Today’s stories include Black Holes Wobbling Three Times a Second have Proved Einstein Right to Astronomers Have Unveiled the World’s Largest Digital Camera, and much more.
One of Jupiter’s moons may be hiding magnificent underwater lakes — and perhaps even life–Europa, a prime candidate for extraterrestrial life, has an icy surface that hides a bustling, watery interior, reports Salon. “This is significant because, just as life on Earth originated from the vast array of water-based structures on our planet, life on Europa may very well be flourishing within any system of lakes that exists on that planet.”
If aliens have visited the solar system, here’s how to find clues they left, reports Paul Sutter for Space.com–“So far, all searches for extraterrestrial life have come up empty. There is an alternative route that has yet to be explored: the search for extraterrestrial objects (SETA). The idea behind this approach is that if aliens become advanced enough, they might want to explore the galaxy, either by themselves or through robotic spacecraft during the 4.5 billion-year history of the solar system–plenty of time to swing by our neighborhood and maybe leave a mark.
Telescopes for the Moon–Our future in space relies on settling the Moon and using it as a base to probe the deepest questions in the cosmos, reports Joseph Silk, Homewood Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University for Aeon. “Only from the lunar surface can we mount the ultimate search for our origins. We’ll achieve this by constructing novel telescopes of unprecedented scope in dark lunar craters and on the far side of the Moon.”
Einstein proved right when Einstein pointed out that black holes can wobble three times per second.–A pair of merging black holes show extreme signs of gravity-induced orbital precession, or wobbling, as predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, reports New Scientist.
NASA Spacecraft Completes Mission and Sends Asteroid into New Orbit–The DART mission proved more successful than expected in adjusting the trajectory of Dimorphos, suggesting that a deadly space rock could be deflected in the future, reports The New York Times.
The speed of light seven times faster than the jet from neutron stars–An optical illusion created by the relative positions of Earth and a pair of colliding neutron stars makes it seem like a jet of radiation is traveling at seven times the speed of light – but thankfully no laws of physics have been broken, reports New Scientist.
James Webb telescope captures ‘cosmic fingerprint’ formed by two giant stars–Series of 17 concentric dust rings was spawned by Wolf-Rayet 140 binary system thousands of light years away, reports The Guardian. “Like clockwork, WR140 puffs out a sculpted smoke ring every eight years, which is then inflated in the stellar wind like a balloon,” said Prof Peter Tuthill of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney, a study co-author.
‘We’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before:’ Black Hole Spews Out Material Years After Shredding Star,According to the Harvard CfA. The Harvard CfA reported that the black holes are now emitting material at twice the speed light. They don’t know why the outflow has been delayed for so long.
Astronomers have unveiled the world’s largest digital camera--The world’s largest digital camera for astronomy is taller than a car, has as many pixels as 266 iPhones and will, over the course of the next 10 years, help researchers study billions of galaxies, reports New Scientist.
Black hole discovers that it can fire jets at a neighboring galaxy.The Royal Astronomical Society reports. The black hole is located in a galaxy approximately one billion lightyears away from Earth, called RAD12.
Two exoplanets have strangely heavy elements floating in their sky.–Astronomers have found barium floating high in the atmospheres of two sweltering exoplanets, and they don’t know how such a heavy element ended up where it is, reports New Scientist.
