The outburst was equal to 1,038 nuclear bombs. “This is an extreme case…” said Michael Calzadilla, at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) of a massive black hole explosion in galaxy cluster SPT-0528 so powerful that it punched two holes in the cosmos. Even though the outburst happened billions of years ago, before our solar system had even formed, it took around 6.7 billion years for light from the galaxy cluster to travel all the way to Chandra, NASA’s X-ray emissions observatory that orbits Earth.
“It’s a shame we don’t have it naturally here on earth, but on Jupiter, there are oceans of metallic hydrogen. We want to find out how these oceans give rise to Jupiter’s enormous magnetic field,” observed Mohamed Zaghoo with the University of Rochester’s Laboratory of Laser Energetics (LLE) and colleague Gilbert ‘Rip’ Collins, director of the high-energy-density physics program. Astrophysicists have long thought that planets with magnetic fields are better able to sustain gaseous atmospheres and are more likely to harbor life.
Some 65 million years ago the greatest asteroid impact in a billion years may have sown life throughout the solar system, even as it ravaged life on Earth. Blasted debris escaped Earth’s gravitational force forming irregular orbits around the sun, eventually finding its way to the planets and moons of the solar system. Mars was eventually dusted with the debris and according to a 2013 study in the journal Astrobiology, the 14-kilometer-wide object ejected tens of thousands of pounds of impact rubble that may have landed on Saturn’s moon, Titan and on Europa and Callisto, which orbit Jupiter – all satellites that scientists believe harbor promising habitats for life. Mathematical models indicate that at least some of this debris still carried living microbes.
China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover is due to touchdown on the far side of the moon around New Year, 2019 at the Von Kármán crater in Aitken Basin –the craggy and complex terrain of the lunar south pole region. The planet’s new space superpower will plant its flag. Will it also claim ownership?
“With these findings, Ceres has gained a pivotal role in assessing the origin, evolution and distribution of organic species across the inner solar system,” said Southwest Research Institute scientist Simone Marchi. “One has to wonder about how this world may have driven organic chemistry pathways, and how these processes may have affected the make-up of larger planets like the Earth.”
“Europa’s plumes are the most straight-forward way to taste its subsurface ocean,” says Hans Huybrighs with Max-Planck Institute of Solar System Physics. “Flying through one of the plumes of water and taking samples of the material could be the easiest way to study Europa’s ocean. JUICE will be the first mission that might be able to do this.”