How did your launch abort affect your future space flights?
Taking advantage of a total lunar eclipse, astronomers using our Hubble Space Telescope have detected ozone in our atmosphere. Why's this important? đź” Researchers can now use this new method – and space telescopes – to continue the search for life in our universe. Find out more HERE.Â
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Observations from both NASA’s James Webb and Hubble space telescopes created this colorful image of galaxy cluster MACS0416. The colors of different galaxies indicate distances, with bluer galaxies being closer and redder galaxies being more distant or dusty. Some galaxies appear as streaks due to gravitational lensing — a warping effect caused by large masses gravitationally bending the space that light travels through.
While Taylor's Eras Tour explores decades of music, our universe’s eras set the stage for life to exist today. By unraveling cosmic history, scientists can investigate how it happened, from the universe’s origin and evolution to its possible fate.
This infographic outlines the history of the universe.
Scientists aren’t sure what exactly existed at the very beginning of the universe, but they think there wasn’t any normal matter or physics. Things probably didn’t behave like we expect them to today.
Artist's interpretation of the beginning of the universe, with representations of the early cosmos and its expansion.
When the universe debuted, it almost immediately became unstable. Space expanded faster than the speed of light during a very brief period known as inflation. Scientists are still exploring what drove this exponential expansion.
When inflation ended, the universe continued to expand, but much slower. All the energy that previously drove the rapid expansion went into light and matter — normal stuff! Small subatomic particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons — now floated around, though the universe was too hot for them to combine and form atoms.
The particles gravitated together, especially in clumpy spots. The push and pull between gravity and the particles’ inability to stick together created oscillations, or sound waves.
Artist's interpretation of protons and neutrons colliding to form ionized deuterium — a hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron — and ionized helium — two protons and two neutrons.
After about three minutes, the universe had expanded and cooled enough for protons and neutrons to stick together. This created the very first elements: hydrogen, helium, and very small amounts of lithium and beryllium.
But it was still too hot for electrons to combine with the protons and neutrons. These free electrons floated around in a hot foggy soup that scattered light and made the universe appear dark.
This animated artist’s concept begins by showing ionized atoms (red blobs), free electrons (green blobs), and photons of light (blue flashes). The ionized atoms scattered light until neutral atoms (shown as brown blobs) formed, clearing the way for light to travel farther through space.
As the universe expanded and cooled further, electrons joined atoms and made them neutral. With the electron plasma out of the way, some light could travel much farther.
An image of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) across the entire sky, taken by ESA's (European Space Agency) Planck space telescope. The CMB is the oldest light we can observe in the universe. Frozen sound waves are visible as miniscule fluctuations in temperature, shown through blue (colder) and red (warmer) coloring.
As neutral atoms formed, the sound waves created by the push and pull between subatomic particles stopped. The waves froze, leaving ripples that were slightly denser than their surroundings. The excess matter attracted even more matter, both normal and “dark.” Dark matter has gravitational influence on its surroundings but is invisible and does not interact with light.
This animation illustrates the absorption of photons — light particles — by neutral hydrogen atoms.
Other than the cosmic microwave background, there wasn't much light during this era since stars hadn’t formed yet. And what light there was usually didn't make it very far since neutral hydrogen atoms are really good at absorbing light. This kicked off an era known as the cosmic dark ages.
This animation illustrates the beginning of star formation as gas begins to clump due to gravity. These protostars heat up as material compresses inside them and throw off material at high speeds, creating shockwaves shown here as expanding rings of light.
Over time, denser areas pulled in more and more matter, in some places becoming so heavy it triggered a collapse. When the matter fell inward, it became hot enough for nuclear fusion to start, marking the birth of the first stars!
A simulation of dark matter forming structure due to gravity.
As the universe expanded, the frozen sound waves created earlier — which now included stars, gas, dust, and more elements produced by stars — stretched and continued attracting more mass. Pulling material together eventually formed the first galaxies, galaxy clusters, and wide-scale, web-like structure.Â
In this animation, ultraviolet light from stars ionizes hydrogen atoms by breaking off their electrons. Regions already ionized are blue and translucent, areas undergoing ionization are red and white, and regions of neutral gas are dark and opaque.
The first stars were massive and hot, meaning they burned their fuel supplies quickly and lived short lives. However, they gave off energetic ultraviolet light that helped break apart the neutral hydrogen around the stars and allowed light to travel farther.
Animation showing a graph of the universe’s expansion over time. While cosmic expansion slowed following the end of inflation, it began picking up the pace around 5 billion years ago. Scientists still aren't sure why.
By studying the universe’s expansion rate over time, scientists made the shocking discovery that it’s speeding up. They had thought eventually gravity should cause the matter to attract itself and slow down expansion. Some mysterious pressure, dubbed dark energy, seems to be accelerating cosmic expansion. About 10 billion years into the universe’s story, dark energy – whatever it may be – became dominant over matter.
An image of Earth rising in the Moon’s sky. Nicknamed “Earthrise,” Apollo 8 astronauts saw this sight during the first crewed mission to the Moon.
We owe our universe today to each of its unique stages. However, scientists still have many questions about these eras.
Our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will look back in time to explore cosmic mysteries like dark energy and dark matter – two poorly understood aspects of the universe that govern its evolution and ultimate fate.
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Each month, we highlight a different research topic on the International Space Station. In January, our focus is Nutrition. Understanding the role of nutrition in astronaut adaptation to spaceflight has a broader application on Earth. For example, understanding the relationship of nutrition to bone loss in space is potentially valuable for patients suffering from bone loss on Earth.
The space station is being utilized to study the risks to human health that are inherent in space exploration. The human body changes in various ways in microgravity, and nutrition-related investigations help us understand and reduce those risks associated with those changes. Examples are:
Bone mineral density loss
Muscle atrophy
Cardiovascular deconditioning
Immune dysfunction
Radiation
and more
Scientists can also test the effectiveness of potential countermeasures like exercise and nutrition, which can have health benefits for those of us on Earth.
Did you know that in 2015 the space station crew harvested and ate lettuce that was grown on the space station? The Veggie facility on station is an experiment that supports a variety of plant species that can be cultivated for educational outreach, fresh food and even recreation for crew members on long-duration missions. Right now, the crew is growing Zinnia flowers. Understanding how flowering plans grow in microgravity can be applied to growing other edible flowering plants, such as tomatoes.
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There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. We must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world. – Epicurus, c. 300 B.C.
Are we alone? Are there other planets like ours? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?
These are questions mankind has been asking for years—since the time of Greek philosophers. But for years, those answers have been elusive, if not impossible to find.
The month of October marks the 21st anniversary of the discovery of the first planet orbiting another sun-like star (aka. an exoplanet), 51 Pegasi b or “Dimidium.” Its existence proved that there were other planets in the galaxy outside our solar system.*
Even more exciting is the fact that astronomers are in hot pursuit of the first discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a star other than the sun. The discovery of the so-called "blue dot" could redefine our understanding of the universe and our place in it, especially if astronomers can also find signs that life exists on that planet's surface.
Astronomy is entering a fascinating era where we're beginning to answer tantalizing questions that people have pondered for thousands of years.
Are we alone?
In 1584, when the Catholic monk Giordano Bruno asserted that there were "countless suns and countless earths all rotating around their suns," he was accused of heresy.
But even in Bruno's time, the idea of a plurality of worlds wasn't entirely new. As far back as ancient Greece, humankind has speculated that other solar systems might exist and that some would harbor other forms of life.
Still, centuries passed without convincing proof of planets around even the nearest stars.
Are there other planets like ours?
The first discovery of a planet orbiting a star similar to the sun came in 1995. The Swiss team of Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of Geneva announced that they had found a rapidly orbiting gas world located blisteringly close to the star 51 Pegasi.
This announcement marked the beginning of a flood of discoveries. Exotic discoveries transformed science fiction into science fact:
a pink planet
worlds with two or even three suns
a gas giant as light as Styrofoam
a world in the shape of an egg
a lava planet
But what about another Earth?
Our first exoplanet mission**, Kepler, launched in 2009 and revolutionized how astronomers understand the universe and our place in it. Kepler was built to answer the question—how many habitable planets exist in our galaxy?
And it delivered: Thousands of planet discoveries poured in, providing statistical proof that one in five sun-like stars (yellow, main-sequence G type) harbor Earth-sized planets orbiting in their habitable zones– where it’s possible liquid water could exist on their surface.
Now, our other missions like the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes point at promising planetary systems (TRAPPIST-1) to figure out whether they are suitable for life as we know it.
Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?
Now that exoplanet-hunting is a mainstream part of astronomy, the race is on to build instruments that can find more and more planets, especially worlds that could be like our own.
Our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), set for launch in 2017-2018, will look for super-Earth and Earth-sized planets around stars much closer to home. TESS will find new planets the same way Kepler does—via the transit method—but will cover 400 times the sky area.
The James Webb Space Telescope, to launch in 2018, wil be our most powerful space telescope to date. Webb will use its spectrograph to look at exoplanet atmospheres, searching for signs of life.
We still don’t know where or which planets are in the habitable zones of the nearest stars to Earth. Searching out our nearest potentially habitable neighbors will be the next chapter in this unfolding story.
*The first true discovery of extrasolar planets was actually a triplet of dead worlds orbiting the remains of an exploded star, called a pulsar star. Two of three were found by Dr. Alexander Wolszczan in 1992– a full three years before Dimidium’s discovery. But because they are so strange, and can’t support life as we know it, most scientists would reserve the “first” designation for a planet orbiting a normal star.
** The French CoRoT mission, launched in 2006, was the first dedicated exoplanet space mission. It has contributed dozens of confirmed exoplanets to the ranks and boasts a roster of some of the most well-studied planets outside our solar system.
To stay up-to-date on our latest exoplanet discoveries, visit: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov
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Scotland is part of the bedrock of geology, so to speak.
In the late 18th century, Scottish farmer and scientist James Hutton helped found the science of geology. Observing how wind and water weathered rocks and deposited layers of soil at his farm in Berwickshire, Hutton made a conceptual leap into a deeper and expansive view of time. After spending decades observing the processes of erosion and sedimentation, and traveling the Scottish countryside in search of fossils, stream cuts and interesting rock formations, Hutton became convinced that Earth had to be much older than 6,000 years, the common belief in Western civilization at the time.
In 1788, a boat trip to Siccar Point, a rocky promontory in Berwickshire, helped crystallize Hutton’s view. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the area on June 4, 2018, top. A closer view of Siccar Point is below.
At Siccar Point, Hutton was confronted with the juxtaposition of two starkly different types of rock—a gently sloping bed of young red sandstone that was over a near vertical slab of older graywacke that had clearly undergone intensive heating, uplift, buckling, and folding. Hutton argued to his two companions on the boat that the only way to get the two rock formations jammed up against one another at such an odd angle was that an enormous amount of time must have elapsed between when they had been deposited at the bottom of the ocean.
He was right.
Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2OBnyJ8
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Putting your life’s work on top of a rocket may seem like a daunting task, but that’s exactly what scientists have been doing for decades as they launch their research to the International Space Station.
This season on #NASAExplorers, we’re exploring why we send science to space, and what it takes to get it there!Â
Watch this week’s episode to meet a team of researchers who are launching an experiment to space for the first time.
Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday!
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For 10 years, our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has scanned the sky for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the universe’s most luminous explosions!
Most GRBs occur when some types of massive stars run out of fuel and collapse to create new black holes. Others happen when two neutron stars, superdense remnants of stellar explosions, merge. Both kinds of cataclysmic events create jets of particles that move near the speed of light.
A new catalog of the highest-energy blasts provides scientists with fresh insights into how they work. Below are five record-setting events from the catalog that have helped scientists learn more about GRBs:
The short burst 081102B, which occurred in the constellation Boötes on Nov. 2, 2008, is the briefest LAT-detected GRB, lasting just one-tenth of a second!
Long-lived burst 160623A, spotted on June 23, 2016, in the constellation Cygnus, kept shining for almost 10 hours at LAT energies — the longest burst in the catalog.
For both long and short bursts, the high-energy gamma-ray emission lasts longer than the low-energy emission and happens later.
The highest-energy individual gamma ray detected by Fermi’s LAT reached 94 billion electron volts (GeV) and traveled 3.8 billion light-years from the constellation Leo. It was emitted by 130427A, which also holds the record for the most gamma rays — 17 — with energies above 10 GeV.
The farthest known GRB occurred 12.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Carina. Called 080916C, researchers calculate the explosion contained the power of 9,000 supernovae.
The known distance to 090510 helped test Einstein’s theory that the fabric of space-time is smooth and continuous. Fermi detected both a high-energy and a low-energy gamma ray at nearly the same instant. Having traveled the same distance in the same amount of time, they showed that all light, no matter its energy, moves at the same speed through the vacuum of space.
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