Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Q. Morris
What is there in the space between the oldest galaxies? Space

What is there in the space between the oldest galaxies?

Nothing? Not quite, which you can see with just a quick glance at the picture below. Images taken by the MUSE spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) show the exact opposite. Using the MUSE instrument on the VLT, an international team of astronomers led by Lutz Wisotzki, professor for observational cosmology at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the University of Potsdam, discovered an unexpected abundance of so-called Lyman-alpha emission in a region of the Fornax constellation that had been mapped with particular precision by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004, the…
Rocky with a hint of hydrogen: what’s a good recipe for a planet? Life

Rocky with a hint of hydrogen: what’s a good recipe for a planet?

Rocky planets are rather small and gas giants are large – that’s one hypothesis you might come up with if you look at our Solar System. But is that true always and everywhere? Is our own system an example of the rule or an exception to the rule? Astronomers have now found more than 3700 exoplanets, but very little is known about their composition. At most the radius and mass are known. But even if the size and mass are known, it is still very difficult to say whether the exoplanet has, in fact, a large, but thanks to…
It’s not Planet X, but 2015 TG387 is still pretty far out Space

It’s not Planet X, but 2015 TG387 is still pretty far out

A team led by astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo has been searching for a while for Planet X, which is supposed to orbit the Sun somewhere in the Oort Cloud far beyond the other planets. To do this, they are studying the areas of interest particularly closely – and keep coming up with interesting discoveries in the process. This time the result is called 2015 TG387. The object was first registered in 2015; scientists needed until today to confirm its orbit, which leads it once around the Sun every 40,000 years. 2015 TG387 is one of the most…
When can we be certain that we’re the only civilization in the galaxy? Life

When can we be certain that we’re the only civilization in the galaxy?

Are we alone in the universe? Most science-fiction authors would answer that question with a no. Scientists, however, aren’t so sure. SETI projects, such as Breakthrough Listen, have not produced any clear results, at least not yet. But assume we search and search and search – and find nothing. Will there come a moment when we can say with some certainty that we are alone in the universe – and can stop searching? Yes, says Claudio Grimaldi from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne; EPFL). In a paper in PNAS, he calculated when…
Exoplanets have pretty moons too Space

Exoplanets have pretty moons too

Nobody really believes that our Solar System is the only one with moons. But the existence of moons in other star systems has only been a hypothesis up until now. So-called exomoons are particularly difficult to find, because they are smaller than their host planets (which is, of course, in their nature) and they follow complicated paths due to their orbits around their planets and, in turn, around their stars. Such objects are usually identified by measuring the occultation caused when they pass in front of their star (transit method). Nevertheless, the Hubble Space Telescope has now finally found…
Dust storms discovered on Saturn’s moon Titan Titan

Dust storms discovered on Saturn’s moon Titan

If you want to see a dust storm on Earth, you only need to visit one of its deserts. Beyond that, the next best opportunity for a dust storm is many millions of miles away on Mars, as NASA’s Mars rovers recently discovered. But there is yet a third celestial body that is regularly hit by dust storms – Saturn’s moon Titan. Titan, after Ganymede the second largest moon in the Solar System, seems to be predestined, with its dense methane atmosphere, for such phenomena. There are, however, no active probes currently in the area around Saturn and wind…
Where is the Milky Way’s sibling now? Space

Where is the Milky Way’s sibling now?

Once upon a time there were three siblings who roamed the universe together. Two of their names are still known today: the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are still the dominant galaxies of the Local Group. But the third sibling went missing two billion years ago – today, astronomers call it “M32p.” At the time, M32p was the third largest galaxy of the Local Group and twenty times larger than any galaxy that has ever merged with the Milky Way. (more…)
Become an astronaut now: the Austrian Space Forum is looking for two new analog astronauts Mars

Become an astronaut now: the Austrian Space Forum is looking for two new analog astronauts

In February 2018, I spent a couple of exciting days in Oman. There, I was allowed to participate in the Mars Simulation Amadee-18 mission. For a couple weeks, approximately twenty men and women from different countries lived as if they hadn’t landed in the Oman desert, but instead on the Red Planet. This wasn’t about fun and adventure (although the participants had quite a bit of that too), but instead about identifying problems and weak points in a real Mars expedition before one is actually attempted. (more…)