Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 65 i All About Space

Universe’s ‘cold spot’ could be evidence for a multiverse A new study suggests a large cooler region may be due to a collision with another universe “The Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse” A strange anomaly, which causes a huge expanse of space to be cooler than its surroundings, could be the first evidence that our universe is one of many. Researchers at Durham University have been studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Most areas of the sky have been found to have an average temperature of 2.73 degrees Celsius above absolute zero – except for an expanse 1.8 billion light-years across that is cooler by 0.00015 degrees. Yet by showing there are just as many galaxies in this spot as in other areas…

NASA is running out of spacesuits American space agency hits problems despite $200 million investment NASA is unlikely to have new flight-ready spacesuits available for many years despite having spent $200 million on their development over the past decade. The space agency’s auditor says the lack of a formal plan and specific destinations for future missions has complicated spacesuit development. The issue is threatening NASA’s plans for deep-space exploration since the current famous white suits were never designed for working on planetary surfaces such as that of Mars. Although William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s chief of human spaceflight programs, says the damning report is “overly critical”, there’s no getting around the potential for embarrassment. The Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS) flight suit is created to be flexible and allow the wearer to…

Timeline of our planet’s fate Predictions are never easy, but what is the likely route to the Earth’s demise? © Tobias Roetsch 0 years An oasis for life Earth is the most fertile spot in the known universe, with a protective atmosphere and liquid water in abundance. Around 300,000 years Wolf-Rayet star WR 104 would have exploded, killing life on Earth Part of a binary star system 8,000 light years from Earth, WR 104 and its companion are expected to turn supernova within the next few hundred thousand years. Depending on WR 104’s axis of rotation, any resulting gamma ray burst could be aimed at Earth. 500,000 years Earth will be hit by an asteroid 1 km wide Earth has been hit by an asteroid up to 1 kilometre (0.6…

TOP TECH Wide Field Camera 3: Hubble’s advanced eye For years, the most powerful lenses staring out into the cosmos aboard Hubble were the Wide Field and Planetary Camera and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. As the years passed, one would replace the other until 2009 when NASA installed what looks to be one of the last instruments to be added to the observatory before it’s replaced by the James Webb Telescope. The WFC3 is still impressive, utilising two independent light paths: an optical channel that takes images from 200-1000 nanometers and a near infrared detector array that covers the wavelength range from 850-1700 nanometers.…

COSMIC DUST What is it trying to tell us? Scientists are starting to find cosmic dust all over the Earth with important consequences Written by Colin Stuart When you think about outer space, your mind is naturally drawn to the very big – planets, stars and galaxies. But many of the universe’s secrets are hidden away in the stuff you can barely see: cosmic dust. Take our own Solar System. The gaps between the planets are peppered with tiny dust grains less than a tenth of a millimetre across. There’s enough of them that if you gathered up all the dust between the Sun and Jupiter you could fashion a sphere 25 kilometres (15.53 miles) across. On a clear night, far from city lights, you can even see sunlight reflecting…

Some of the dustiest places in the universe Lagoon Nebula (M8) Brand new stars are slowly being formed as gravity pulls gas and dust together in this 100-light-year-wide nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius. Eagle Nebula (M16) One of the most famous ‘dusty’ places in the universe thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, these ‘Pillars of Creation’ form part of the Eagle Nebula. Crab Nebula (M1) The remnant of a supernova explosion first seen in the year 1054, last year Swedish astronomers found 92 dusty globules in this famous cloud. The Milky Way Look up from a dark site and you will see the Milky Way arching overhead. You can clearly see there’s lots of dust between the stars. The Pleiades (M45) The famous star grouping – nicknamed The Seven…

In search of antigravity In search of ANTIGRAVITY It’s the force that throws objects up and, if found, could be the holy grail for space travel among the stars Written by Nicky Jenner  Straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva lies the European Organization for Nuclear Research, more popularly known as CERN. “ Differences between the behaviour of matter and antimatter are embedded in our conventional theory” Chris Parkes This laboratory houses the accelerators, detectors, and equipment comprising a number of different particle physics experiments – including the famed Large Hadron Collider (LHC), responsible for discovering a particle suspected to be the Higgs Boson, or ‘God particle’, in 2012. CERN’s particle accelerators are designed to study the tiniest constituents of matter: the fundamental particles that form everything from stars and planets…

Focus on Enceladus ENCELADUS ‘BEST CHANCE FOR LIFE’ Hydrogen spewing from the surface of Saturn’s icy moon could hint at extraterrestrial creatures beyond Earth © NASA; JPL; Space Science Institute; Caltech; Southwest Research Institute  Hydrogen gas discovered in a plume of material erupting from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggests that the frozen world could be our best chance of finding life within the Solar System. Data indicates that the hydrogen is being made through chemical reactions between the rocky core and warm water from its subsurface ocean, a process that’s analogous to hydrothermal vents on Earth. “The discovery offers a tantalising suggestion that habitable conditions could exist beneath the crust” “Hydrogen is a source of chemical energy for microbes that live in the Earth’s…

STARGAZER Moon tour Mare Imbrium Explore the Moon’s 'Sea of Showers' this evening © NASA One of the most iconic images in the history of space exploration dates back to 1902. In his 1902 film Trip To The Moon, one of the first sci-fi films ever made, pioneer film-maker Georges Melies fired a bullet-shaped capsule to the Moon from a giant cannon, and that iconic image shows how it landed in the poor Man in the Moon’s right eye. Today when we look up and see the Man in the Moon staring back at us, his right eye thankfully seems to have gaze at Imbrium through even a small telescope. When sunlight strikes Mare Imbrium at a shallow angle it reveals its seemingly-flat floor is wrinkled and rippled lie an…

STARGAZER How to… Observe Titan Gas giant Saturn is famous for its beautiful ring system, but it also has several moons. Here’s how to spot its largest © John Chumack; Science Photo Library You’ll need: • A small telescope • Ephemeris • Notebook If you have ever seen the planet Saturn through a telescope, no doubt you will remember the stunning ring system, but perhaps you never noticed the moons orbiting around the planet. Saturn has five or six moons which are visible through amateur telescopes, depending on the size of your instrument. These include Titan, the largest and easiest to spot, Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Iapetus. Titan was first discovered by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1655, not that long after the famous ring system was discovered by…

How can we… …avoid an asteroid impact The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been cataloguing asteroid and comet orbits for 70 years. Proposed strategies involve breaking up asteroids so they burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere, or delaying/speeding up arrival times to miss the Earth. …escape an expanding red giant Sun If we could push Earth just a little bit further out from the Sun – an additional 15 per cent, say – it’s been suggested that it would definitely survive the furthest reach of the Sun’s expansion into a red giant, although it still wouldn’t be a viable place on which to grow crops. …avoid a runaway greenhouse effect In the long term, this looks unavoidable; once the Sun’s luminosity overtakes Earth’s ability to dissipate absorbed radiation…

Explaining the Great Attractor: dark flow Direction of flow This map of the night sky shows the direction of flow of clusters of galaxies at different distances from us Galaxy clusters The clusters all appear to be moving along a line extending from our Solar System out to the constellations of Centaurus and Hydra. The Great Attractor? As you can see, they’re all moving in a similar direction, called dark flow, which is possibly caused by the existence of the Great Attractor. How dark flow operates Remnant of the Big Bang The motions of the clusters may be a remnant of the rapid inflation of the universe after the Big Bang. One direction Many clusters in the night sky appear to be flowing to a particular point of sky, which…

Head to head Hubble vs Chandra When it comes to weight, Hubble remains one of the chunkiest at 12,247 kilograms (1360 kilograms more than its original launch weight) – noticeably heavier than the Chandra Space Telescope which clocks in at 4,790 kilograms. In terms of sheer size, the Hubble isn’t quite as grand as the far newer Chandra, with its all important measurements coming in at 13.2 metres by 4.2 metres compared to Chandra’s larger 13.8 metres by 19.5 metres stats. Hubble and Chandra almost occupy the same space as a double decker with length 15 metres and height 4.3 metres, and Hubble is almost heavy as the 12,650-kilogram bus.…

Different kinds of space dust Intergalactic dust Dying stars can blast dust out of their host galaxies and into the void between. Mergers between galaxies and dwarf galaxies can also create intergalactic dust. What it tells us It is important to study intergalactic dust because it can dim light arriving at Earth from very distant galaxies, leading us to underestimate their brightness. Circumplanetary dust In 2015 astronomers spotted a mysterious dust cloud around the planet Mars using the MAVEN spacecraft. It was 150 – 300 kilometres (93 – 186 miles) above the Martian surface. What it tells us This dust suggests that there’s probably a process going on in Mars’s atmosphere that we’re unaware of. Interstellar dust The dust between the stars largely thrown out by supernova as massive stars…

Where you can see cosmic dust on Earth Antarctica Cosmic dust landing in Antarctica becomes trapped in the ice and lies undisturbed for millions of years. This creates a historical record of past dust events. Ocean floor Nearby supernova explosions can rocket dust into the Solar System and through the atmosphere to land on the ocean floor where scientists have collected it. City rooftops Amateur Norwegian scientist Jon Larsen found cosmic dust in 300 kilograms of material rescued from rooftop gutters in multiple cities including Paris and Oslo. © Alamy; Robert Matton; NASA; ESA; Hubble; JPL-Caltech; J. Hester; A. Loll (Arizona State University); ESO; S. Guisard; Y.Beletsky; Lars Hellebust; Kevin Cho Zodiacal Light While the dust itself is not on Earth, you can still see this interplanetary dust on a…

FIRST LOOK Inside your CAPSULE into SPACE Blue Origin has given its best-ever peek at the spacecraft, tipped to blast you off into Earth-orbit at the end of this year Written by David Crookes If you buy something from Amazon, you could get the item to your door in double-quick time. You’ll have to pay for such speedy delivery, of course – whether as a one-off or part of a subscription – but as long as you put up the cash, you can sit back, enjoy whatever it is that you’ve bought or even return it if it doesn’t take your fancy. Hand your cash to Blue Origin, though, and much the same will apply. The core experience will last 11 minutes, it’ll cost you many tens of thousands of…

Interview Lord Martin Rees Interview with... Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees The astronomer talks sending messages to an alien civilisation and why he thinks aliens will use robots to conquer space Interviewed by Paul Sutherland  A number of projects are involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Do you believe this is a search worth doing, or do you think resources are better spent elsewhere? “ I think it’s going to be only when we find something that is really unusual… that we will take this seriously” I think SETI is worth doing, but, of course, we don’t know how much life there is of any kind beyond the Earth. We know that there must be billions of planets like the Earth but not how likely it is that…

STARGAZER The Northern Hemisphere Observers longing for night-sky targets to track down with the naked eye, binoculars and telescopes won’t be disappointed © Wil Tirion; NASA; ESA; STScI; ST-ECF; CADC; Adam Block; Mount Lemmon SkyCenter; University of Arizona This June, and provided you have a small telescope or a pair of binoculars to hand, you’ll be treated to views of Comet C/2015 V2 (Johnson) in the constellation of Boötes. The comet is expected to reach a magnitude of 6.9 as it makes its closest approach to the Sun and will be visible all night as the dusk sky fades for those in the Northern Hemisphere. With conjunctions between the Moon and other celestial bodies in our Solar System, including Mercury and Venus as well as between Haumea and dwarf planet…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE © ESO; P. Horálek Space fireworks over Paranal Our cosmic neighbourhood is exposed in all its glory over the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), in this stunning capture by photographer Petr Horálek. On the right, and behind the line of four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes of the VLT, the red and green hues of airglow can be seen illuminating the sky. Zodiacal light is brightening the sky, too, and is caused by microscopic particles of light-scattering space dust. Our galaxy appears in a bright arc, peppered with dark filaments of dust, which absorb and obscure light from the stars behind them. It is the more luminous features where new stars are forming. Beneath the Milky Way, two of our small…

Dark matter could be fuzzy Scientists have come up with a new way of describing this mysterious substance A new study of dark matter's properties using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory seems to be shedding new light on it with some scientists now describing it as ‘fuzzy’ and quite ‘excited’. While such terms may not appear to be overly technical, it is believed to be the best way of explaining how the matter clumps together in galaxies. The research has sought to figure why the density of both dark and normal matter in the centre of galaxies is more evenly spread out than under the established ‘cold dark matter’ model. Such a model posits that the density of dark matter should be higher in the centre of galaxies than…

Earth’s last day WHAT WILL HAPPEN ON EARTH'S LAST DAY? In the grand cosmic scale of the universe, our planet is doomed. All About Space finds out what will occur during Earth’s final moments Written by Paul Cockburn © Tobias Roetsch  Apollo 17 may have been the 20th century’s final manned mission beyond Earth orbit, but its crew left us with one very public legacy – the iconic ‘Blue Marble’ image of planet Earth which, during the last 45 years, has become one of the most reproduced images in human history. “ Admittedly, that’s barely a pinprick when compared to the history of life on our Pale Blue Dot as a whole” That’s barely a pinprick when compared to the history of life on Earth as a whole: when you…

The Great Attractor Mysterious space-time that's pulling us in THE GREAT ATTRACTOR This perplexing region of space is rapidly dragging our Milky Way toward a place we're desperate to understand Written by Jonathan O’Callaghan © Mark Garlick; Science Photo Library “That lumpiness reflects an imbalance in the gravitational attraction from one side of the sky to the other” Lister Staveley-Smith More than 20 years ago, a team of seven astronomers discovered the location of a vast and mysterious region of space that was pulling our galaxy and thousands of others towards it. They called this the Great Attractor, and today there is still much we don’t know about it – but we are finally on the brink of a breakthrough. To better understand it, it’s important to understand that our…

In search of antigravity What can antigravity be used for? If proven to exist, this 'repulsive force' could assist in our quest to travel amongst the stars Opening up a wormhole Antigravity, in theory, could be used to open up a wormhole in order to allow spacecraft to dive straight in and travel straight through. By using a sufficient torrent of antigravity – which acts as negative energy – to force the throat of space-time apart, and it will be opened wide enough to enable an astronaut and his spacecraft to slip right though. © Adrian Mann Gravity shields Gravitational shielding involves shielding an object from the influence of a gravitational field. Currently bound to the pages of science fiction, gravity shields have the effect of reducing the weight of…

STARGAZER This month’s planets While Jupiter rules the night alongside Mars and Saturn, Venus and Uranus are worthwhile targets during the small hours of the morning Planet of the month This month the night sky belongs to the king of the Solar System. As the western sky darkens after sunset, mighty Jupiter will already be high to the south, shining to the upper right of Spica, brightest star in the constellation of Virgo. Jupiter remains visible until the early hours, slowly drifting westwards. Jupiter will look its best around midnight, when it will be above the south western horizon, a beautiful magnitude -2.2 yellow-white star brighter by far than anything else in the sky, apart from the Moon. The Moon itself will approach and pass Jupiter as May ends and…

STARGAZER How to… Turn your telescope into a solar scope Our nearest star is a popular target during the summer months. Here’s how to see some impressive solar activity You’ll need: • A small telescope • Two pieces of card or solar safety film • Great care! There are many ways of observing the Sun safely using a telescope these days, from simply projecting the Solar disc onto a screen or white card (the very safest way to view it), to using high quality, read expensive, specialist narrow-band filters which you can attach to your telescope. The most inexpensive and safe way to see the Sun for yourself though, is to either project the Sun through your telescope, or use Solar Safety Film, which you can buy by the sheet…

STARGAZER Deep sky challenge Summer treasures of the serpent, serpent-bearer and the hero Breathtaking views in the constellations of Ophiuchus, Serpens and Hercules for those willing to stay up late © NASA; STScl; ESA; Hubble; Gilles Chapdelaine; Robert J. Vanderbei Although there aren't many hours of darkness in which to observe the night sky, if you plan your viewing, there is a good chance you will be rewarded. This time of year is especially good for globular star clusters. These objects, as the name suggests, are tightly packed balls of stars, which orbit around the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way, sometimes at surprisingly large distances from it. Each cluster is individual and is fascinating to view through a telescope. Some are very bright, such as the Great Globular Cluster…

Observe Titan Finding Saturn’s largest moon Titan will always be found near the planet, but how can you tell which point of light it is? Helpfully, Titan, being the largest moon of Saturn, is also the brightest. It also orbits as one of furthest moons away from Saturn, with a mean distance of 1.2 million kilometres. A moderate magnification, say 50x, should show you the planet and its ring system quite well, along with Titan, some two or three arc-minutes away. The moon also has a slightly yellow-orange tinge to it, which helps identification even further. If you increase the magnification to 150x or up to 250x - if the conditions and your telescope can take it - then you will see that Titan is a tiny disc, but it…

Margaret Rhea Seddon She became the first female surgeon to go into space © NASA On her very first day away from Earth on 12 April 1985, astronaut Margaret Rhea Seddon said she felt like Superwoman. This, she explained, was because she was able to float around the Space Shuttle Discovery rather than walk everywhere. But as a member of the first group of six women to be selected as astronaut candidates, she had just cause to feel like a superhero for a very different reason. Born on 8 November 1947 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Seddon described herself growing up as a “tomboy who could crochet”. She went on to study physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and she earned a doctorate of medicine from the University of Tennessee in…