Latest news with #SpaceCom
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
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China's Commercial ZQ-2E Launched 6 Satellites, Rocket Sheds Tiles
China's commercial ZQ-2E Y2 rocket launched from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The payloads were the Tianyi-29, Tianyi-34, Tianyi-35, Tianyi-42, Tianyi-45, and Tianyi-46 satellites, The rocket sheds insulation tiles during launch, a normal occurrence. Credit: | footage courtesy: China Central Television (CCTV) | edited by Steve Spaleta Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
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A hidden asteroid family may share Venus' orbit: 'It's like discovering a continent you didn't know existed'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers are investigating a little-known and largely unseen group of asteroids that quietly orbit the sun alongside Venus — and there may be many more of them than we thought. "It's like discovering a continent you didn't know existed," Valerio Carruba of the São Paulo State University in Brazil, who led the analysis, told "It's very likely there are other asteroids we don't observe today." These space rocks, known as "Venus co-orbital asteroids," are a special class of asteroids that move in lockstep with the planet, sharing its orbit around the sun. To date, only about 20 have been confirmed — but a new study conducted by Carruba and his colleagues suggests many more may be lurking just out of sight. Most Venus co-orbital asteroids are exceptionally difficult to detect from Earth. They appear close to the sun in the sky, an area where ground-based telescopes have limited visibility. Even under ideal conditions, their rapid motion makes them tricky to track. Only one of the known Venus co-orbital asteroids follows a nearly circular orbit; the others move on more elongated paths that sometimes bring them closer to Earth, making them easier to detect. However, Carruba's team believes this pattern may reflect observational bias, not the actual makeup of the population. "It's impossible to say for sure," he said, "but I suspect we will find hundreds of asteroids around Venus." To test this idea, Carruba's team ran computer simulations modeling the orbits of hundreds of hypothetical Venus co-orbital asteroids, projecting their paths up to 36,000 years into the future. They found that many of these objects can remain gravitationally bound to Venus' orbit for an average of about 12,000 years. Of note, the orbits of the objects appeared chaotic, meaning small shifts over time can push them onto different paths, including some that bring them close to Earth. There's no cause for concern right now; none of the known asteroids pose any threat, and the timescales involved span many thousands of years. "The likelihood of one colliding with Earth any time soon is extremely low," Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. who was not involved with the new study, told National Geographic. "There isn't too much to be worried about here." In a study published earlier this year in the journal Icarus, Carruba's team analyzed the orbital evolution of the 20 known Venus co-orbital asteroids. Their simulations showed that three of these objects — each measuring between 1,000 and 1,300 feet (300 to 400 meters) across — could eventually pass within about 46,500 miles (74,800 kilometers) of Earth's orbit. In some cases, this gradual shift onto a near-Earth trajectory could take up to 12,000 years. Keeping track of such objects and understanding how they move is crucial for building a more complete picture of near-Earth space, the new study argues. "We should know about these objects," said Carruba. "They are very interesting dynamically — I think that would be a reason to continue to study them." Because Venus' asteroids are so difficult to spot from Earth, Carruba's team explored how we might do better from other vantage points. Their simulations showed that a spacecraft orbiting closer to Venus would have a much better chance of detecting these fast-moving asteroids. Related Stories: — The Rubin Observatory found 2,104 asteroids in just a few days. It could soon find millions more — Europe wants to land a tiny spacecraft on the infamous asteroid Apophis in 2029 — Astronomers discover the largest comet from the outskirts of the solar system is exploding with jets of gas The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which just released its first images on June 23,, could also help. Although it's not specifically built to focus on the inner solar system, its special twilight observing campaigns might be able to catch some of these hidden asteroids. In fact, the observatory has already identified 2,104 new asteroids in its initial datasets. Further into the future, a proposed mission concept called CROWN could offer an even more targeted approach. The mission concept envisions a fleet of small spacecraft operating near Venus' orbit, designed specifically to search for asteroids in the inner solar system. These efforts "may be able to discover a lot of these objects, if they exist," said Carruba. This research was posted to arXiv on May 21 and will be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Science
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Tiny ‘primordial' black holes created in the Big Bang may have rapidly grown to supermassive sizes
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Primordial black holes that formed during the earliest moments of the universe could have swollen quickly to supermassive sizes, complex cosmological simulations have revealed. The discovery could lead to a solution for one of the biggest problems in modern cosmology: how supermassive black holes could have grown to be millions or billions of times more massive than the sun before the universe was 1 billion years old. This problem has gotten out of hand recently, thanks to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The powerful scope has been probing the early universe, discovering more and more supermassive black holes that existed just 700 million years after the Big Bang, or even earlier. "The problem here is that, when we view the early universe with more and more powerful telescopes, which effectively allow us to see the cosmos as it was at very early times due to the finite speed of light, we keep seeing supermassive black holes," research team member John Regan, a Royal Society University research fellow at Maynooth University in Ireland, told "This means that supermassive black holes are in place very early in the universe, within the first few hundred million years." The processes that scientists previously proposed to explain the growth of supermassive black holes, such as rapid matter accretion and mergers between larger and larger black holes, should take more than a billion years to grow a supermassive black hole. The earliest and most distant supermassive black hole discovered thus far by JWST is CEERS 1019, which existed just 570 million years after the Big Bang and has a mass 9 million times that of the sun. That's too big to exist 13.2 billion years or so ago, according to the established models. "This is confusing, as the black holes must either appear at this large mass or grow from a smaller mass extremely quickly," Regan said. "We have no evidence to suggest that black holes can form with these huge masses, and we don't fully understand how small black holes could grow so rapidly." The new research suggests that primordial black holes could have given early supermassive black holes a head start in this race. Black holes come in an array of different masses. Stellar-mass black holes, which are 10 to 100 times heftier than the sun, are created when massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel an die, collapsing to trigger huge supernova explosions. Supermassive black holes have at least one million times the mass of the sun and sit at the heart of all large galaxies. They're too large to be formed when a massive star dies. Instead, these black holes are created when smaller black holes merge countless times, or by ravenously feeding on surrounding matter, or in a combination of both processes. These two examples of black holes, as well as elusive intermediate-mass black holes, which sit in the mass gulf between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes, are classed as "astrophysical" black holes. Scientists have long proposed the existence of "non-astrophysical" black holes, in the form of primordial black holes. The "non-astrophysical" descriptor refers to the fact that these black holes don't rely on collapsing stars or prior black holes for their existence. Instead, primordial black holes are proposed to form directly from overdense pockets in the soup of steaming-hot matter that filled the universe in the first second after the Big Bang. There is no observational evidence of these primordial black holes thus far. However, that hasn't stopped scientists from suggesting that these hypothetical objects could account for dark matter, the mysterious "stuff" that accounts for 85% of the matter in the universe but remains invisible because it doesn't interact with light. The new research suggests that primordial black holes, proposed to have masses between 1/100,000th that of a paperclip and 100,000 times that of the sun, could have a big advantage in rapidly forming supermassive black holes. That's because the upper limit on their mass isn't restricted by how massive a star can get before it dies, as is the case with stellar mass black holes. "Primordial black holes should form during the first few seconds after the Big Bang. If they exist, they have some advantages over astrophysical black holes," Regan said. "They can, in principle, be more massive to begin with compared to astrophysical black holes and may be able to settle more easily into galactic centers, where they can rapidly grow." Primordial black holes can also get a head start on stellar-mass black holes, because they don't have to wait for the first generation of massive stars to die — a process that could take millions of years. Regan explained that, due to their origins, astrophysical black holes can form only after the first stars run out of fuel. Even then, astrophysical black holes can still be just a few hundred solar masses in total. Additionally, negatively impacting the prospect of supermassive black hole growth from stellar-mass black holes is the fact that the energy emitted from stars during their lives and their explosive supernova deaths clears material from around the newborn black holes, depleting their potential larder and curtailing their growth. "That can mean that there is no material for the baby black hole to accrete," Regan explained. Primordial black holes wouldn't emit energy and wouldn't "go 'nova, eliminating this hindrance. But, they would still need to find their way to an abundant source of matter. In the simulation performed by Regan and colleagues, primordial black holes needed to grow by accreting matter, with black hole mergers taking a backseat in the process. "Matter in the early universe is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium," Regan continued. "These primordial black holes are expected to mostly grow by accreting hydrogen and helium. Mergers with other primordial black holes may also play a role, but accretion is expected to be dominant." For the matter accretion of primordial black holes to be efficient enough to result in the creation of supermassive black holes, these objects need to be able to rapidly gobble up matter. That means making their way to regions of the universe where matter congregates — namely, the center of galaxies, which also happens to be where supermassive black holes lurk in the modern epoch of the cosmos. "For this, primordial black holes need to sink to the center of a galaxy," Regan said. "This can happen if there are enough primordial black holes. Only a few have to get lucky!" The number of primordial black holes available for this process determines whether astrophysical black holes would eventually play a role in the growth of early supermassive black holes. "If primordial black holes are very abundant, then they can make up the whole supermassive black hole population," Regan said. "Whether primordial black holes account for the entire mass of early supermassive black holes depends on how many there are. In principle, it's possible, but my guess is that astrophysical black holes play a role, too." Of course, these findings are based on simulations, so there is a long way to go before this theory can be confirmed. One line of observational evidence for this theory would be the detection of a massive black hole in the very, very early universe, prior even to 500 million years after the Big Bang. Another possible line of observational evidence would be the detection of a black hole with a mass smaller than three times that of the sun in the modern-day universe. That's because no black hole so small could have formed from the supernova death and collapse of a massive star, indicating this diminutive black hole grew from a primordial one. "I was surprised that primordial black holes grew so rapidly and that our simulations at least matched the parameter space in which they can exist," Regan said. "All we need now is a 'smoking gun' of a primordial black hole from observations — either a very low-mass black hole in the present-day universe or a really high-mass black hole in the very early universe. "Primordial black holes, if they exist, will be hiding in the extremes!" Related Stories: — A 'primordial' black hole may zoom through our solar system every decade — Primordial black holes may flood the universe. Could one hit Earth? — Tiny black holes left over from the Big Bang may be prime dark matter suspects In lieu of such observational evidence, the team will seek to improve their cosmological simulations to strengthen the theory of supermassive black holes starting off as primordial black holes. "The next steps are to increase the realism of the simulations. This was a first step. The simulations only had primordial black holes," Regan concluded. "Next, we want to model primordial and astrophysical black holes in the same environment and see if we can see any distinguishing characteristics." The team's research appears as a pre-peer review paper on the repository site arXiv.
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
When is the first day of summer? When's the summer solstice? How much daylight will Ohio see?
Have you pulled out your lawn chairs, open-toed sandals, and sun hats yet? Summer is on its way. That means hotter temperatures, family vacations, and maybe a trip to Cedar Point or Kings Island. When is the first day of summer 2025? When is the summer solstice? Here's what to know. The first day of summer can vary, depending on the context. Climate scientists often identify June 1 as the first day of the meteorological summer. But if you're looking at the astronomical calendar, summer starts a few weeks later. The astronomical season begins with the summer solstice on June 20, 2025, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. In Ohio and the rest of the Eastern time zone, the summer solstice will happen at 10:42 p.m. ET, according to The site states that daylight in temperate and mid-northern latitudes, such as Ohio, could last 15 hours that day. The summer solstice marks the beginning of the summer astronomical season. June 20 will be the day of the year when we will enjoy the longest hours of daylight in the northern hemisphere. After this day, the daylight hours will begin to shorten as summer progresses. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, astronomical seasons are defined by the Earth's orbiting position in relation to the sun, Meteorological seasons are dictated by the Earth's temperatures, per USA Today. The Earth's tilt and "the sun's alignment over the equator" shape the equinoxes and solstices. The Earth is tilted approximately 23.5 degrees on its axis. Because of this tilt, there are times when part of our planet leans toward the sun, and other times when another part of the planet faces away, according to NCEI. The Earth's elliptical orbit brings our planet closer or farther to the sun, depending on where the planet is in its 365.24-day cycle. These factors determine when the astronomical seasons fall, and each season varies in length from 89 to 93 days. And because of these variations in length, meteorological seasons were created. So basically, meteorological summer begins on June 1, and astronomical summer 2025 starts with the summer solstice on June 20. This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: When is the first day of summer 2025? How much daylight will Ohio see?
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'Cosmic miracle!' James Webb Space Telescope discovers the earliest galaxy ever seen
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) excels at a lot of things, but there are two things it does better than any other scientific instrument in human history: spotting early galaxies and breaking its own records!Now, the $10 billion NASA space telescope has done both things again, detecting a galaxy that existed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, a feat that the team behind this research has dubbed a "cosmic miracle."Currently, as the earliest and most distant galaxy ever detected, this "the mother of all early galaxies," this new JWST discovery has been fittingly designated "MoM z14." "First and foremost, at the moment, this is the most distant object known to humanity. That title changes every so often, but I find it is always cause for pause and reflection," team member and Yale University professor of Astronomy and Physics Pieter van Dokkum told "MoM z14 existed when the universe was about 280 million years old - we're getting quite close to the Big Bang. "Just to put that in context, sharks have been around on Earth for a longer timespan!" Since it began sending data back to Earth in the summer of 2022, the JWST has excelled in detecting galaxies at so-called "high redshifts." Redshift refers to the phenomenon of the wavelength of light from distant and thus early sources being stretched and shifted toward the "red end" of the electromagnetic spectrum as it traverses expanding space. The earlier and thus further away an object is, the greater the redshift. Prior to the discovery of MoM z14, the galaxy holding the title of earliest and distant was JADES-GS-z14-0, which existed just 300 million years after the Big Bang, or around 13.5 billion years ago. This previous record galaxy has a redshift of z =14.32, while MoM z14 has a redshift of z = 14.44. There is a wider context to the observation of MoM z14 than the fact that it has broken the record for earliest known galaxy by 20 million years, though, as van Dokkum explained. "The broader story here is that JWST was not expected to find any galaxies this early in the history of the universe, at least not at this stage of the mission," van Dokkum said. "There are, very roughly, over 100 more relatively bright galaxies in the very early universe than were expected based on pre-JWST observations."Also, in addition to detecting this new, earliest, and most distant galaxy, the team was able to determine some of its characteristics using the JWST. The researchers were able to determine that MoM z14 is around 50 times smaller than the Milky Way. The team also measured emission lines from the galaxy, indicating the presence of elements like nitrogen and carbon. "The emission lines are unusual; it indicates that the galaxy is very young, with a rapidly increasing rate of forming new stars," van Dokkum said. "There are also indications that there is not much neutral hydrogen gas surrounding the galaxy, which would be surprising: the very early universe is expected to be filled with neutral hydrogen. "That needs even better spectra and more galaxies, to investigate more fully." The presence of carbon and nitrogen in MoM z14 indicates that there are earlier galaxies to be discovered than this 13.52 billion-year-old example. That is because the very earliest galaxies in the universe and their stars were filled with the simplest elements in the cosmos, hydrogen and helium. Later galaxies would be populated by these heavier elements, which astronomers somewhat confusingly call "metal," as their stars forged them and then dispersed them in supernova explosions. "MoM z14 is not one of the very first objects that formed in the universe, as the stars in those galaxies are composed of hydrogen and helium only - we would not see carbon or nitrogen," van Dokkum said. "It could be part of the first wave of formation of 'normal' galaxies, that is, the first galaxies that have elements like nitrogen and carbon - but we've thought that before!" Related Stories: — Is our universe trapped inside a black hole? This James Webb Space Telescope discovery might blow your mind —James Webb Space Telescope finds our Milky Way galaxy's supermassive black hole blowing bubbles (image, video) — James Webb Space Telescope sees early galaxies defying 'cosmic rulebook' of star formation As for finding even earlier galaxies than MoM z14 and perhaps even detecting that first generation, van Dokkum is confident that the JWST is up to the task. He explained: "The JWST continues to push the boundary beyond where we thought it was, and at this point I would not be surprised if we find galaxies at z =15 or z =16!" For now, van Dokkum and the rest of this team, led by Rohan Naidu of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, can celebrate breaking new ground in our understanding of the early cosmos."In a program like this, the whole team is always hoping for a 'miracle,' that is, that some of the candidate extremely early galaxies actually pan out and are not 'mirages,' objects whose colors look like extremely early objects," van Dokkum concluded. "While we were hoping for some very early objects, I don't think any of us expected to break the redshift record!" A pre-peer-reviewed version of the team's research is published on the paper repository site arXiv.
