Dark matter’s shadowy effect on EarthEarth’s periodic passage through the galaxy’s disk could initiate a series of events that ultimately lead to geological cataclysms and mass extinctions.
A shower of comets rains down on Earth while violent volcanic eruptions billow up from below. Both events may follow our planet’s passage through dark matter concentrated in the Milky Way’s plane and help to trigger extinction events.
Both Voyagers are on one-way tickets out of the solar system. But, as you note, neither is traveling anywhere near 1,381,308 mph (2,223,000 km/h). The apparent inconsistency arises because escape velocity depends on where you start your journey.
Limits of the cosmos: The far reaches of spaceEverything astronomers have learned points to a universe populated by superclusters of galaxies, incredibly long filaments, and colossal voids.
Wormholes make the best shortcuts in the universe. That’s true in a literal sense, since the theoretical things can connect distant corners of the cosmos (or even different universes), allowing a traveler to go someplace without having to visit everywhere in between.But wormholes also present the perfect way for writers to get around that pesky speed of light, the universe’s speed limit and impediment to fast travel through the cosmos. If characters in science fiction aren’t taking months or years to travel between worlds, a wormhole is likely the reason.Too bad, then, that as far as we know, the things don’t exist.
Although Jupiter is large as planets go, it would need to be about 75 times its current mass to ignite nuclear fusion in its core and become a star.The brilliant planet Jupiter dazzles anyone with a clear sky. Roman observers named Jupiter after the patron deity of the Roman state following Greek mythology, which associated it with the supreme god, Zeus. But when Galileo turned his telescope skyward in 1610, Jupiter took on new significance. Galileo discovered the planet’s four principal moons — and witnessed the first clear observation of celestial motions centered on a body other than Earth.
We could feed one million people living in colonies on MarsWith bugs, algae and other resource-efficient foods we could feed one million people on Mars within a century of arriving there. Scientists even invented a martian diet.
Like watching the final chapter of a show or movie series, you’re almost trembling with excitement — but you don’t know whether you’ll have the experience of a lifetime, suffer a grand disappointment, or end up with something that’s just OK.Right now, odds are that Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) will be wonderful. Just maybe it will be the most amazing thing you will ever see — a great comet for the history books. Here’s what we might be able to expect.Past to presentY4 was discovered on December 29, 2019, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) search program, one of the several automated sky surveys looking for potential Earth-crossing asteroids. Discovering comets is essentially a byproduct of this endeavor. At the time, C/2019 Y4 was a feeble magnitude 19.6 and located at nearly 3 astronomical units from the Sun — almost twice as far from our star as Mars. (One astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance.)In mid-March, Y4 ATLAS surged 4 magnitudes, fueling rumors that it will just keep getting brighter, peaking at magnitude –8. But back in 2000, C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) dropped the same amount on its approach and dissolved rapidly.
The situation for all of us looks pretty bleak at the moment but at least there’s a sliver of good news coming out of the scientific community. Experts have confirmed that changes in the jet stream (fast air currents at high altitudes) are evidence of the recovery of the Earth’s protective ozone layer. Ozone, a type of inorganic molecule, exists in a layer of our planet’s stratosphere and is responsible for absorbing the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Levels of ozone had declined to such a worrying degree that a 1987 agreement known as the Montreal Protocol put a stop to the use of ozone depleting substances (ODSs) around the world. A new study, published in the journal Nature, shows the Montreal Protocol has been successful.Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/26/earths-ozone-layer-appears-healing-12458672/?fbclid=IwAR3c3xiccbF4ulE5DxddgBDOfOWhIpmgc_PpJxA20jNd-17t4oBLt7XSIr8?ito=cbshareTwitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
Betelgeuse — a red supergiant located roughly 700 light-years away in the constellation Orion the Hunter — has been dimming over the last few months. But now, astronomers have found it's also changing shape.In a new image captured with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers captured how much the star has dimmed compared to a picture taken late last year. And when they saw the before and after images, they noticed that Betelgeuse has also changed its shape.
