Space & Spaceflight

Higgs Boson Bubbles Filled the Early Universe With Thunder

When the Universe came into being, it was a kind of hot soup of elementary particles—and now scientists believe it could have been rumbling with thunder caused by Higgs boson bubbles. This video, created by researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland, shows a visualization of how the early Universe could have formed. New…

The Best Proposed Warning Systems Miss Half of Earth-Bound Meteors

Nobody expected the giant meteor which exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia last year—and according to new research, that might not change much in the coming years. https://gizmodo.com/meteorite-explodes-over-russia-panic-spreads-5984476 A new study of the efficacy of future early warning systems reveals that even the best of them would miss about half of all potential meteor strikes the…

Why It’s So Hard to Find Alien LIfe

A big reason why the Fermi paradox has punch is the matter of time. Max Tegmark gets into this in his excellent new book Our Mathematical Universe (Knopf, 2014), where he runs through what many thinkers on the subject have noted: Our Sun is young enough that countless stars and the planets that orbit them…

A Map of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede, Where We Might Be Able to Live

One day, poor planet Earth will succumb to the centuries of abuse we’ve dealt her, shrivel up, and cease to support life. Then, if we’re not already living in some Elysium-like habitat in space, we’ll have to find a new home. Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, might just be it. Ganymede with its underground ocean and rocky…

Snapped from the International Space Station 230 miles above all the events, this photo of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, clearly reveals the massive new facilities including Fisht Stadium where the opening ceremonies were held. And if you look closely at the full-res image, you can even see the Olympic flame burning. [NASA]

New Solar Satellite Uses Pigment Found In Prehistoric Cave Paintings

The European Space Agency’s new solar satellite will be partially shielded using a bone-based pigment found in prehistoric cave paintings. The result will be a surreal cross between the earliest era of human cognition and creativity—that underground cinematic world of flickering animal images found in European caves—and the outer reaches of our current mechanical sciences.…

Meet the Flockers: ISS Launches Low-Cost Earth-Imaging Micro-Satellites

Since the launch of the Landsat program in 1972, generating images of Earth from space has been the near-exclusive domain of enormous, multi-million dollar satellites sponsored by nations and major defense corporations. But these new micro-satellites, recently launched from the ISS, aim to make real-time imaging available for a fraction of the price. Designed, built,…

A Rocket, a Meteor and the Milky Way, All in One Overwhelming Image

Pictures of rockets, meteors and the Milky Way are all amazing. But one with all three makes for an overwhelming image indeed. This amazing picture shows the night sky over Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand. Within it, you can see the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, hovering surreally. But there’s more: just…

This Beautiful Patchwork US Celebrates Landsat 8’s First Year in Space

A year ago, Landsat 8 rocketed into space. Since then it’s been beaming back data to Earth for NASA scientists to interpret—like these beautiful patchwork picture of the US. This series of images, acquired in August 2013 by the satellite’s Operational Land Imager, were pieced together by David Roy, from South Dakota State University. The…

How Space Heat Helps Us Hunt Down Alien Technologies

My colleagues and I have begun the Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies (G-HAT) SETI program, which has been written about here on Centauri Dreams and in other places, like in this nice summary article. I describe some of the foundations of the search here on my blog, but I have written up this short primer…

Astronomers Discover Oldest Star in Known Universe

Well, here’s a superlative for you. With the help of Australia’s SkyMapper telescope, astronomers have discovered the oldest star in the known universe, some 6,000 light years away from Earth—and the star’s chemistry could change the way we understand the Big Bang. The star itself isn’t like our Sun and not just because it’s nearly…

8 of the Most Fascinating Items From Carl Sagan’s Personal Archives

As America’s foremost ambassador to space, Carl Sagan has continued to inspire our fascination with exploring beyond Earth. The Library of Congress has digitized its Carl Sagan archives, and several items just collectedonline give us an amazing new look into the mind of the astronomer. Some items from the Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl…

All of Earth’s Water Comes From Space

If there’s one thing that makes our home planet special—other than the presence of you and me—it’s water. This is The Blue Marble after all. But for something that’s so characteristically Earth-y, its origins are positively extra-terrestrial. As MinuteEarth explains, the question isn’t so much whether our water came from space, but rather how it…

A Stunning Picture of the Earth’s Atmosphere Is Better Than Any Sci-Fi

This image may look like the opening scene from a high-budget sci-fi film, but it is in fact a real photograph, snapped by astronaut Koichi Wakata from the International Space Station. Captured on February 1st, it shows the crescent moon rising and the stunning cusp of Earth’s atmosphere. The beautiful oranges and blue hues are…

The First Image From Gaia’s Mission to Scan the Entire Sky

This image of twinkling stars is the first picture to be beamed back to Earth by the Gaia telescope—whose mission is to scan the entire sky. It’s actually a test image, designed to help the European Space Agency fine-tune the behaviour of the instruments aboard the telescope before it gets down to the real task…

We Got Our First Close-up Look at Venus 40 Years Ago Today

Venus’ perpetually overcast skies had long obscured our view of the planet, making it appear nearly featureless when viewed in the visible light spectrum. But when viewed through Mariner 10’s ultraviolet-filtered camera lens, the second planet from the Sun can be seen in unprecedented detail. See what Venus looks like normally below. [NASA]

Why Hubble Has a Telescope Named After Him

Just about everyone has heard of the Hubble Space Telescope. A space-based observatory on “the highest mountain” the world can provide; it is the technology behind many of today’s great discoveries in space. Started in 1977 and launched into orbit in 1990, it has aided in humans determining the expansion rate of the universe, as…

This Bluegrass Cover of Elton John’s ‘Rocketman’ Is Finger-Pickin’ Good

In the Smoky Mountains, where I grew up, bluegrass is a way of life. Every Friday night, about a mile from my house, an abandoned old schoolhouse becomes one big jam session, and sometimes, when the weather is nice, it moves outside under the stars with the moonlight casting shadows onto the red Tennessee dirt.…

Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center recently figured out how to look for extraterrestrial life in tiny samples of space dust using a nanoelectrospray emitter (above, right) that charges molecules into a mass spectrometer (above, left). Previously, they needed large chunks of carbon-rich meteorites to look for signs of aliens.

Spam, Silkworms, Hydroponics: The Speculative Future of Food on Mars

Last year, NASA held a recipe contest for cooking on Mars. Ordinary civilians like us were invited to submit recipes based on a list of available ingredients—heavy on freeze-dried produce and various meat-flavored “textured vegetable proteins”—to be cooked and judged by crew members of HI-SEAS. HI-SEAS wasn’t actually a mission on Mars, of course; it…