Space

Jan 13 2022

New candidate for exomoon discovered

Almost all planets in our solar system - and even some dwarf planets - are orbited by moons. In other star systems, however, astronomers have not yet been able to definitively confirm a single moon. Is it because there are no moons there? Certainly not - our observational technology simply isn't ready yet. But an article published in Nature Astronomy now introduces at least one new candidate for an exomoon. If confirmed as an exomoon, Kepler-1708 b-i - which is 2.6 times larger than Earth - could provide a missing piece of the puzzle for understanding the formation and…

Why we don’t stick to the ground with our bellies – or why our earth is not a super earth

Astrophysics

Jan 9 2022

Why we don’t stick to the ground with our bellies – or why our earth is not a super earth

During the search for exoplanets astronomers notice again and again that our solar system seems to be clearly out of the way. There are neither "hot Jupiters" (gas giants in the proximity of the central star) nor super earths (rock worlds with more than three times earth mass). At first it was thought that this could be due to the way of searching. The techniques used work particularly well with celestial bodies that are very large and orbit close to their star. In the meantime, however, the list of exoplanets is clearly in four digits, and super-Earths are still…

Astrophysics

Jan 6 2022

The death throes of red supergiants

For the first time, astronomers have imaged the dramatic end of a red supergiant's life in real time. They observed the rapid self-destruction of a massive star located 120 million light-years from Earth in the galaxy NGC 5731 and its final death throes before collapsing into a type II supernova. Led by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), the team observed the red supergiant during its last 130 days before its fatal detonation. The discovery, published in the Astrophysical Journal, contradicts previous ideas about how red supergiants evolve just before they explode. Previous observations…

Ice belts at the equator are more common than ice caps at the poles

Life

Dec 15 2021

Ice belts at the equator are more common than ice caps at the poles

We like to go south, towards the equator, to escape the cold. At the two poles of the earth there is permanent frost and ice. In terms of the entire universe, this is by no means the rule, as astronomers have discovered in a scientific work. To do so, a team from the University of Washington and the University of Bern computationally simulated more than 200,000 hypothetical Earth-like worlds - planets that have the same size, mass, atmospheric composition and geography as modern Earth - all in orbit around stars similar to our Sun, a G-type star. So they…

Space

Dec 2 2021

Black holes on a collision course

Do you already have something planned for the year 250,002,000? Then take an evening off and look with your future super telescopic eye at the area around the galaxy NGC 7727 in the constellation Aquarius. There, two super heavy black holes are colliding with each other. Today, they are still 1600 light-years apart, but they are the closest pair of black holes observed so far. Astronomers found it with the help of the European Southern Observatory's VLT. "It is the first time we have found two supermassive black holes so close together, less than half the distance of the previous…

Life

Dec 1 2021

Planets with an eggshell

ou open the airlock door. Your first step onto the surface of a new planet! It is hot, but your spacesuit protects you. A thin layer of clouds hides the sun. But something is wrong. You climb down the ladder. What is it? You spin around your axis. Wherever you look, the horizon is the same distance away. This planet has no elevations at all. It is as if you are standing on the outside of an eggshell. Such planets probably really exist. "Eggshell planets," a recent study shows, are to be expected in a solar system under certain…

Space

Nov 6 2021

Is our Earth an oddity in space?

When you think of the rocks that make up our home planet (but also all the other rocky planets in the solar system), you probably immediately think of the fact that olivine and orthopyroxene are the predominant minerals in the Earth's mantle. If not, you are probably not a geologist. I confess, I didn't know that either. But is this actually normal? Are all rocky planets in the universe composed primarily of these minerals? That's an important question, because other rock types absorb more water than Earth's rocks, for example, which would affect the development of oceans. Others melt…

42 of the largest asteroids: from spheres to dog bones

Space

Oct 13 2021

42 of the largest asteroids: from spheres to dog bones

More than 650,000 objects orbit in the solar system's asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory ESO imaged 42 of the largest in a large-scale effort from 2017 to 2019; the results have now been published. What did they notice? (more…)