Astronomy

An asteroid hurtling toward Earth could be deflected without a spacecraft ever touching it. The trick is using X-rays to divert the space rock, researchers report September 23 in Nature Physics. In lab experiments, scientists heated the surfaces of free-falling faux asteroids with X-ray radiation, producing vapor plumes that pushed the objects away. Subsequent computer simulations demonstrated that X-rays emitted by a distal nuclear blast could deflect some asteroids that are about as wide as the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is long. input[type="radio"].svelte-wecxzz{display:none}.payment-option-wrapper.svelte-wecxzz.svelte-wecxzz{display:flex;flex:1 0 28%;width:100%}.payment-option-wrapper.svelte-wecxzz.svelte-wecxzz:only-child{max-width:3...

The William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, Spain. Credit: PAUS team A new catalog providing information on millions of distant galaxies, which determines their distances with unprecedented precision over a field of view and depth never before explored, has been published today. The catalog is the result of The Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS), an international collaboration led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), dependent on the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), which involves 14 institutions across six countries—including the University of Portsmouth. Collected over 200 nights between 2015...

A team of scientists presented a new gravity map of Mars at the Europlanet Science Congress 2024. The map shows the presence of dense, large-scale structures under Mars’ long-gone ocean and that mantle processes are affecting Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System. The new map and analysis include data from multiple missions, including NASA’s InSIGHT (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission. They also use data from tiny deviations in satellites as they orbit Mars. The paper “The global gravity field of Mars reveals an active interior” will be published in an upcoming edition of JGR: Planets. The lead author is Bart Root of the Delft University of Technology. Some of the results go against an important concept in geology. Geol...

Saturn imaged on 22 August 2024, showing the narrow tilt of its splendid rings. Image: Luigi Morrone. Saturn is arguably the most popular planet, certainly with children and the public at large. Its wonderful system of rings, well seen through even a small telescope, makes it unique in the Solar System.  Unlike Mars and Jupiter, both of which are currently rising high in the Taurus/Gemini area, Saturn lies rather low in the sky from UK shores, among the stars of the largely Southern constellation of Aquarius. Despite this, Saturn still achieves a reasonable altitude of between 26° and 31° from UK shores when it culminates at about 1am in early September. Town and city dwellers just need to find a reasonably flat horizon from the south-west around to the south-east to view Saturn clear loc...