 2016. “Decisions like this are difficult, but NASA is dedicated to making careful choices,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “We look forward to accomplishing our commitment to state-of-theart climate observation in a more efficient and costeffective way.” The decision to end GeoCarb was due to “technical concerns, cost performance and availability of new alternative data sources.” The most recent anticipated cost of GeoCarb was $600 million (£494 million). As…

There are different classifications of dwarf stars, and not all of them are equal he term ‘dwarf star’ was first used in the early 20th century by Ejnar Hertzsprung, used in T opposition to ‘giant star’ for two different groups of brightness, rather than very small stars. Now the term is attached to a number of different types of stars, covering the majority of stars in the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. The most famous, due to the 2016 detection of the closest exoplanet to Earth around one, are red dwarfs. These appear to be the most common type of star in the galaxy, but they’re not visible to the naked eye due to their size and brightness. They are small, ranging from 0.075 to 0.5 times the mass of the Sun. They…

Confirmation of a multiverse could raise some intriguing questions about the origins of life and our own place in the cosmos. According to our current understanding, the physical laws of our universe are suspiciously fine-tuned for life to arise – atiny difference in any one of several physical constants might make liquid water much rarer, render complex organic chemistry unworkable or leave matter itself unable to hold together. The usual scientific solution to this problem, called the ‘weak anthropic principle’, simply states that if the laws of the universe didn’t have the particular behaviours we observe, we wouldn’t be around to see them, so we shouldn’t be so surprised. ‘Strong anthropic principles’ take things a step further with the assumption that, for some reason, the universe has to give rise…

Why didn’t the star die? In 2018, two studies looked at the light that rebounded off interstellar dust as it made its way to Earth. This is called a light echo, and the delay when compared to the light taking a direct route allows experiments to be conducted many decades later. Astronomers at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and Armin Rest of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, both found that the eruption in the 1840s may have been due to a three-way fight. Papers suggest that there were three stars, and that Eta Carinae gobbled one of them up when the system became unstable, sending more than ten times the mass of our Sun into space. Blasting it with lasers Since our planet’s gassy atmosphere blurs…

Of all the planets in the Solar System, Saturn is perhaps the most visually stunning. Ever O since its rings were discovered by Galileo in 1610, this gassy world has been a source of great fascination, with many studies looking at where, when and how those whirls of ice and rock were formed. Yet Saturn isn’t the only planet with rings. Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have them too, but they’re not as prominent. In the case of Jupiter, this has proven to be particularly baffling since Jupiter is 15 per cent larger than Saturn and has three times the mass. In that sense, astronomers would expect the gas giant to have rings even more spectacular than its neighbour. Instead they’re mere whispers in comparison. Among those keen to discover why…

A tthe end of January Venus will be a bright ‘evening star’ shining low in the southwest after sunset. You’ll see it glinting there as soon as darkness falls, looking like a bright silvery-white spark in the sky. You won’t be able to miss it. At the end of January Venus will have company in the sky – the ringed planet Saturn will be close by, shining just down to its lower right, much fainter to see than Venus itself but still visible to the naked eye. As January drifts into February Venus and Saturn will pull apart a little further each evening, and Venus will appear to close in on Jupiter, to its upper left. But if you have binoculars you’ll be able to see Venus having a close…

B orn in Brooklyn in 1944, he joined NASA in August 1979 following a glittering academic career. He designed, built, tested and flew a balloon-borne gamma-ray telescope for his PhD in astrophysics at Harvard University, and he worked on X-ray astronomy rocket payloads at Leicester University. When he was selected for STS-61 – the first Space Shuttle flight to repair Hubble – he’d already been on three space missions. His first was STS-51-D in 1985, when he sought to rescue a malfunctioning satellite, and his second was a Spacelab mission in 1990. His third was the first test flight of the Tethered Satellite System in 1992. In the process, he became the first Jewish astronaut and twice gained NASA Exceptional Service Medals. With numerous other special honours, for both his…

A new image shows the exposed heart of a distant galaxy in stunning detail, demonstrating the promise of a recent addition to the Very Large Telescope (VLT). It shows the galaxy NGC 1097, which is located 45 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Fornax. The image was taken by the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS), recently installed on the VLT, a telescope located at Cerro Paranal in northern Chile and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Set to operate for at least ten years, ERIS will scan the universe in infrared, studying Solar System objects, exoplanets and even distant galaxies like NGC 1097. “We expect not only that ERIS will fulfil its main scientific objectives, but that due to its versatility it will also be…

A rocky meteoroid that exploded over Canada last year was more extraordinary than it first seemed: it originated from the outer Solar System, where scientists thought only icy bodies exist. A cavalcade of astronomers caught images and videos of the meteoroid as it exploded over Alberta. By studying this data, researchers have determined that the meteoroid broke apart like a rocky object, surviving deeper into Earth’s atmosphere than icy objects on similar trajectories. The analysis also suggested that the meteoroid came from the Oort Cloud, far beyond Pluto. Discovering a rocky body from this region could rewrite existing theories of how the Solar System formed. “This discovery supports an entirely different model of the formation of the Solar System, one which backs the idea that significant amounts of rocky material…

A new quantum experiment allows scientists to study the dynamics of wormholes, theoretical space-time entities that first A emerged from general relativity. Rather than creating an actual wormhole, a rip in time and space that’s theorised to form a bridge between one distant region of space and another, the team built a wormhole model to run on a quantum processor. This allowed them to investigate the physics of wormholes and their potential connection to so-called ‘quantum gravity.’ “We found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole yet is sufficiently small to implement on today’s quantum hardware,” Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics (QCCFP) principal investigator Maria Spiropulu said. “This work constitutes a step towards a larger program of testing quantum gravity physics using a quantum computer.”…

Have you ever wondered how different your life would be if you had made different decisions? H You may never know what may have been, but incredibly, all those ‘what if’ scenarios may have played out somewhere. Over the past few years, support for the idea that we live in a ‘multiverse’, in which our universe is just one tiny bubble among countless others, has been gaining strength. For many people, the term ‘multiverse’ conjures up pictures of parallel realities, some with just a slight difference from our own. And that sort of multiverse is indeed predicted by the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics – the strange but highly successful model of how the universe works on the smallest scales – wherein every possible quantum state branches off into…

A Martian megatsunami – agiant killer wave that may have reached more than 80 stories tall – may have raced across the Red Planet after a cosmic impact similar to the one that likely ended Earth’s age of dinosaurs. Although the surface of Mars is now cold and dry, a great deal of evidence suggests that an ocean’s worth of water covered the Red Planet billions of years ago. Previous research found signs that two meteor strikes might have triggered a pair of megatsunamis about 3.4 billion years ago. The older tsunami inundated about 800,000 square kilometres (309,000 square miles), while the more recent one drowned a region of about 1 million square kilometres (386,000 square miles). A 2019 study found what may have been ground zero for the younger…

The International Space Station (ISS) houses an incredible array of cutting-edge research facilities, allowing scientists back on Earth to conduct pioneering experiments in space. Different space agencies, academic institutions and private companies from across the world share the onboard facilities, taking it in turns to perform their experiments. Delicate tests can be conducted in microgravity inside the station itself, and outside experiments can be exposed to vacuum and radiation. With a clear view of space and out of the reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, the ISS is also the perfect place to investigate the universe. Some experiments investigate the physical sciences, looking at the behaviour of different materials in space, while others focus on biology, helping us understand how the human body is affected by space travel or how to grow…

Up near the top of the lunar disc, nestled in the curve of the rugged Montes Apenninus, is a small crater called Timocharis. It doesn’t look like anything special; the Moon is spattered with countless tens of thousands of craters just like it, each one proof that our satellite has been absolutely pummelled and pulverised in its distant past by asteroids and comets that were left circling the Sun after it was born 4.6 billion years ago. Some of these impact craters are enormous, and lunar observers gaze at them again and again, ignoring the smaller holes surrounding them. But some of these small craters have fascinating stories behind them too, and deserve more than just a fleeting glance, such as Timocharis. The crater was named in 1651 by the…

Star projectors are a quick and easy way to change a room’s entire feel, and the Astronaut Starry Sky Star Projector is no different. How could we resist this on-brand astronaut wearing a spacewalking suit? We wanted to see if it performed as well as its more discrete counterparts or if it’s just a novelty item that lacks the functionality we’ve come to expect from a quality star projector. One thing we did notice when shopping around for this product is that prices between retailers seem to vary wildly. Unless we were to purchase one from every store and touch and use them, we can’t really see any noticeable differences between the advertised models, but we’d advise buying from a reputable seller to ensure you aren’t getting a poor-quality replica.…