Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Q. Morris
Today’s forecast: cloudy with a 100% chance of iron rain in the evening Space

Today’s forecast: cloudy with a 100% chance of iron rain in the evening

The exoplanet, WASP-76b, about 640 light-years from Earth, orbits its host star, WASP-76, once every approximately 1.8 days at the relatively small distance of only 0.03 astronomical units (AU). The Earth, in contrast, is at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun. The star, WASP-76, is somewhat larger and hotter than the Sun, but that doesn’t make much of a difference for the planet orbiting around it. At such a small distance, the planet would be damn hot no matter how big the star was. The planet, almost as massive as our Jupiter, is therefore classified as a…
Hexaquark d*(2380): a new candidate for dark matter Astrophysics

Hexaquark d*(2380): a new candidate for dark matter

One of the biggest mysteries of our universe is what is dark matter made of. Its existence is suggested by several astronomical observations, among them peculiarities in the rotation of galaxies. Dark matter would have to make up at least 63% of all matter in the universe and to date, physicists have no idea about its exact nature. All that is clear is that dark matter interacts with normal matter only via gravity. These could be, among other things, so-called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which would be considered cold dark matter. However, researchers are not making very quick…
Bad news for life on Titan – or not? Life

Bad news for life on Titan – or not?

So that life as we know it can emerge, it must be able to differentiate itself somehow from its environment. Therefore, every cell needs a shell that allows nutrients to pass through it from the outside, but nevertheless protects the cell’s insides from the outside world. On Earth, cell membranes perform this function and are made from lipids, hydrocarbon compounds that include, among other things, fatty acids. On Saturn’s moon, Titan, it is much too cold, at an average temperature of -180 °C, for the formation of lipids. But there is a different class of substances there that astrobiologists…
Why the star of Orion’s left shoulder is fading Space

Why the star of Orion’s left shoulder is fading

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant. With a diameter 1000 times that of the Sun’s and – formerly – 10,000 times the illuminance, it has wowed the entire Milky Way, but now it’s even being mentioned on the cable news shows. Why? Because everyone’s hoping for a catastrophe. If such a large star fades to 36 percent of its previous illuminance within a short time, it would suggest it might soon end in a supernova. That would certainly be spectacular, because it would grace the Earth’s night skies with the brightness of a half moon. But the hope that this…
NASA wants to visit Triton, Io, and Venus Space

NASA wants to visit Triton, Io, and Venus

NASA has unveiled four new research missions that could set flight under the Discovery Program – if their feasibility can be confirmed. They highlight three locations that you will already know from my books: Venus (two proposals), Io, and Triton. However, a maximum of two of the four proposals will be developed. Here are the details: DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus) DAVINCI+ will analyze Venus’s atmosphere in order to understand how it formed and developed and whether Venus ever had an ocean. To do this, DAVINCI+ will plunge into Venus’s inhospitable atmosphere and…
Cosmic strings and our existence in the universe Astrophysics

Cosmic strings and our existence in the universe

The Big Bang was the beginning of this, our universe. Astrophysicists agree on that much at least. Whether it was or will be the only event of this type is a debate for philosophers. But there are still a few unresolved questions involving the Big Bang. The most important of these would probably be: why do we exist at all? Because after all the four fundamental forces finally developed after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should always be formed in exactly the same amount. The evolution of the universe would thus be relatively boring: matter and antimatter would…
Sleeping monster from the early days of the universe Astrophysics

Sleeping monster from the early days of the universe

At first glance, XMM-2599 appears to be a rather boring galaxy (because it’s dying). But an international research team has recently discovered that it’s really a sleeping monster. XMM-2599 formed more than 12 billion years ago, when the universe was still very young, only 1.8 billion years old. At first the galaxy was extremely active. “Even before the universe was 2 billion years old, XMM-2599 had already formed a mass of more than 300 billion suns, making it an ultramassive galaxy,” says Benjamin Forrest, lead author of the study in Astrophysical Journal. “More remarkably, we show that XMM-2599 formed…
Spectacular details on the Sun’s surface Space

Spectacular details on the Sun’s surface

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) plays an important role in my novel “Silent Sun.” When I wrote the book, the solar telescope was still under construction. It’s still not completely finished, but it’s already taken its first snapshots of its only object of observation, our Sun. The images are absolutely stunning, showing the Sun’s surface at a level of detail never seen before. (more…)