Hard Science Fiction

Jul 30 2020

In the orbit of two giants

Eta Carinae, approximately 7500 light-years from Earth, has everything that an astronomer could want. First, there’s the nebula surrounding Eta Carinae. The so-called Homunculus Nebula is still growing. It has the shape of two opposing cones, whose tips originate in Eta Carinae, and measures more than 0.5 light-years from end to end. From the propagation rate of up to 700 km/s, the existence of the nebula can be traced back to an outburst in the 1840s. Second, it is not just a single star, but a binary system consisting of two blue giants. The primary star has a mass…

Astrophysics

Jul 29 2020

How does a star simply vanish?

PHL 293B, also known as HL 293B, the Kinman dwarf galaxy, A2228-00, or SDSS J223036.79-000636.9, is a small, not especially bright galaxy 75 million light-years from the Sun. It belongs to a class of so-called “blue compact dwarf galaxies.” These normally consist of several large, young star clusters containing hot, massive stars. The brightest of these are blue – thus the designation of the galaxies and their color. PHL 293B is no different. Between 2001 and 2011, astronomers observed that the dwarf galaxy was dominated by a blue giant, a “luminous blue variable” (LBV), which shines approximately 2.5 million…

When you gotta go, you gotta go, even on the Moon…

Fun

Jul 28 2020

When you gotta go, you gotta go, even on the Moon…

Space is harsh and uncomfortable. That’s true for all human bodily functions. But maybe you’ve spent some time thinking about this problem and you have an idea for the perfect space toilet? It could win you $20,000 if it meets the following specifications: General requirements Easy to use Odor control Usable for at least 14 days Usable for urine, feces, vomit, diarrhea, menses Usable by female and male users between 58 to 77 inches tall and 107 to 290 lbs Also usable by sick crew members, e.g., able to capture vomit without requiring the crew member to put his/her…

Moving blocks of ice around on Triton – the reality

Other books

Jul 27 2020

Moving blocks of ice around on Triton – the reality

May 24, 2082, Neptune’s moon Triton: The hero of one of my novels, Nick, tries to move a block of ice weighing 80 kg (176 lbs). But it’s damn hard, even with Triton’s low force of gravity. “On Earth, the ice would slide because its bottom would melt due to the pressure, like under the blade of a skate, but it’s too cold for that here,” Nick thinks. A mistake, a Swedish reader just wrote to me. The idea that ice skating works because ice melts under pressure and then forms a lubricating layer is old. Ice does in…

Enceladus

Jul 26 2020

How a steam-powered robot could explore Enceladus

The thing designated SPARROW that engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory want to send to the icy moons of Enceladus and Europa has nothing at all in common with its namesake bird. Americans and scientists love acronyms, and the designation SPARROW came from the name “Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocean Worlds.” The project is part of the “NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts” program (NIAC), whose current candidates were announced by NASA earlier in Spring 2020. SPARROW stands out because it uses a very old propulsion solution from the start of the Industrial Age. But instead of coal for…

Too heavy to be a neutron star, too light to be a black hole

Astrophysics

Jul 25 2020

Too heavy to be a neutron star, too light to be a black hole

Sometimes (always?), new research instruments like the Ligo-Virgo gravitational wave detector collaboration not only provide long expected answers to old questions, but also create completely new questions too. Take, for example, GW190412, which is the designation given to the latest conundrum, for which physicists can thank Ligo-Virgo. It refers to a gravitational wave burst that reached Earth on 14 August 2019. From the measured data, the researchers determined that a relatively lightweight object and a significantly more massive object must have merged together to form a black hole with a mass of now 25 solar masses. There’s no question about…

How many civilizations are there in the Milky Way?

Life

Jul 2 2020

How many civilizations are there in the Milky Way?

Are there other thinking creatures in the universe? Researchers recently determined that life should be at least relatively common. In terms of intelligence, however, the results, which were based on an analysis of its development on Earth, were less clear. A new article published in the Astrophysical Journal has come to somewhat more encouraging results. Astrophysicist Tom Westby, one of the authors, explains his group’s approach: “The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life. Opinions about such matters, however, vary quite substantially. Our new study simplifies these assumptions using…

Astrophysics

Jun 30 2020

Sunspot problems in older stars

Sunspots caused by magnetic fields have plagued our Sun for ages. Their frequency changes approximately every eleven years, but even in the worst case they never cover more than 0.4 percent of the Sun’s surface. However, the Sun is pretty big, which you can appreciate from the fact that a sunspot can be about as large as a whole cross section of the Earth. On a cosmic scale, however, our Sun is only a small light and, just like there are people with more or less freckles, there are also stars that have large numbers of spots. Under certain…