Astronomy

As always with these news it is still too early to draw conclusions: more analysis and tests are necessary.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-2020-perseverance/perseverance-rover/nasas-perseverance-rover-scientists-find-intriguing-mars-rock/

I was about 30 years old when I talked to my mother about some program on TV about astronomy when she mentioned that our sun is a star. It's like all the other stars we see during the night, it's just closer to us so it appears bigger. My mind was blown. I didn't understand how I could have lived for 30 years and never thought this thought.

Yesterday me and our 10 years old were talking about the universe and things in it, and I mentioned to her that our sun is just a star like all the other ones we see during the night. I saw that her mind was as blown as mine was back when my mom told me this fact.

Actually even in the song "Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are." it encourages us to think about this fact, but it took me 30 years to do so.

A group of astronomers want to change the definition of a planet. Their new proposed definition wouldn't bring Pluto back into the planetary fold, but it could reclassify thousands of celestial bodies across the universe. From a report:

The International Astronomical Union's (IAU) current definition of a planet, established in 2006, includes only celestial bodies that are nearly round, are gravitationally dominant and orbit our Sun. This Sun-centric definition excludes all of the bodies we've discovered outside our solar system, even if they may fit all other parameters. They are instead considered exoplanets. Those behind the new proposal critiqued the IAU's definition in an upcoming paper in the Planetary Science Journal, arguing it's vague, not quantitative and unnecessarily exclusionary.

Their new proposal would instead classify planets based on their mass, considering a planet to be any celestial body that:

1. orbits one or more stars, brown dwarfs or stellar remnants and,
2. is more massive than 10ÂÂ kilograms (kg) and,
3. is less massive than 13 Jupiter masses (2.5 X 10^28Âkg).

The planet Jupiter is particularly known for its so-called Great Red Spot, a swirling vortex in the gas giant's atmosphere that has been around since at least 1831. But how it formed and how old it is remain matters of debate. Astronomers in the 1600s, including Giovanni Cassini, also reported a similar spot in their observations of Jupiter that they dubbed the "Permanent Spot." This prompted scientists to question whether the spot Cassini observed is the same one we see today. We now have an answer to that question: The spots are not the same, according to a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

From the other place: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1dmibwd/this_is_my_most_advance_moon_photograph_ever_it/

Pics too good to miss. :)

Another interesting video from Scott Manley.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/18298626

"I recently explored the optimal fuel burn schedule to land as gently as possible and with maximum remaining fuel. Surprisingly, the theoretical best strategy didn’t work. The game falsely thinks the lander doesn’t touch down on the surface when in fact it does. Digging in, I was amazed by the sophisticated physics and numerical computing in the game. Eventually I found a bug: a missing “divide by two” that had seemingly gone unnoticed for nearly 55 years."

I still can't believe how this one comes back again and again. One of the greatest feat of humanity.

The sun fired off a volley of radiation-riddled outbursts in May. When they slammed into Earth's magnetic bubble, the world was treated to iridescent displays of the northern and southern lights. But our planet wasn't the only one in the solar firing line. From a report:

A few days after Earth's light show, another series of eruptions screamed out of the sun. This time, on May 20, Mars was blitzed by a beast of a storm. Observed from Mars, "this was the strongest solar energetic particle event we've seen to date," said Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or MAVEN, at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

When the barrage arrived, it set off an aurora that enveloped Mars from pole to pole in a shimmering glow. If they were standing on the Martian surface, "astronauts could see these auroras," Dr. Curry said. Based on scientific knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, she and other scientists say, observers on Mars would have seen a jade-green light show, although no color cameras picked it up on the surface. But it's very fortunate that no astronauts were there. Mars's thin atmosphere and the absence of a global magnetic shield meant that its surface, as registered by NASA's Curiosity rover, was showered by a radiation dose equivalent to 30 chest X-rays -- not a lethal dose, but certainly not pleasant to the human constitution.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/when-cosmic-inflation-occurred/ <-- before the big bang

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/beginning-big-bang/ <-- the big bang happens here

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-at-its-hottest/ <-- energy is converted into particles here

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/matter-defeated-antimatter/ <-- war between matter and antimatter particles

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/higgs-gave-particles-mass/ <-- actual matter with mass is created here.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/protons-and-neutrons-formed/ <-- subatomic particles created

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/last-antimatter-disappeared/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/first-elements-formed/ <-- our atoms are created here

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/what-like-when-no-stars-existed/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/first-stars-began-shine/ <-- first stars are created here

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/very-first-stars-died/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/polluted-stars-formed/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/first-galaxies-began-to-form/ <-- first galaxies are created here

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/cosmic-dark-ages-ended/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/life-first-became-possible/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-formed-most-stars/

I'd certainly seen this exoplanet somewhere in my mainstream news world somewhere ... so nice to see a breakdown here from "Dr Becky" about how the science isn't so clear cut.

Anyone else able to provide insight on what the possible outcomes of the newly acquired data will be?