Posted on Aug 1, 2022 in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Early Universe, Exoplanets, Galaxies, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA, Science, Space News, Universe
Today’s stories from Beyond range from NASA brings standards of evidence to the search for UFOs to The unexpected science from the James Webb’s first images to Investigating Milky Way’s origins.
Webb space telescope has just imaged another most-distant galaxy, breaking its record after a week, reports Ben Turner for Live Science. And it almost certainly won’t be the last time. “The galaxy, named CEERS-93316, was pictured as it existed just 235 million years after the Big Bang, using Webb’s Near Infrared Camera, which can peer back in time to the earliest flickerings of the very first stars.”
A Giant Hole In The Universe: Just What Is The Boötes Void? –If the Milky Way had been in the center of the Boötes void, we wouldn’t have known there were other galaxies until the 1960s, reports iFL Science. ” Barnard 68, which – if the Internet is to be believed (which it’s not) – is “an empty void in space so big that if you traveled across it you wouldn’t bump into anything for 752,536,988 years”.
Why bother exploring the Universe? asks Ethan Siegel for Big Think. “There are so many problems, all across planet Earth, that harm and threaten humanity. Why invest in researching the Universe? It’s a question that’s been asked repeatedly over the course of many centuries, but the answer is always the same: human civilization is a long game. We mustn’t shortchange the future.”
A New device will investigate Milky Way’s origins, reports The BBC. The William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, Spain will be able to survey 1,000 stars per hour until it has cataloged a total of five million. A super-fast mapping device linked up to WHT will analyze the make-up of each star and the speed at which it travels. It will show how our Milky Way galaxy was built up over billions of years.
Strange Radio Sources in Distant Galaxy Cluster Defy Our Understanding, reports Science Alert. “A series of rarely observed radio objects – a radio relic, a radio halo, and fossil radio emission – within a particularly dynamic galaxy cluster called Abell 3266 defy existing theories about both the origins of such objects and their characteristics.
JWST could soon tell us what exoplanets’ surfaces are made of, reports New Scientist. Observing the surface of an exoplanet is tricky, but a study analyzing data from the Spitzer space telescope suggests it should be feasible with the more powerful James Webb telescope.
Debris From Uncontrolled Chinese Rocket Falls Over Southeast Asian Seas–Space watchers had tracked the 23-ton rocket stage’s path in Earth orbit this week because of the slight possibility that it could come down over a populated area, reports the New York Times.
NASA was “completely wrong” about the asteroid Bennu –The surface of asteroid Bennu is more like a plastic ball pit than the Moon, reports Big Think. “A NASA scientist remarked that the particles making up Bennu’s exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that they act more like a fluid than a solid.”
China adds science laboratory to its orbiting space station, reports AP News. “The 23-ton Wentian laboratory is designed for science and biology experiments and is heavier than any other single-module spacecraft currently in space, according to the state-owned Global Times.”
A brief guide to looking for aliens, This technology will probably be our best clue reports astrophysicist Jason Wright, for Interesting Engineering.
A new discovery may explain the origin of life on Earth. The new research provides the simplest hypothesis yet for the chemical reactions that sparked life on Earth, Chris Young for Interesting Engineering. ““We’ve come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry,” says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research. “We think the kind of reactions we’ve described are probably what could have happened on early earth.”
New Satellite Is a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ in Space –The hyperspectral probe can pick out extreme detail of materials on Earth’s surface, reports Scientific American. ” new tool will soon let researchers analyze Earth’s surface in mesmerizing detail, from the state of the planet’s soil to the plants that bloom on its surface to the makeup of urban sprawl”
The unexpected science you missed from James Webb’s first images –We knew we’d find galaxies unlike any seen before in its first deep-field image. But the other images hold secrets even more profound, reports Big Think. “The first of the five images to be released was a deep-field image of a galaxy cluster, containing numerous ultra-distant galaxies from when the Universe was less than 1 billion years old. But three of the other images contain so many galaxies that they might lead to an entirely new kind of science.”
NASA brings standards of evidence to the search for UFOs, reports the University of Rochester. “Scientists have the technology to detect biosignatures, which occur when a distant planet is clothed in a biosphere whose life alters the host world’s atmosphere biosignatures—in other words, signs of life. “But as exciting as this prospect is, we won’t ever be able to claim we’ve found life without those all-important standards of evidence,” says astrophysicist Adam Frank. “And it’s those standards, stated clearly and followed precisely, that have everything to do with UFOs and NASA.”
Scientists find evidence for biggest earthquake in human history, reports Ben Turner for Live Science. The quake was so ruinous, humans fled the area for 1,000 years.
Curated by The Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff
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