Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Q. Morris
How the ice moon Enceladus got its tiger stripes Enceladus

How the ice moon Enceladus got its tiger stripes

Saturn’s ice moon, Enceladus, is one of the most promising worlds in terms of the search for places where extraterrestrial life might exist. Of course, as a reader of the Ice Moon series, you’ve already known that for a long time. Near its south pole there are deep fissures in its crust, through which water is constantly being forced outward. This allows researchers to look under the ice, which is up to 100 kilometers thick, without having to drill through it. A new study tries to explain the unusual appearance of these sulci, which are also called “tiger stripes.”…
Three giant black holes at the center of one galaxy Astrophysics

Three giant black holes at the center of one galaxy

At the center of any galaxy that wants to be taken seriously, a mysterious giant is lurking – a supermassive black hole, often with a mass of millions to billions of solar masses. The center of our Milky Way has a gravitational monster, Sagittarius A*, which has sucked up the mass of more than four million stars the size of our Sun. But in terms of the universe, that’s almost nothing. Astronomers have now identified three supermassive black holes in the irregular galaxy NGC 6240 as reported by the University of Göttingen. NGC 6240 is about 330 million light-years…
Hot and cold: an ice giant orbiting a white dwarf Astrophysics

Hot and cold: an ice giant orbiting a white dwarf

In a few billion years, when our Sun has exhausted its supply of fuel, it will first turn into a red giant and then collapse to form a white dwarf. Some planets of our Solar System will probably survive this time (if they’re not flung out into deep space). Astronomers know this will happen – theoretically. But until now, nobody had ever found a white dwarf with a planet in orbit around it. So, it’s understandable why researchers are so excited about the discovery of WDJ0914+1914, which is located in the constellation Cancer about 1500 light-years away. “It was one…
When a black hole is simply too big Astrophysics

When a black hole is simply too big

One of the distinguishing features of black holes is that they are hard to see. Astronomers looking for them sometimes have luck, but at the cost a star: when a ravenous black hole tears off and devours stellar material from an orbiting star, the resulting accretion disk emits radiation that can be measured. Almost all known black holes have been discovered this way. But it seems logical that those aren’t the only ones out there. Black holes are formed when heavy stars die. And many of these giant stars die alone, without a companion that a resulting black hole…
How exoplanets develop in multiple-star systems Astrophysics

How exoplanets develop in multiple-star systems

In the novel, “The Three-Body Problem,” a civilization that developed in a system with three stars plays an important role. This situation has dramatic consequences for the civilization’s planet, which I don’t want to spoil for you. I was reminded of the novel when I read a press release of research work at the University of Jena. Dr. Markus Mugrauer, an astrophysicist there, examined 1300 known star systems with exoplanets to determine how many stars there were within these systems. To do this, he used the most up-to-date version of the data from the ESA Gaia Mission. A clever approach…
Water detected on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa Life

Water detected on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa

The hottest candidates for the development of extraterrestrial life are one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, and one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa – even though it’s very cold on its surface. Life, in fact, might be hiding in an underground ocean under the 50-100 kilometer thick layer of ice. Its existence is indicated, among other things, by the countless fault lines criss-crossing across its surface. Proof of this underground sea, however, has not yet been found. But now, with the help of the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea (Hawaii), astronomers have found more evidence, as they have written in an…
A black-hole Sun: planets could also form around black holes Space

A black-hole Sun: planets could also form around black holes

What does a builder of worlds need to form planets? A protoplanetary disk made out of a suitable material in which differences in density can develop, and an object at the center of the system that acts as a common center of gravity and uses its force of attraction to prevent the cloud of material from floating off into infinity. Until now it had been assumed that these conditions were met primarily by stars. But apparently much more exotic planetary systems are also conceivable, as Japanese researchers have now described in a study. The scientists took a closer look…
A place on Earth where everything’s dead Life

A place on Earth where everything’s dead

So far, the Earth is the only place in the universe where life has been proven to exist. But even on our planet, there are places that life cannot survive. The geothermal fields in the Ethiopian region of Dallol are one of these places. Near the Danakil Depression in northeastern Ethiopia, close to the border with Eritrea, a volcanic explosion in 1926 formed a crater with a diameter of 30 meters (98 ft), exposing hot salt springs. The emerging water is 70°C (158°F) and extremely acidic with a pH value below 1. At the same time, the air temperature…