Space

The Earth is a wonderful blue and green dot covered with oceans and life, while Venus is a yellowish sterile sphere that is not only inhospitable but also sterile. However, the difference between the two is only a few degrees in temperature. A team of astronomers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), with the support of the CNRS laboratories of Paris and Bordeaux, has achieved a world's first by managing to simulate the entirety of the runaway greenhouse process that can transform the climate of a planet from idyllic and perfect for life, to a place more than harsh and hostile.

The scientists have also demonstrated that from initial stages of the process, the atmospheric structure and cloud coverage undergo significant changes, leading to an almost-unstoppable and very complicated to reverse runaway greenhouse effect. On Earth, a global average temperature rise of just a few tens of degrees, subsequent to a slight rise of the sun's luminosity, would be sufficient to initiate this phenomenon and to make our planet inhabitable. These results are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This mission marks New Shepard’s return to flight after the failure during NS-23 in September 2022.

Launch thread has been posted over on [email protected]: https://sh.itjust.works/post/11203171

I will be posting updates there. Come join us in that thread!

Misinformation was extremely popular in 2023, as bad science often made global headlines. Learn the truth behind these 10 dubious stories.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• While there have been huge scientific advances in a wide variety of aspects of physics and astronomy, there have also been wild headlines that do not reflect at all what's true in this Universe.
• No, we haven't found a room-temperature superconductor, overturned the expanding Universe or Big Bang, discovered that the cosmos is twice as old as we thought, or discovered alien technology on the seafloor.
• There has been a lot of fiction permeating science news this year, and the frustrating thing is that these untrue stories are posing as actual facts.

Here are 10 lies you may want to learn the actual truth behind.

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This mission marks Electron’s return to flight after the failed launch of Acadia Mission 2.

Launch thread has been posted over on [email protected]: https://sh.itjust.works/post/10873069

I will be posting updates there. Come join us in that thread!

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. More specifically, it is a barred spiral galaxy, meaning that within its central region, there is a bar shape off of which the spirals emanate. About two-thirds of spiral galaxies are barred spirals, and astronomers have thought this difference is just a variance in how density waves cluster stars in a galaxy. But a new study suggests that the bar of the Milky Way may have been caused by an ancient collision with another galaxy.

Most of the times astronomers reported dramatic, cataclysmic events like neutron star mergers or the creation of a black hole; they are taking place light years away, typically in in another galaxy. While we can observe their destructive power through the light they emit, they have minimal impact on Earth. However, a relatively recent discovery of certain types of isotopes at the bottom of the ocean hints at one of these events happening fairly close to home. And it probably didn't happen all that long ago.

So, how can isotopes at the bottom of the ocean determine that a catastrophic event happened nearby recently? In the case of some elements, very few processes in the universe can create them naturally. Two of those—Fe-60 and Pu-244—were found in ocean sediments dating back 3–4 million years ago.

Fe-60 can, in theory, be created in a regular supernova. While still powerful, these events aren't the universe-shaking cataclysms we can see from far away. However, Pu-244 is thought to be created only in those extraordinary events. In particular, the creation of this plutonium isotope only happens in specific classes of supernovae, such as a kilonova or the merger of at least one neutron star with something else.

When you're standing on Earth's surface, it's easy to forget that our planet is hurtling around the sun at more than 67,000 mph (107,800 km/h). And it's even easier to forget that there are seven other planets also making their way around our home star at similar breakneck speeds, or that all eight have been ceaselessly circling the solar system for billions of years.

But what might really blow your mind is finding out how many trips around the sun each planet has under its belt. This may seem like a tricky thing to calculate, but because the planets' orbits have remained largely unaltered for most of their existence, all it takes is a bit of basic math.

The remains of a tiny tomato lost by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio after an off-Earth harvest in March finally showed up on the International Space Station (ISS), more than eight months later.

"Our good friend Frank Rubio, who headed home [already], has been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato. But we can exonerate him. We found the tomato," NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli said during a livestreamed event on Wednesday (Dec. 6) that celebrated the ISS' 25th anniversary. (Moghbeli did not elaborate where the tomato was found, or what condition it was in).

How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the periodic table found naturally on Earth. The finding deepens our understanding of element formation in stars.

cross-posted from [email protected]: (https://sh.itjust.works/post/10315727)

Source: Tory Bruno himself.

Our brand new large solid rocket motor storage facility at Camp Blanding FL is starting to fill up. It’ll be SRMs stacked like cord wood soon!