Astronomers have discovered the most distant and earliest blazar, comprised of an erupting supermassive black hole aiming its plasma jets directly at Earth.
Blazars occur when supermassive black holes are surrounded by vast amounts of gas and dust that they feed on, in regions called active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The immense gravity of these cosmic titans causes the surrounding gas and dust to glow brightly, meaning that AGNs can outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxies that house them. But that isn't all; matter that isn't feasted upon is channeled to the poles of the black hole, from where it is blasted out as twin jets of plasma moving at near-light speed.
These events are called quasars, but when the jets are directed straight down our line of sight, the quasar is classified as a blazar. Light from this high-energy blazar, designated Blazar OP 313, has been travelling to Earth for 8 billion years, meaning it is seen as it was just 5 billion years after the Big Bang during a crucial transitional phase in cosmic history.
"Around 11 billion years ago, the universe experienced a period of peak activity known as the 'cosmic noon,' characterised by an intense rate of star and galaxy formation," research team member Axel Arbet-Engels said in a statement."When this phase of intense activity slowed down and galaxies began to evolve and mature, the universe entered a calmer phase, which continues to this day."
The dawn of cosmic noon
Cosmic noon marked the period during which OP 313 emitted its powerful burst of very high-energy photons in the form of gamma-rays.
That emission was first observed in December 2023, with astronomers following up on the discovery with the Large-Sized Telescope (LST-1) prototype and the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope, both of which are located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Spain.
This revealed high-energy gamma-rays originating 8 billion light-years away. The analysis of these gamma-rays revealed how the supermassive black hole at the heart of this blazar is acting as a cosmic particle accelerator.
As these gamma rays traversed the cosmos, they interacted with the total accumulated radiation from all the stars, galaxies, and other AGNs throughout cosmic history, known as the extragalactic background (EBL).
When gamma rays interact with this fossil light, they create electron-positron pairs, a process known as pair production. This depletes the number of gamma-ray photons in this signal. Using the LST-1 and MAGIC, the team was able to characterize this depletion, revealing that the intense gamma-ray emission was fueled by a dense population of so-called 'relativistic' electrons. Relativistic means travelling at speeds near that of light, with the blazar's central supermassive black hole as the engine that accelerated these particles.
This plot shows the locations of 150 blazars (green dots) used in the EBL study. Image released Nov. 1, 2012. (Image credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration)
"In what is known as the leptonic scenario, electrons have been accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light within a powerful plasma jet ejected by the central supermassive black hole of OP 313," team member Domenico Della Volpe of the University of Geneva said. "Upon colliding with lower-energy photons surrounding the black hole, the electrons transfer part of their considerable energy to these photons, thereby propelling them to energy levels corresponding to very high-energy gamma rays."
That means these findings could represent a major step forward for our understanding of quasars, some of the most powerful cosmic events ever detected by humanity.
The moon is a historical landmark — a celestial body continually peppered with robotic landers shot from our home planet, as well as human footprints planted there by a dozen visiting moonwalkers from 1969 to 1972.
A recent gathering in Italy of the International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage (ISCAH) looked at protecting lunar heritage with an eye toward developing guidelines for spacecraft deorbiting onto the moon's surface.
Particular attention was paid to the risks posed by the impacts of deorbited satellites and rocket stages, recently highlighted by the crash of a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage into the moon last August.
As pointed out in the meeting, as lunar traffic increases, controlled crash landings of moon orbiters and rocket stages are becoming an attractive end-of-mission disposal strategy.
And that's a problem.
Limited knowledge
There is limited knowledge regarding ejecta modeling and the effects produced by these impacts, said Luca Forassiepi. He spoke at the Sept. 14 meeting in Piza, which was called "Protecting Lunar Heritage: Developing Guidelines and Recommendations for Controlled Lunar Deorbiting."
"These effects have only been observed, and only partially, in a handful of historical cases. As a result, much of our current understanding relies on simulations, which necessarily involve a number of simplifications compared with reality," Forassiepi told Space.com.
Examples of archaeological artifacts and features on the moon. (Image credit: Justin Holcomb et al)
Strong incentive
"Because the moon is an airless world, any movement on the surface is going to stir up sticky, abrasive dust that erodes human materials," pointed out associate professor Alice Gorman, an Australian archaeologist and heritage consultant at Flinders University.
"This is a problem for cultural heritage sites," Gorman said. "Imagine the iconic Apollo 11 landing module, the Eagle, being worn away until it crumbles into dust itself."
"It's also going to be a problem for habitation and mining installations," she added. "So there is a strong incentive for [the] space industry to minimize the impacts of rocket and satellite crashes, protecting both heritage places and new surface missions."
End-of-life planning
Gorman pointed to 51 hard spacecraft impacts on the moon to date, a number that includes nine rocket bodies and 19 lunar orbiters.
"We've reached an inflection point where spacecraft craters aren't just new archaeological sites, they're an environmental hazard that may cause irreversible damage," Gorman told Space.com.
Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Gorman observed, nations are liable for any damage their space hardware causes to the property of other nations. "We could be looking at a situation where a state could demand compensation for a rocket body crash harming its cultural heritage. End-of-life planning is going to become critical."
The Soviet Union's robotic Luna 9 spacecraft made the first-ever soft landing on the moon in February 1966. (Image credit: Roscosmos/For All Moonkind Registry)
Cultural landscape
Also taking part in the meeting was Beth O'Leary, a cultural anthropology and archaeology specialist and college professor emerita at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
"The moon is part of the cultural landscape of Earth," she said. As such, its environment and heritage deserve international attention.
It's now been more than 60 years since the first successful soft landing on the moon, that of the Soviet Union's Luna 9 spacecraft in February 1966. And lunar traffic is poised to increase greatly in the coming years, as both the United States and China aim to build bases near the moon's south pole.
Given this landscape, "we seek to address the challenges of lunar traffic from crashes, deorbiting spacecraft, and intentional landings and to understand those risks to our aerospace heritage. Our committee attempts to estimate the real consequences of the impacts," O'Leary said.
With global experts in planetary geoarchaeology, site formation processes and heritage management, ISCAH is analyzing and increasing the knowledge base that could prevent the irreversible destruction of the significant historic cultural resources on the lunar surface.
Far-reaching consequences
"Our recommendations should inform consensus-based decisions and support international best practices and policies," said O'Leary.
The ongoing work of the group provides the best opportunities for lunar preservation and protection by and for humanity, she added.
"In our short three years," O'Leary said, "we will have had three conferences, created a mission statement, received World Monuments Fund listing, and will continue as a delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space."
O'Leary told Space.com that all these issues are complex scientifically and legally, "but it is so important to rely on excellent research and proven heritage management principles in order to make good decisions about preservation which have far-reaching consequences."
Planetary geoarchaeology
One goal the group is addressing is a "post-mission gap," particularly regarding lunar projects.
That is, what happens to lunar heritage following the completion of a successful mission and in the decades that follow?
Also, what are the appropriate end-of-mission practices, and how can we ensure the long-term protection of spacecraft, robotics and other material remains associated with these missions?
Those questions are being deliberated by Justin Holcomb, an assistant research professor with the Kansas Geological Survey, a research unit of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Planetary geoarchaeology provides one way to address this issue, by identifying the natural (geological) and anthropogenic (human) processes operating within these environments "that may threaten lunar heritage, while also identifying environmental settings that are more conducive to its long-term preservation," Holcomb told Space.com.
Lunar practices
Forassiepi said that future points of action are on the agenda.
"There is certainly ongoing and continuous work by the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage on this aspect," said Forassiepi.
ICOMOS is the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a non-governmental organization working to conserve and protect cultural heritage sites on our planet — and off it as well.
"In active collaboration with the World Monuments Fund, we will further refine our research into the potential risks associated with deorbiting and crash landings," Forassiepi noted.
Over the coming months, Forassiepi said, the group will move into a second phase focused on listening and dialogue with all relevant stakeholders in the sector, from space agencies and the scientific community to private actors, heritage experts and communities with social and religious values associated with the moon that could be affected or disrupted by certain lunar practices.
The human touch: A commemorative plaque left at the Apollo 15 moon landing site that honors deceased NASA and Soviet cosmonauts, with a tiny figure of a fallen astronaut. (Image credit: NASA)
Ultimate goal
"The aim is to initiate an open dialogue and exchange among all these different actors, with a view to collectively developing guidelines based on broad consensus," Forassiepi said.
These will then be presented in the context of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 2027, with the hope that, over time, they may evolve into "internationally recognized standards of behavior" and be adopted and followed by all space actors, Forassiepi added.
"The ultimate goal is to build a lunar future that is sustainable not only from an operational perspective, but also in terms of scientific research and the protection of the earliest traces of human presence in the history of space," he stressed. "These are two irreplaceable forms of heritage, and their damage would represent an enormous loss for future generations."
Astronomers have discovered the youngest exoplanet on record, and they spotted the "newborn" world hiding in old data archives.
About as massive as Jupiter, the newly-discovered exoplanet Elias 2-24 b is one big baby — despite its hefty size, Elias 2-24 b is by far the youngest planet ever found, thought to be less than a million years old. In fact, the exoplanet (or, planet outside of our solar system) was located 450 light-years away from Earth, still resting in the swirling gas and dust where it was born.
The previous record-holder for "youngest exoplanet" is a four-way tie between four worlds that are all over 5 million years old, according to Lucas Cieza, co-author of a study on Elias 2-24 b and a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos in Chile. "Our planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known planet," Cieza said in a statement. "Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes."
To spot this massive baby, a team led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, dug through archival data captured by the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The study focused on the star Elias 2-24 which is surrounded by a disk of material. Their findings confirmed earlier observations collected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope which suggested something may lie in a gap within the debris disk around Elias 2-24.
The archival data that confirmed these suspicions and this planet came from observations using Keck's coronagraph. Coronagraphs work by blocking out the glare from far-off starlight, allowing light bouncing off the planets orbiting those stars to be captured for direct observations. The team looked through such coronagraph data for seven distant stars, each surrounded by debris disks where planet formation may be happening. The team thought that perhaps it'd be possible to find a planet hiding in a gap in one of these disks. And they were right.
"The planets should be found within the gaps, since they are carving them," Bernardi said. "And that’s exactly where we found Elias 2-24 b."
By finding a planet in one of these disks, and by finding a planet so early in its lifetime, this finding gives researchers an opportunity to study the earlier development stages of planet formation.
"The galaxy churns out new stars and planets continuously, so there are many in every stage of evolution," Cieza said. "That means we can see the entire process in theory, but there is a large gap in what most telescopes can detect. We are mostly blind to these baby planets right now."
In looking at the future of planet detection and study, researchers hope to be able to conduct more direct observations with the Coronagraph Instrument that just launched (Aug. 30) aboard NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This is the most advanced coronagraph ever launched to space, and scientists hope it will allow for more in-depth study of exoplanets and their atmospheres.
"We usually hear about telescopes working separately, but this confirmation was possible only by using multiple telescopes together," Bernardi said. "Elias 2-24 b is at the limit of what current telescopes can detect, but with new instruments like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, such detections should become easier."
This work was described in a new study published Sept. 16 in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Detective work by a team of space-weather experts has discovered the truth about a historical event that had been thought to be the first-ever case of technological disruption by geomagnetic activity from the sun, but has now been shown to have taken place seven years later.
From it being too hot or too wet to leaves on the track or cows on the line, there's a fine tradition of what the British public consider to be flimsy excuses for delays on the trains. Yet an 1871 edition of the journal Nature describes a very different event that caused a train departing Exeter, in Devon on the south-west coast of the U.K., to be delayed by 16 minutes: a solar storm that flooded the railway signals' electrical telegraph network with current.
"The Exeter train delay is a fascinating story because it sits right at the point where emerging technologies first began to encounter the realities of the space environment," said Jim Wild, who is a professor of space physics at Lancaster University and also the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, in a statement.
The event has frequently been cited as the first example of a solar storm disrupting technology on Earth, but when a team led by Wild went back through historical records to investigate further, they found that things didn't add up.
The original report in Nature stated that the electrical disturbance occurred at 10:05pm local time on Oct. 18, 1841. However, Wild's team found that particular train line didn't open until 1846.
So, they delved deeper into the history books to figure out the truth.
"Our research has a hint of a detective story — piecing together a wide range of archived records to better understand a historically severe space-weather event," said team-member Mike Hapgood, a space weather expert at RAL Space, which is the UK's National Space Laboratory, in Oxfordshire.
Combining data from railway timetables, old newspapers, plus historic reports of solar observations and the northern lights and digitized geomagnetic data, Wild and Hapgood's team were able to conclude that the most likely date for the train delay was Oct. 18, 1848, which coincided with a strong solar storm that hit Earth.
This revised date knocks it off top spot in the chronological list of such events. The first recorded disruption to electrical technologies is now a disturbance on the Midland railway network, which had lines covering much of the U.K., in March 1847.
"Although this means it is not the earliest recorded space weather impact, it remains one of the first clear examples of solar activity disrupting critical infrastructure," Wild said. "It also demonstrates the value of combining scientific records with contemporary newspaper reports and archival documents when reconstructing historic space weather events."
Solar storms have been playing havoc with electrical technology on Earth since the 1840s. (Image credit: NASA/SDO)
The case reminds us that space weather has been a hazard to technology and modern systems for a long time, and isn't just a recent problem.
"Society has been experiencing the effects of space weather on technology for almost as long as electrical technologies have existed," said Wild.
The most dramatic example is the aforementioned Carrington event of 1859, representing the most significant solar storm on record as it caused telegraph poles to spark and battery power supplies to be disrupted. By this point, telegraph operators had grown used to electrical disturbances associated with auroral activity, but even the Carrington storm shocked them — quite literally in some cases, as extra current ran down the telegraph lines — with its ferocity. Should a similar event occur today, it would cause huge black outs, knock out power grids, disrupt communications and fry satellites.
"While today's space weather [monitoring] capabilities are far more advanced than anything available in the 1800s, the modern technologies we depend on are also much more vulnerable to solar storms," said Hapgood.
The current solar cycle 25 peaked in Oct. 2024 and we are just beginning to come out of an extended period of maximum activity. However, it remains to be seen how the rest of this cycle will play out before reaching solar minimum in about 2030. We've already seen severe geomagnetic storms caused by space weather in May 2024 — will we experience another powerful storm before the decade is out?
As the newest heavy hitter in orbital observatories continues the journey to its final destination, NASA has begun the process of switching the spacecraft on.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopelaunched on Aug. 30, and is on a three-month long trek to Lagrange point two (L2). L2 is a relatively idle orbital sweet spot almost a million miles from Earth that will allow Roman to remain on the planet's night side and keep the bright sun to its back. It's an optimal location for the telescope to operate its two primary instruments, the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and its Coronagraph Instrument.
Neither are ready to begin collecting science, and will undergo another month or so of calibrations and tests before Roman can begin its mission, but initial downlinks from the telescope indicate nominal readings on its components as NASA teams continue its commissioning. "This is a huge milestone for the team at Goddard, our industry teams at BAE Systems, Inc. and Teledyne, and our science centers," said Josh Schlieder, the Wide Field Instrument scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.
The WFI is a 300-megapixel infrared camera designed to survey enormous swaths of the sky. Scientists plan to use the imager to take fast snapshots of the cosmos, study dark energy, and map the distribution of matter throughout the universe. It uses 18 infrared detectors that NASA says combine for a sensing area about the size of a laptop; by comparison, a typical digital camera imaging sensor covers about the size of a postage stamp.
Before engineers could switch on the WFI, they spent about 10 days allowing the instrument to dry out and shed contaminants that may have accumulated prior to launch. The WFI was kept at a relatively warm (for space) -85 degrees Fahrenheit (-65 Celsius). On Friday (Sept. 11), Roman teams turned off the instrument's heater to allow it to cool to around -225 Fahrenheit (-143 Celsius), at which point it was cold enough to activate its infrared detectors. The detectors continued cooling afterward toward their eventual operating temperature of about -300 F (-183 C).
Following the successful activation of its infrared sensors, engineers moved on to calibrate the WFI's element wheel, which filters individual wavelengths for detection using a system of prisms and other optic mechanisms. And, on the morning of Sept. 13, Roman teams confirmed the focus components were functioning nominally.
Roman's coronagraph also completed its first major steps toward operation. The instrument is controlled by the Coronagraph Commanding Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, where operators were able to verify that they could remotely operate the instrument’s electronic and mechanical systems. The coronagraph functions using a series of mirrors, masks and sensors to block the light of a distant star in order to detect the much fainter light of planets in that star’s orbit.
Tests on the coronagraph also included warming the device to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius) — nominal for operating conditions in controlled environments on Earth, but quite warm compared to the WFI’s -300 F (-183 C) operating temperature. The extra heat allows the Coronagraph to maintain conditions similar to those inside NASA test chambers so engineers can more easily simulate tests on Roman's deformable mirrors.
"Now that this test is complete, we've been decontaminating: sitting idle with our detectors warm so anything that’s stuck to the surface, such as water or trace chemicals, will tend to leave it,” said Eric Cady, an optical engineer leading commissioning efforts for the Roman Coronagraph at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Decontamination procedures on Roman's coronagraph will continue for 30 days, along with periodic checks and other minor calibrations. That will occupy a portion of the observatory's remaining journey to L2, which is expected to last about 12 more weeks. NASA says Roman remains on track to release its first science images in early 2027. And, thanks to the precision of Roman's SpaceXFalcon Heavy launch vehicle and fuel savings during Roman's early trajectory corrections, the telescope is expected to have enough propellant to operate for the next 22 years.
When stars the size of our sun die, they leave behind powerful stellar remnants called white dwarfs — and these white dwarfs can transform into even more extreme objects called neutron stars, composed of the densest material in the universe. However, scientists have found that conditions must be "just right" for the major makeover to occur. You can think of it like a cosmic "Goldilocks" situation.
As it turns out, the white dwarf has to be feeding on a companion star like some kind of cosmic vampire.
Neutron stars and white dwarfs are both born when stars run out of the fuel supplies needed for nuclear fusion happening in their cores, but the difference between the two lies with their masses.
Stars with masses similar to that of the sun end their lives when they run out of hydrogen in their cores. This halts the nuclear fusion process — which involves converting that hydrogen to helium — leading to the stars collapsing and shedding their outer layers to become a white dwarf with around the mass of the sun crammed into the width of Earth.
When stars with masses around eight times that of the sun collapse after running out of hydrogen in their cores, they generate enough pressure and heat in these cores to fuse the produced helium into even heavier elements. This process only ends when the star attains a core of iron. The final collapse results in a supernova explosion and creates a neutron star with a mass between one and two times that of the sun. That's the usual way neutron stars form.
However, what if there's a bridge between the white dwarf scenario and neutron star scenario? Scientists have long suspected there is indeed a pathway for a white dwarf to become a neutron star. This new work maps out that pathway, calling it accretion-induced collapse (AIC).
"In AIC, the progenitor is already a stellar remnant, and the trigger is not its own evolution but material handed to it by a companion," team leader Laurenz Thümmler of ETH Zurich told Space.com.
The researcher added that an AIC begins with a stellar remnant in the form of a white dwarf, while the traditional route to birthing a neutron star begins with a massive "living" star. Yet, in the AIC, the collapse of an overfeeding white dwarf continues in a broadly similar way to the collapse of a massive star that creates a neutron star.
As Thümmler explains, in both cases, the neutron star creation process involves the massive star's core imploding and zippy particles called "neutrinos" carrying away energy from the event. However, an important difference is in the "standard" massive star collapse scenario, the subsequent core-collapse supernova and neutron star birth happens inside a thick envelope of material that has been ejected during the massive star's death throes. In AICs, however, this thick envelope of matter is absent.
"AIC is expected to be faint and fast, and why so little matter is ejected compared with an ordinary supernova. Not all white dwarfs could undergo an AIC, and that is the essential point."
Though AICs have been theorized about for years, Thümmler and team wanted to know what characteristics a white dwarf would need in order to undergo this transformation. They set about investigating this using 3-dimesional simulations.
It's what is inside that counts
Most white dwarfs consist of carbon and oxygen. However, some stars collapse to form a white dwarf composed of oxygen, neon and magnesium. That only happens for a narrow range of stellar masses, meaning this composition represents a minority population of white dwarfs.
When carbon and oxygen white dwarfs overfeed on stellar material from a companion or donor star, they eventually reach the so-called Chandrasekhar limit, usually around 1.4 stellar masses. Above this limit, they can go supernova. They don't become neutron stars as a result of these "Type 1a" supernovas, however, but are rather completely destroyed. Oxygen, neon and magnesium white dwarfs can avoid that destruction thanks to their high densities.
"They are typically born more massive and denser than carbon-oxygen white dwarfs and therefore require less additional mass to approach the Chandrasekhar limit," Thümmler said.
However, Thümmler and colleagues discovered this isn't the only condition needed to provoke an AIC. The white dwarf can't be too greedy either.
An illustration shows a "vampire" neutron star feeding on a close companion star. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))
The team found that the accretion rate, or rate at which material from the donor star falls onto the white dwarf, has to fall within a fairly narrow window to allow an AIC to occur.
"If it is too low, nova eruptions can expel much of the accumulated material again; if it is too high, winds, envelope expansion, or binary interaction can prevent the white dwarf from reaching the conditions required for collapse," Thümmler said. "The accretion has to be fast enough, and steady enough, to get it there without triggering explosive burning along the way.
"When those conditions hold, electrons are captured onto neon and magnesium nuclei. This removes the pressure supporting the star, and the collapse follows."
All this means that AICs are expected to be rare events, although the rate at which they occur remains highly uncertain.
An illustration of a highly magnetic neutron star. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada)
The team also found the environment around AICs is somewhat surprising.
"We expected the most neutron-rich material, which produces the heaviest elements, to emerge along the rotation axis, since that is where the magnetically driven outflow is strongest," Thümmler said. "It does not."
Instead, the team's models revealed neutron-rich material emerging at the mid-latitudes of white dwarfs as they transform into neutron stars. This is region where the outflows of matter driven by intense magnetic fields collide with winds heated by energy-carrying neutrinos.
Thümmler explained that this is significant because it means that these events would appear different based upon the angle at which they are observed.
How to spot white dwarf transformations
Laurenz said these AICs could be identified by Vera C. Rubin Observatory and other telescopes as a bright ultraviolet and optical event lasting two to three days, potentially accompanied by X-ray emissions and longer-lasting radio emissions.
However, the neutron stars created by such events may be difficult to distinguish from stellar remnants birthed in the traditional way.
"They are expected to populate the lower end of the neutron-star mass distribution because the collapsing white dwarf has a mass close to the Chandrasekhar limit and ejects relatively little material," Thümmler said. "However, ordinary stellar-collapse channels, particularly those involving low-mass progenitors, can also produce neutron stars with masses of approximately 1.1 to 1.4 solar masses, so a low mass alone would not uniquely indicate an AIC origin."
The Vera C. Rubin observatory gazes out at the Milky Way (Image credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/B. Quint)
The team isn't done investigating AICs, with Thümmler explaining there are two main approaches to take next.
"The first is to make the predicted light curves more reliable by following both the radioactive heating and energy injection in substantially greater detail," Thümmler said. "This requires distinguishing energy carried bygamma rays, which can escape relatively early from the low-mass ejecta, from that deposited more efficiently by charged particles, while also modelling how the neutron star wind heats and accelerates the heavy-element-rich material."
The team's simulations can then be used to follow the expansion of the ejecta from the AIC and calculate how the observed light curve and spectra depend on viewing angle.
"This work is currently underway," Thümmler said. "The second direction is to test the robustness of the explosion geometry, since our present models begin with a relatively simple magnetic-field configuration and more complex or tilted fields may produce different angular ejecta patterns."
The team's research is available to view as a pre-print on the paper repository site arXiv.
The star-forming region IC 348, as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Luhman, C. Alves De Oliveira, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb))
An ethereal and magnificent display of gas and dust stretches across the cosmos in a spectacular new image captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
What is it?
Glowing wisps of translucent gas and dust paint a striking image of the star-forming region IC 348 in this new JWST snapshot. In the image, you can see IC 348, a region found about 1,000 light-years away.
In this vast expanse of gas and dust, cold molecular hydrogen gas collapses to create new stars. And this image has no shortage of suns, with twinkling stars speckling the entire cosmic landscape, diffraction spikes and all.
But while this is a star-forming region, objects are found here as well. This image was captured as part of a scientific search for brown dwarfs, which are objects that form like stars but aren't massive enough to kickstart hydrogen fusion in their cores.
Why is it incredible?
Brown dwarfs are one of the great mysteries of our universe. Not as massive as the least massive stars, but more massive than the biggest planets, brown dwarfs are strange objects stuck in the middle.
Brown dwarfs do emit some light and heat, which helps scientists to find them, though doing so can be tricky, as they're much cooler than stars and not that bright (at least in visible light). However, despite being dim, they give off infrared radiation, allowing them to be spotted by infrared instruments aboard space telescopes like JWST.
This incredible new image is part of an observing program that aims to use JWST to find and study the smallest brown dwarfs. In 2022, researchers looking at IC 348 found brown dwarfs just a few times more massive than Jupiter, so they were on the very small end. Researchers hope to find even smaller brown dwarfs to help them better understand how these strange objects form and vary across space.
NASA's newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to extend its lifespan and double its exciting potential for discovery thanks to an efficient use of fuel on its way to its final orbit.
"As a result of exquisite planning by our orbital dynamics team, brilliant execution by the operations team, and a precise launch from SpaceX, Roman has fuel for at least 22 years of potential science operations," said Jamie Dunn, the center director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.
The space telescope, which launched from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 30 on a mission to measure dark energy and search for exoplanets, is headed to the L2 Lagrange point. There, it will join the likes of the James Webb Space Telescope on the opposite side of Earth to the sun. Its primary mission will last five years, and scientists were hoping for an additional five years if funding allowed.. Now, however, that potential extended mission could go on for a lot longer — and it's all thanks to the spacecraft coming in less massive than the original design had projected.
The Lagrange points depicted in a diagram. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)
At the beginning of Roman's design process, the fuel capacity was chosen to permit a maximum mass of 21,605 pounds (9,800 kilograms), yet the finished spacecraft came in lighter at 17,760 pounds (8,065 kilograms). And because it was lighter, there was a surplus of available mass that could be used for more fuel.
"A spacecraft's mass changes throughout the design and build process, so we base the propellant on a set maximum value so we won't come up short," Alison Rao, who leads Roman's propulsion systems at NASA Goddard, said in the statement. "We track the propellant needed based on actual mass throughout integration and testing as well, to make sure we have wiggle room. Since Roman's [mass] was lower than we budgeted for, we were able to fill the propellant tanks to their capacity rather than only filling them as much as we needed to for the 10-year requirement."
The extra fuel loaded onto the telescope before launch meant it had enough for at least a 14-year mission. Then, within a day of launching, the space telescope had to fire its engine for three minutes to push it onto a trajectory to take it to L2. This engine burn was more precise and hence more efficient than anyone could have hoped for, sending Roman on its way to L2 with 99% accuracy. In doing so, it used only 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of fuel, which is less than 10% of the 441 pounds (200 kilograms) of fuel that had been budgeted for the maneuver. This is thought to have bought Roman an additional four years of life, bringing the tally to 18 years.
Then there's the added bonus. The precision with which the Aug. 31 engine burn was conducted means that the second course correction, required to take Roman into its orbit at L2 in early December, will also now require much less fuel. This will add yet another four years to Roman's operational lifetime, so long as nothing goes wrong with the telescope. Once in orbit at L2, only minor burns once every 28 days are needed for station keeping — a negligible amount of fuel.
In total, this observatory could be probing the final frontier and making incredible discoveries for at least the next 22 years, taking it up to 2048 at minimum. For the next two or three decades, we're going to be hearing a lot about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Astronauts could travel back to Earth from Mars using rocket fuel converted directly from the carbon dioxide in the Red Planet's atmosphere, using a technique known as electrochemical reduction, a recent study reports.
It's an old method involving electrolysis, which is the application of an electrical current to drive a chemical reaction, but the new trick produces methane pure enough to be used as liquid propellant. (A number of rocket engines these days burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane — including the Raptors that power Starship, the rocket SpaceX is developing to help humanity get to Mars.)
"The work we're doing is basically taking CO2 and using electricity to convert it into carbon-containing fuels and chemicals," said Carter Racine in a statement. Racine is a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University and a member of the study team, which was led by University of Mississippi chemical engineer Ahmed Badreldin.
"You can't bring up everything you need [on Mars] from Earth, because every additional kilogram adds enormous cost and complexity to launch and escape Earth's gravity," added Badreldin. "So the question becomes, How do we make the fuels and chemicals needed for space exploration from the resources already available at the destination?"
One answer is electrochemical reduction, which takes place in an electrolyzer, with electrons flowing from the negatively charged anode to the positively charged cathode. Water at the anode is oxidized, meaning it loses an electron, which is transferred to the carbon dioxide at the cathode, where one of its atoms gains an electron and becomes what chemists refer to as "reduced" (meaning its oxidation state is lowered). It can then react with the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that have split from the oxidized water molecules.
The anode contains a catalyst, and the choice of material for the catalyst dictates what carbon-based compounds are produced when the reduced carbon reacts with the hydrogen and oxygen. For example, a gold catalyst leads to the production of carbon monoxide (CO), while copper produces more complex compounds including alcohols, ethanol and methane (CH4).
What makes the work of Badreldin's team stand apart from previous experiments is that they have developed a nanometer-scale copper catalyst doped in nitrogen that is able to produce nearly pure methane.
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide has been used to produce methane before, in applications on Earth. The problem is, those methods have produced a lot of byproducts alongside methane. On Earth we have complex equipment that separates the methane from the other unwanted compounds, but astronauts are not going to be able to take such unwieldy devices to Mars when every kilogram counts. That's a problem, because for methane to be used as a liquid propellant in rocket fuel it needs to be pure.
NASA wants to send astronauts to Mars in the late 2030s or early 2040s. (Image credit: NASA)
However, the specific copper catalyst used by Badreldin's team is able to preferentially produce methane over other compounds, thereby creating it pure without having to refine it. And there's plenty of carbon dioxide available on Mars to use: While Mars' atmosphere is thin, it is nonetheless composed of 96% carbon dioxide.
Even if astronauts never go to Mars, the usefulness of this technique on Earth is clear. Rather than drilling for this natural gas, we can create methane from the carbon dioxide already in our atmosphere.
"We want to do that because right now many of these carbon-based products ultimately come from virgin fossil resources," said Racine. "If we can make them using captured CO2 and renewable electricity, it could reduce reliance on virgin fossil carbon and help close the carbon cycle."
Consequently, electrochemical reduction has also been suggested for use on Earth as a carbon sequestration technique, drawing carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere where it acts as an unwanted greenhouse gas.
The problem with that is, converting carbon dioxide into methane to be burned as a fuel simply releases that carbon dioxide straight back into the atmosphere in a net-zero cycle. Ideally, we want to lock that carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere for a long period of time, but Badreldin doesn't think the technology is ready yet.
"What we are ultimately interested in is seeing whether we can move beyond simply recycling CO2 and toward pathways that are net-negative," he said. "That means using CO2 as a carbon source while converting it into products where the carbon is stored or used long enough that it is not immediately released back into the atmosphere."
It should be noted that the best way to alleviate climate change is to cease burning all fossil fuels, including methane. However, using methane created from electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction in a net-zero process rather than drilling for it could help during the transition from fossil fuels to renewable resources.
The study reporting this research was published in April in the journal ACS Catalysis.
A broad pit that looks almost like a "footprint" on Mars is unlike anything researchers have ever seen on the Red Planet. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Is that a footprint on Mars? Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. However, scientists have found a strange feature unlike anything they've seen before on the Red Planet's surface.
What is it?
While NASA's Perseverance rover is the newest addition to the agency's robotic Red Planet fleet, its cousin Curiosity is still going strong and finding strange and unusual things on Mars 14 years after landing.
In new observations captured on Mars' Mount Sharp, the Curiosity team has identified "features unlike quite anything we have seen in the past," Michelle Minitti, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), said in a statement.
These mysterious features are a bunch of broad, shallow pits scattered across the Martian bedrock.
Why is it incredible?
While little pits and divots are common to find on the Martian surface, these wide, shallow pits that researchers saw with Curiosity are quite different from surface features that have been seen before.
"The pits of this week were much broader and shallower than past features and were not accompanied by obvious objects that were once in the pits," Minitti said.
The team collected as much data as they could on the strange pits using Curiosity's various instruments, including MAHLI, the Mastcam camera, ChemCam (the Chemistry and Camera complex) and APX (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer).
They have so far found interesting layers in the pit material that seems chemically different from the main bedrock.
But we will have to wait and see what else researchers might be able to learn about these odd pits. How did they form? How long have they existed? What can they tell us about the history of Mars?
