Life on Earth can seem pretty hazardous, but if you ask astrophysicist Paul Sutter, it's still safer than anywhere else in the universe.

Sutter, a frequent Space.com contributor, explores all the dangers the universe has on offer in his new book, "How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena" (Pegasus Books, 2020).

From solar flares to wormholes, black holes to dark matter and supernovas to hostile aliens, Sutter touches on a host of astrophysical threats, both known and theoretical. (Read an excerpt from "How to Die in Space.") Sutter sat down with Space.com to share some highlights from writing the book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Related: Best space and sci-fi books for 2020

Space.com: How did this book come about?

Paul Sutter: I wanted to write this book because I wanted to talk about some really cool astrophysics like stars blowing up, and stars being born and exotic stuff from the earliest moments of the formation of the universe. But as I was writing, as I was researching, I realized that, wow, this is all pretty high-energy stuff. It's all pretty nasty.

As cool as it is, I would hate to actually visit it, because there's a good chance I would die. And that became the genesis for the thread for the entire book: that the universe may be beautiful, but it's actually very, very dangerous.

Space.com: How did you decide which topics to include in the book?

Sutter: I knew from the start that I wanted to take a kitchen-sink approach to this, where I wanted to touch on as many different topics as possible because it's an amazing universe out there and there's a lot going on.

Each one of the topics I could dig down and write an entire book on, but I did want to make it high-level, I wanted to include a lot of things and show the connections between things, how certain kinds of forces and particles operate in very, very different ways and very similar ways throughout the universe to produce the amazing variety of dangers in the universe.

Space.com: What was your favorite topic to write about and why?

Sutter: Oh, picking a favorite topic is like picking a favorite kid, which you do, but you don't tell anyone about. It was really, really fun, I will admit, to write the chapter on wormholes and explain how wormholes don't actually work and they're a very, very bad idea, and generally should be avoided. It was also really fun to explore all the nuanced ways that stars die, and how each one is beautiful in its own way and tragic in its own way, and of course, dangerous in its own way.

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Space.com: Are there any topics you considered including that didn't make the cut?

Sutter: I think I managed to get everything in, even if something doesn't get its own chapter. When I ran across something cool, I worked it into some chapter. So at least there's some broad overview of everything.

Space.com: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

Sutter: I hope readers have a lot of fun, I hope readers learn a lot about the universe, and I hope readers stay at home.

Space.com: Can you expand on that?

Sutter: The very first chapter in the book starts with the vacuum of space and how it can immediately kill you in a very grotesque way, and it gets worse from there. So, I encourage everyone to enjoy our universe from a very safe distance.

Space.com: Are there any particularly fun tidbits you stumbled on while researching and writing the book?

Sutter: I've written about wormholes, I've talked about wormholes before but one of the reasons I really enjoyed writing that chapter is, as I read paper after paper on wormholes stretching back, from the 1970s until the present day, I was amazed at how hard physicists have been working to try to get wormholes to work and how nature just won't let us and you can see the frustration in the history of the articles and it was fun to share that frustration.

Space.com: And that's in the last section of the book, the one about speculative threats. Could you talk a bit about that section in general?

Sutter: That was a very fun section to write because so much of the book was known or largely known. Of course, we have questions about everything, we haven't figured out everything about how the universe works, but we generally know what powers say, a solar flare or a supernova. And then we get to the speculative threats.

If we were doing an intergalactic voyage, I felt compelled to talk about some of these things that we're not sure if they exist, we're not sure if they are going to be threats, we're not sure if you're going to encounter them. And so it gave me a chance, an opportunity to give a little bit more fun, to get a little bit more whimsical, to talk about aliens, to talk about cosmic strings, to talk about jumping into a wormhole and explore that this is real research, this is real science, but it is very hypothetical right now.

Space.com: What do you hope readers take away from that section?

Sutter: What I hope people get out of the speculative threats is to recognize and appreciate that we live in a very large, very old, very mysterious universe and that, yes, we've learned a lot in astrophysics and cosmology and astronomy. But we have a lot more still left to learn, and the universe is very much capable of surprising us.

Space.com: What are you excited about right now in space?

Sutter: As I state in the beginning of the book, anything that I write about could change in a moment's notice. I am personally very excited for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, which will launch one of these days, I guess, and will tell us a lot about the formation of stars and the formation of planets.

I'm very excited by exoplanet-hunting missions and the possibility of life outside the Earth. I'm very excited for things like LIGO and the continued detection of gravitational waves and getting more and more understanding about how black holes work and don't work and stretch the limits of known physics.

Basically, everything that's happening in astrophysics, I'm excited [for] in some form.

You can buy "How to Die in Space" on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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'How to Die in Space' explores the dangers of astrophysics - Space.com

It is a widely-accepted theory today that when the first stars formed in our Universe (ca. over 13 billion years ago), they quickly came together to form globular clusters. These clusters then coalesced to others to form the first galaxies, which have been growing through mergers and evolving ever since. For this reason, astronomers have long-suspected that the oldest stars in the Universe are to be found in globular clusters.

The study of stars in these clusters is therefore a means of determining the age of the Universe, which is still subject to some guesswork. In this vein, an international team of astronomers and cosmologists recently conducted a study of globular clusters in order to infer the age of the Universe. Their results indicate that the Universe is about 13.35 billion years old, a result that could help astronomers learn more about the expansion of the cosmos.

Their study, titled Inferring the Age of the Universe with Globular Clusters, recently appeared online and was submitted for consideration to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. The study was led by David Valcin, a predoctoral researcher from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), who was joined by a team from France, Spain, and the US.

As noted, globular clusters are of particular interest to astronomers given their unusual nature. These spherical collections of stars are found in a galaxys halo orbiting beyond the galactic core and are considerably denser than open clusters (which are found in the galaxys disk). Most globular clusters are also uniform in age, containing older stars that have entered into their Red-Giant Branch (RGB) phase.

In fact, studies of globular clusters in the Milky Way have shown that some of the oldest stars in our galaxy exist within them. While the origins of globular clusters and their role in galactic evolution are still something of a mystery, astronomers believe that the study of these collections of old stars will yield valuable information about both. As Valcin and his colleagues shared with Universe Today via email:

Globular clusters are among the first stellar structures formed in the Universe and so can be used as a good estimator of the epoch of galaxy and star formation to infer the age of the Universe. From an astrophysical point of view, they provide a wealth of information about the formation and evolution of galaxies and stars.

For the sake of their study, the team examined 68 galactic globular clusters, which were observed by the Hubble Space Telescopes Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Specifically, they studied the distribution of stars in these clusters based on their magnitude, which was obtained by using a modified version of isochrones to model the data.

This software package takes synthetic photometry provided by stellar models and then interpolates their magnitude based on where stars of the same mass are found on the evolutionary track at the same age. As Valdin explained:

Using the catalog from Sarajedini et al (2007) survey of globular clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope, we extracted information from the Color Magnitude Diagram of Globular clusters using theoretical isochrones (isochrones are a set of stellar models computed at the same age for a range of different masses). Indeed the way stars are distributed in the diagram according to their magnitude and color can constrain the parameter sensitivity of stellar isochrones, which correspond to a population of stars with the same age

Similarly, the team relied on the Mesa Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST) stellar model, as well as the Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database (DSED). In the end, they obtained an average age estimate of the oldest global clusters to be 13.13 billion years. After taking into account the amount of time it would take for these globular clusters to form, they were able to infer an age estimate of 13.35 billion years.

This result has a 68% confidence level and includes a range of uncertainty of 0.16 billion years (statistical) and 0.5 billion years (systemic). This value is compatible with the previous age estimate of 13.8 0.02 billion years, which was inferred by data obtained by the Planck mission on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) the remnant background radiation created by the Big Bang that is visible in all directions.

Whats more, the previous estimate is dependent on the ?CDM cosmological model, a version of the Big Bang model that contains three major components: Dark Energy (?), cold Dark Matter (CDM), and ordinary matter. This essentially means that globular clusters can be used to accurately constrain the age of the Universe in a way thats not dependent on theoretical models.

Whats more, since their age estimates are consistent with estimates that are based on cosmic expansion, this information could also provide clues to the latter. Of course, Valdin and his colleagues acknowledge that more observations and data are necessary if scientists hope to figure out why there has historically been such a discrepancy between age estimates in the first place:

In the on-going uncertainty about the expansion of the Universe, it is important to collect more data which interpretation is as cosmology-independent as possible, to understand the origin of the discrepancy. Even though Globular clusters dont provide direct measurement of the expansion, they allow us to constrain the age of the Universe, which can be related to the expansion.

The age of the universe is determined by CMB observations too but this determination is very model-dependent. A valuable aspect of the expansion estimate is the fact that its obtained without assuming any cosmological model. The agreement between these two measurements can be used to confirm important aspects of the cosmological model.

Other members of the research team included astronomers and cosmologists from the University of Barcelona, the Johns Hopkins University, the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), the Sorbonne Universite in Paris, and the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics.

Further Reading: arXiv

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According to Globular Clusters, the Universe is 13.35 Billion Years Old - Universe Today

ESAs ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted new gas signatures at Mars. These unlock new secrets about the martian atmosphere, and will enable a more accurate determination of whether there is methane, a gas associated with biological or geological activity, at the planet.

The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has been studying the Red Planet from orbit for over two years. The mission aims to understand the mixture of gases that make up the martian atmosphere, with a special focus on the mystery surrounding the presence of methane there.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft has now spotted never-before-seen signatures of ozone (O3) and carbon dioxide (CO2), based on a full martian year of observations by its sensitive Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS). The findings are reported in two new papers published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, one led by Kevin Olsen of the University of Oxford, UK and another led by Alexander Trokhimovskiy of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia.

These features are both puzzling and surprising, says Kevin.

They lie over the exact wavelength range where we expected to see the strongest signs of methane. Before this discovery, the CO2 feature was completely unknown, and this is the first time ozone on Mars has been identified in this part of the infrared wavelength range.

The martian atmosphere is dominated by CO2, which scientists observe to gauge temperatures, track seasons, explore air circulation, and more. Ozone which forms a layer in the upper atmosphere on both Mars and Earth helps to keep atmospheric chemistry stable. Both CO2 and ozone have been seen at Mars by spacecraft such as ESAs Mars Express, but the exquisite sensitivity of the ACS instrument on TGO was able to reveal new details about how these gases interact with light.

Observing ozone in the range where TGO hunts for methane is a wholly unanticipated result.

Scientists have mappedhow martian ozone varies with altitude before. So far, however, this has largely taken place via methods that rely upon the gas signatures in the ultraviolet, a technique which only allows measurement athigh altitudes (over 20 km above the surface).

The new ACS results show that it is possible to map martian ozone also in the infrared, so its behavior can be probed at lower altitudes to build a more detailed view of ozones role in the planets climate.

This graphic summarises significant measurement attempts of methane at Mars. Reports of methane have been made by Earth-based telescopes, ESAs Mars Express from orbit around Mars, and NASAs Curiosity located on the surface at Gale Crater; they have also reported measurement attempts with no or very little methane detected. More recently, the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter reported an absence of methane, and provided a very low upper limit. Credit: ESA

One of the key objectives of TGO is to explore methane. To date, signs of martian methane tentatively spied by missions including ESAs Mars Express from orbit and NASAs Curiosity rover on the surface are variable and somewhat enigmatic.

This graphic depicts some of the possible ways methane might be added or removed from the atmosphere. How methane is created and destroyed on Mars is an important question in understanding the various detections and non-detections of methane at Mars, with differences in both time and location. Although making up a very small amount of the overall atmospheric inventory, methane in particular holds key clues to the planets current state of activity. Credit: ESA

While also generated by geological processes, most of the methane on Earth is produced by life, from bacteria to livestock and human activity. Detecting methane on other planets is therefore hugely exciting. This is especially true given that the gas is known to break down in around 400 years, meaning that any methane present must have been produced or released in the relatively recent past.

Discovering an unforeseen CO2 signature where we hunt for methane is significant, says Alexander Trokhimovskiy. This signature could not be accounted for before, and may therefore have played a role in detections of small amounts of methane at Mars.

The observations analyzed by Alexander, Kevin, and colleagues were mostly performed at different times to those supporting detections of martian methane. Besides, the TGO data cannot account for large plumes of methane, only smaller amounts and so, currently, there is no direct disagreement between missions.

This graph shows a new CO2 spectral feature, never before observed in the laboratory, discovered in the martian atmosphere by the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) MIR instrument on ESAs ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).The graph shows the full extent of the magnetic dipole absorption band of the 16O12C16O molecule (one of the various isotopologues of CO2).The top panel shows the ACS MIR spectra (shown in black) along with the modeled contribution of CO2 and H2O (shown in blue); the model is based on the HITRAN 2016 database.The bottom panel shows the difference between data and model, or residuals, revealing the structure of the absorption band in detail. The calculated positions of spectral lines are marked with arrows, in different colors corresponding to different branches of the absorption band (red stands for the P-branch, green for the Q-branch and blue for the R-branch).Credit: A. Trokhimovskiy et al. (2020)

In fact, were actively working on coordinating measurements with other missions, clarifies Kevin. Rather than disputing any previous claims, this finding is a motivator for all teams to look closer the more we know, the more deeply and accurately we can explore Mars atmosphere.

Methane aside, the findings highlight just how much we will learn about Mars as a result of the ExoMars program.

These findings enable us to build a fuller understanding of our planetary neighbor, adds Alexander.

Mars is about half the size of Earth by diameter and has a much thinner atmosphere, with an atmospheric volume less than 1% of Earths. The atmospheric composition is also significantly different: primarily carbon dioxide-based, while Earths is rich in nitrogen and oxygen. The atmosphere has evolved: evidence on the surface suggest that Mars was once much warmer and wetter. Credit: ESA

Ozone and CO2 are important in Mars atmosphere. By not accounting for these gases properly, we run the risk of mischaracterizing the phenomena or properties we see.

Additionally, the surprising discovery of the new CO2 band at Mars, never before observed in the laboratory, provides exciting insight for those studying how molecules interact both with one another and with light and searching for the unique chemical fingerprints of these interactions in space.

Together, these two studies take a significant step towards revealing the true characteristics of Mars: towards a new level of accuracy and understanding, says Alexander.

As its name suggests, the TGO aims to characterize any trace gases in Mars atmosphere that could arise from active geological or biological processes on the planet, and identify their origin.

Artists impression of the ExoMars 2020 rover (foreground), surface science platform (background) and the Trace Gas Orbiter (top). Not to scale. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The ExoMars program consists of two missions: TGO, which was launched in 2016 and will be joined by the Rosalind Franklin rover and the Kazachok landing platform, due to lift off in 2022. These will take instruments complementary to ACS to the martian surface, examining the planets atmosphere from a different perspective, and share the core objective of the ExoMars programme: to search for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.

These findings are the direct result of hugely successful and ongoing collaboration between European and Russian scientists as part of ExoMars, says ESA TGO Project Scientist Hkan Svedhem.

They set new standards for future spectral observations, and will help us to paint a more complete picture of Mars atmospheric properties including where and when there may be methane to be found, which remains a key question in Mars exploration.

Additionally, these findings will prompt a thorough analysis of all the relevant data weve collected to date and the prospect of new discovery in this way is, as always, very exciting. Each piece of information revealed by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter marks progress towards a more accurate understanding of Mars, and puts us one step closer to unraveling the planets lingering mysteries.

First detection of ozone in the mid-infrared at Mars: implications for methane detection by K. S. Olsen et al. (2020) (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202038125) and First observation of the magnetic dipole CO2 absorption band at 3.3 m in the atmosphere of Mars by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter ACS instrument by A. Trokhimovskiy et al. (2020) (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202038134) are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The studies utilized the Mid-InfraRed (MIR) channel of the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), reporting the first observation of the 30003060 cm-1 ozone (O3) band and the discovery of the 3300 cm-1 16O12C16O magnetic dipole band (which both overlap with the 29003300cm-1 methane 3 absorption band) at Mars.

ExoMars is a joint endeavor of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos.

The ACS instrument is led by the Principal Investigator team at the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) in Moscow, Russia, assisted by the CoPrincipal Investigator team from CNRS/LATMOS, France, and co-investigators from other ESA Member states.

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Puzzling and Surprising New Gas Signatures Discovered by ExoMars Orbiter in the Martian Atmosphere - SciTechDaily

After analyzing several million galaxies and quasars, an international consortium of scientists has retracted a more continuous history of the Universe. They have created the largest 3D map of the Universe produced to date.

It is the fruit of a twenty-year collaboration of several hundred scientists from around thirty different institutions around the world, all united within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with data collected from an optical telescope dedicated to the project located in New Mexico, in the United States.

Resulting from the analysis of several millions of galaxies and quasars, this latest survey builds upon existing data as early as 1998 to fill specific gaps in cosmological history and to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the expansion of the Universe.

This latest cosmological survey of the SDSS, called The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS), includes more than 100 astrophysicists, of which several are researchers from EPFL. Jean-Paul Kneib, who heads EPFLs Astrophysics Laboratory (LASTRO), initiated the eBOSS survey and was its principal investigator (PI) for several years.

Jean-Paul Kneib, who heads EPFLs Astrophysics Laboratory (LASTRO) said,In 2012, I launched the eBOSS project with the idea of producing the complete 3D map of the Universe throughout the lifetime of the Universe, implementing for the first time celestial objects that indicate the distribution of matter in the distant Universe, galaxies that actively form stars and quasars. It is a great pleasure to see the culmination of this work today.

On account of the extensive theoretical models portraying the Universe after the Big Bang, as well as observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), the infant universe is moderately well known. Scientists have also investigated its expansion history over the most recent few billion years from Supernovae distance measurements and galaxy maps, including those from past phases of the SDSS.

Cosmologist Kyle Dawson of the University of Utah said,We know both the ancient history of the Universe and its recent expansion history fairly well, but theres a troublesome gap in the middle 11 billion years. Thanks to five years of continuous observations, we have worked to fill in that gap, and we are using that information to provide some of the most substantial advances in cosmology in the last decade.

Will Percival of the University of Waterloo, eBOSSs Survey Scientist, said,Taken together, detailed analyses of the eBOSS map and the earlier SDSS experiments, we have now provided the most accurate expansion history measurements over the widest-ever range of cosmic time. These studies allow us to connect all these measurements into a complete story of the expansion of the Universe.

The final map shows filaments of matter and voids that more precisely define the structure of the Universe since its beginnings when it was only 380,000 years old. From there, scientists measured the recurring patterns in the distribution of galaxies, thus identifying several key cosmological parameters, including the density of hypothetical dark matter and energy in the Universe, with a high degree of precision.

For this survey, scientists take a gander at different galactic tracers that reveal the mass distribution in the Universe. For the part of the map relating to the Universe six billion years ago, scientists observed the oldest and reddest galaxies.

For more distant eras, they concentrated on the youngest galaxies, the blue ones. To go back further, that is to say, up to eleven billion years, they used quasars, galaxies, whose supermassive black hole is extremely luminous.

This map reveals the history of the Universe, and in particular that the expansion of the Universe began to accelerate at some point and has since continued to do so. This seems to be due to the presence of dark energy, an invisible element that fits naturally into Einsteins general theory of relativity but whose origin is not yet understood.

The currently accepted expansion rate, called the Hubble constant, is 10% lower than the value calculated from the distances between the galaxies closest to us. It is unlikely that this 10% difference is random due to the high precision and wide variety of data in the eBOSS database.

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Astrophysics created the largest 3D map of the Universe to date - Tech Explorist

A new grant will help researchers at Rochester Institute of Technologys National Technical Institute for the Deaf learn more about one of the most challenging phases in stellar astrophysics, according to the National Science Foundation.

The nearly $300,000 project, which incorporates research opportunities for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students, will revolutionize how scientists understand a crucial phase of binary star evolution that rapidly shrinks the orbit of two stars to 0.1 percent of the distance from the Earth to the sun in only one year.This is the main method for forming tight binaries in the universe, such as binary black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, and many other classes of objects. But scientists have never seen it happen.

Jason Nordhaus, an RIT/NTID assistant professor of physics and the principal investigator on the grant, is beyond excited to lead the first-of-its-kind survey that will allow astrophysicists to create the first observational constraints on the outcomes of what is called the common envelope phase.

Through the project, titled Brief But Spectacular: New Windows into the Physics of Common Envelope Evolution, Nordhaus and his team will be conducting an observational survey of all galactic star clusters within 1 kiloparsec of Earth to hunt for close binary systems.To do that, they will use data from NASA and the European Space Agencys flagship space missions, TESS and Gaia, in addition to some of the largest telescopes on the planetthe Lowell Discovery Telescope in the northern hemisphere and the Magellan Telescopes in the southern hemisphere.

The common envelope phase is responsible for making the systems that will later merge and create gravitational waves, explains Nordhaus.Because only one star in our galaxy is experiencing this phase at any time, we have never directly seen it. However, close binaries in clusters act as a Rosetta stone, allowing us to map the conditions right before the common envelope phase to the conditions right after the phase is over.

As part of this three-year project, several deaf and hard-of-hearing RIT/NTID undergraduates will help conduct research at Boston University each summer. Philip Muirhead, co-PI on the project, is the director of graduate admissions for Boston Universitys astronomy department.Nordhaus and Muirhead will work together on best practices for supporting those students successfully in the summer. Also contributing to the project are Maria Drout, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and Jeffrey Cummings, associate research scientist at Johns Hopkins University.

This new venture that Dr. Nordhaus is taking on will lead to discoveries beyond our imagination, said Gerry Buckley, NTID president and RIT vice president and dean. This work also provides a tremendous opportunity for our young deaf and hard-of-hearing science students to work in a research setting and be a part of this remarkable project.

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Groundbreaking study of binary star evolution is focus of new NSF grant - RIT News

In May 2009, the Planck Satellite was launched with a mission to discover the age of the universe. The goal was to measure cosmic background radiation (CMB), a source of light that traces back to around 380,000 years after the universes start at the Big Bang. Those measurements revealed the universe to be around 13.8 billion years old.

But in the past few years, astronomers have improved on classic observations of how fast distant galaxies move away from Earth. These measurements result in an age of the universe hundreds of millions of years younger than the Planck measurements indicated.

In July, the research team behind the National Science Foundations Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), which includes Department of Physics and Astronomy Chair Arthur Kosowsky, graduate student Yilun Guan and 40 other participating institutions, jumped into the fray with their own estimates. The team made new maps of the slight variations in the microwave backgrounds temperature and polarization which are more sensitive and sharper than Plancks.

The simplest model of the universe that fits the new data from ACT, which is located in Chile, has an age of 13.77 billion years with an uncertainty of plus or minus 40 million yearsessentially confirming the Planck results. Papers featuring the findings were posted to the arXiv distribution service and have been submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

Now weve come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree, says Simone Aiola (A&S 14G, '16G), a lead author and researcher at the Flatiron Institutes Center for Computational Astrophysics who holds a PhD in physics from Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable.

Kosowsky said the findings add to the confusion surrounding the actual age of the universe but also provide a few clues about where cosmologists should look for answers.

He noted that ACT also essentially confirmed Planks estimated Hubble constant, which is the rate at which the universe is expanding. ACT found the universe is expanding at a rate of 67.6 kilometers per second per megaparsec, which means an object located a megaparsec away from Earth (approximately 3.26 million light years) is on average moving away from us at the rate of 67.6 kilometers per second due to the cosmic expansion.

Probably the most interesting possibility for this discrepancy is that our simple model of the universe is wrong.

Arthur Kosowsky

The Planck teams Hubble constant was 67.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec and the rates estimated by measuring galaxies range between 70 and 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec, significantly faster than the other results.

Probably the most interesting possibility for this discrepancy is that our simple model of the universe is wrong. So the inference were making about the Hubble parameter from our measurement is based on a model thats not quite right, said Kosowsky. Our basic model of the universe is based on some really simple assumptions about some really simple physics. If you change something youre probably saying theres new, undiscovered, fundamental physics that were seeing in this discrepancy.

Guan, who is pursuing a PhD in cosmology at Pitt's Dietrich School, is investigating whether the flaw in the model lies in assumptions made about the nature of dark energy, which is what researchers call the unknown force that is accelerating the universes expansion.

In our current model of the universe we treat dark energy as a really simple component that has a simple evolutiontheres this amount of dark energy and it evolves in a certain way. But nobody knows what dark energy is doing, it could be that dark energy is changing from when we measure it at the CMB until we measure it in these local measurements, he explained. What were doing is thinking about if theres any way dark energy can be changing that is consistent with measurements from both our local measurements as well as measurements from CMB and other observations that have been made.

While Guan continues the dark energy research, he is also investigating ways to automate the process of finding the most useful data from telescopes and satellites. On the ACT project, he was responsible for the first levels of data quality assurance, a process that meant analyzing tens of millions of detector time streams collected by ACT each year to determine which ones are to be used to make sky maps.

Telling good data from bad data requires a lot of expert knowledge. In the past we used to have one expert who had a lot of experience in this area and if he looks at diagnostics and statistics he can tell if something is going wrong. But thats not a scalable solution, Guan said.

In 2022, ACT will officially shut down and its research team will shift attention to the Simons Observatory, also located in Chile, which will feature new telescopes, cameras and state of the art detector arrays. Those upgrades will give experts an order of magnitude more data to assess. In anticipation of the challenge, last year Guan started work on a machine learning algorithm designed to take on the task.

It turns out, this is a very easy problem for the machines. We have lots of data that experts told us is bad or good so we can train our algorithms to learn from what experts decide and have these algorithms make these decisions for us, he said.

For ACTs upcoming data release next year, which covers information gathered from 2017 through 2019 and will feature four times more data, experts will still lead the way in data quality assurance. However, Guan hopes to have an automated process in place before its time to analyze data from Simons.

Kosowsky said the data that comes from the Simons Observatory could hold precisely whats needed to resolve mysteries surrounding the age of the universe once and for all.

The fact that were doing measurements right now where the pieces are not all completely fitting together makes it really exciting to have the possibility of doing even better measurements of the universe with the next generation experiments, he said.

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Answers About Universe's Age Could Be Found in the Dark - UPJ Athletics

Yerevan, Armenia STARMUS, one of the world-scale science and art festivals, will take place in September 2021 in Yerevan, Armenia, to celebrate science communication with world-class scientists, artists, and astronauts.

STARMUS VI will be dedicated to Mars, from the very first Soviet MARS 3 and American MARINER 9 to the spectacular NASA missions and ambitious manned landing plans of Space X. It has been 50 years since MARS 3 performed the first soft landing on the Red Planet and sent back to the Earth the first data from its surface. The same year, in 1971, NASAs MARINER 9 became the first Orbiter around Mars. These milestones were followed by dozens of successful missions by NASA providing us with more accurate images and information from our neighbor in the Solar System. In the summer of 2020, three space agencies around the world plan to launch pioneering missions to arrive at Mars in 2021.

Following the established tradition, the festival will address pressing issues and screen films about the exploration of Mars. Previous film screenings included the documentary Apollo 11 and The Spacewalker, a film about the legendary Russian astronaut and Starmus Board Member Alexei Leonov.

The festival will be held under the high patronage of the President of Armenia, Dr. Armen Sarkissian. The President invited Starmus to Armenia during his speech in 2019 at the opening ceremony of Starmus V A Giant Leap in Zurich.

The Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Armenia (MoESCS) on behalf of the RA Government will support, and, working in close partnership with the Ministry of High-Tech Industry of the Republic of Armenia, make the festival an outstanding event, thus playing an important role in different educational, scientific, and artistic activities of the festival.

As in the previous years, the sixth Starmus Festival will welcome to the stage world-class scientists, artists, and astronauts to share breakthrough discoveries, reflect upon pressing questions and inspire new generations of scientists and explorers.

The Starmus Advisory board will announce a further line-up of speakers from art and music later this year. Nobel Laureate scientists Edvard Moser and Michel Mayor, Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke, co-inventor of CRISPR gene-editing technology Emmanuelle Charpentier, and the father of ipod and NEST founder Tony Fadell are among confirmed speakers. For more information visit http://www.starmus.com.

Since the very first Homo Sapiens looked up at a star-filled sky we have been awestruck by the vastness of the cosmos. Even today we remain humbled by the sheer immensity of space, especially as through our progress in physics and astronomy, we are now aware of the tremendous distances involved even to our closest neighboring stars.

Created by Dr. Garik Israelian, astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) and Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and the lead guitarist of the iconic rock band Queen, the Starmus Festival is a combination of science, art and music that has featured presentations from Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Nobel Prize Winners and prominent figures from science, culture, the arts and music.

Stephen Hawking and Alexei Leonov, together with the rock star and astrophysicist Dr. Brian May, worked to create the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, awarded to individuals and teams who have made significant contributions to science communication. Previous Stephen Hawking Medal winners include Elon Musk, Jean-Michel Jarre, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Eno, Hans Zimmer and The Particle Fever documentary.

The Starmus Festivals join Nobel laureates, eminent researchers, astronauts, thinkers, men and women of science, culture, arts, and music to share their knowledge and experiences in the common search for answers to the great questions of today.

Original post:

STARMUS VI: The world-renowed festival will be dedicated to Mars in 2 - Astronomy Magazine

NASA's Juno Jupiter probe has captured unprecedented views of the largest moon in the solar system.

During a close flyby of Jupiter on Dec. 26, 2019, Juno mapped the north polar regions of the icy satellite Ganymede in infrared light, something no other spacecraft had done before.

The data, which Juno gathered using its Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, show that Ganymede's northern reaches are very different than locales closer to the equator of the moon, which is bigger than the planet Mercury.

Related: In photos: Juno's amazing views of Jupiter

"The JIRAM data show the ice at and surrounding Ganymede's north pole has been modified by the precipitation of plasma," Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, said in a statement. "It is a phenomenon that we have been able to learn about for the first time with Juno because we are able to see the north pole in its entirety."

This plasma consists of charged particles from the sun, which have been trapped by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. Unlike any other moon, the 3,274-mile-wide (5,269 kilometers) Ganymede has a magnetic field of its own, which funnels the plasma toward its poles.

A similar phenomenon occurs here on Earth, which explains why the auroras occur at high latitudes on our planet. But Ganymede has no atmosphere to obstruct and be lit up by these particles, so they slam hard into the ice at and around both poles.

As a result, Ganymede's polar ice has been pummeled into an amorphous state at the structural level. This battered ice has a different infrared signature than the highly ordered, crystalline ice at lower latitudes, mission team members said.

The $1.1 billion Juno probe launched in August 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in July 2016, on a mission to help scientists better understand the giant planet's composition, structure, formation and evolution.

Juno loops around Jupiter in a highly elliptical orbit, gathering a variety of data during close passes that occur every 53.5 Earth days. During the December 2019 encounter, Ganymede's north pole happened to be in Juno's view. So the mission team reoriented the probe, allowing it to study the mysterious region with JIRAM and other instruments.

Juno gathered about 300 infrared images, from a distance of roughly 62,000 miles (100,000 km). The images have a resolution of about 14 miles (23 km) per pixel, mission team members said.

"These data are another example of the great science Juno is capable of when observing the moons of Jupiter," Giuseppe Sindoni, program manager of the JIRAM instrument for the Italian Space Agency, said in the same statement.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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NASA Jupiter probe images huge moon Ganymede like never before (photos) - Space.com

To say youve done something that is a once in a lifetime event is awesome, but to find out that it wont happen again for another 6,700 years is super-duper awesome and mind-blowing! Im referring to Comet Neowise, which is making its rare appearance during the month of July. There is a lot of light pollution where I live, so I didnt think Id get to see it. But we spent the past weekend at the Oregon Coast where, fortuitously, the nights were clear, and Neowise was easy to find. Right below the Big Dipper, the comets tail displayed as a fuzzy streak in the nighttime sky. I can only say that the view was amazing. Bucket list item: See something that wont happen again for thousands of years. Check.

The other astronomical delight that is taking place this year is the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn an event that takes place every twenty years. According to the web site, http://www.earthsky.org, astronomers use the word conjunction to describe meetings of planets and other objects on our skys dome. On Dec. 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest to each other theyve been since 1623. But you dont have to wait until the end of the year to see these planetary wonders theyre visible right now, shining brightly in the southwest direction of the night sky. Can I say amazing again? OK, amazing.

No doubt about it: astronomy is cool. Just because you may not have a degree in astrophysics, it doesnt mean that you cant become an amateur astronomer. Ive selected eight books to get you started, but be sure to search our online catalog for more titles at http://www.fvrl.org. All ages can learn how to develop their stargazing skills, so Ive included two books geared for young readers: Looking Up! by Joe Rao and The Space Adventurers Guide by Peter McMahon.

Comet Neowise, Jupiter and Saturn you rock!

50 Things to See with a Small Telescope by John A. Read.

Catching Stardust: Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System by Natalie Starkey.

Looking Up!: The Science of Stargazing by Joe Rao.

National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky by Andrew Fazekas.

Photography Night Sky: A Field Guide for Shooting After Dark by Jennifer Wu.

The Space Adventurers Guide: Your Passport to the Coolest Things to See and Do in the Universe by Peter McMahon.

The Universe Today Ultimate Guide to Viewing the Cosmos: Everything You Need to Know to Become an Amateur Astronomer by David Dickinson.

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Check It Out: These eight books will have you starstruck - The Columbian

The undergrad research series is where we feature the research thatyouredoing. If youve missed the previous installments, you can find themunder the Undergraduate Research category here.

Are you doingan REU thissummer? Were you working onanastro research project during this past school year? If you, too, have been working on a project that you want to share,we want to hear from you!Think youre up to the challenge of describing your research carefully and clearly to a broad audience, in only one paragraph? Then send us a summary of it!

You can share what youre doing by clickinghereand using the form provided to submit a brief (fewer than 200 words) write-up of your work. The target audience is one familiar with astrophysics but not necessarily your specific subfield, so write clearly and try to avoid jargon. Feel free to also include either a visual regarding your research or else a photo of yourself.

We look forward to hearing from you!

************

Francisco Mendez

University of Florida

Francisco Mendez is an alumnus from the University of Florida who recently graduated with a BS in Astrophysics. As part of his senior thesis, he worked with Dr. Jian Ge on detecting the stellar activity of FGK stars. The results of this research project were presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at the University of Florida and the AAS 236th meeting.

The detection of Earth-like exoplanets has now become a reality. With the new spectrographs, we can now detect small radial velocity (RV) signals caused by the gravitational pull of the planet(s) on the host star. However, as the mass of the planet drops, the RV signals get weaker. Small RV signals are contaminated by stellar phenomena known as stellar activity, and it can mimic the same periodic RV signals caused by the planet. Therefore, studying stellar activity is crucial for the detection of Earth-like planets.

Whether a RV signal is due to a planet or stellar activity can be distinguished by studying the stellar spectra. We are interested in measuring both magnetic cycles and stellar rotation periods for FGK type stars as part of our stellar activity analysis by using two activity indicators seen in the spectra: the H alpha line and the Ca Infrared Triplet (IRT) lines. The stellar spectra were taken from the Dharma Planet Survey, and this is the first in-depth analysis of stellar activity coming from this survey.

We analyze a sample of 23 stars and by computing the long-term variability of the activity indicators, we expect to detect the magnetic cycles of these stars. To visualize the long-term variability (magnetic cycle) we binned the nightly calculated indices every 150 days, so the short-term noise could be removed. In order to measure the significance in the long-term variability we used a statistical test, known as the F-test, to compare the scatter of the binned data with their uncertainties (see the figure). If the associated probability values (or p-values) were less than 5%, the long-term variability was considered significant. We identified the periodicity of the activity indicators using a Lomb-Scargle Periodogram to find the stellar rotation period.

Our observation time span is not long enough to cover whole magnetic cycles to measure the long-term variability. We were only able to distinguish three different parts of these cycles: Active, Quiet, or Transition phases. For significant long-term variability, 8 stars from the sample show significant variability in the H alpha index and 12 stars in the Ca IRT index. By considering both activity indicators, we were able to measure the rotation period of 12 stars. The most remarkable result is seen for the star HD 115043, for which we measured a rotation period of ~6 days in both activity indicators, matching literature values.

In summary, identifying periodic signals from stellar activity, especially due to rotation, gives confidence that other periodic signals are caused by Earth-like exoplanets. In future work, we will investigate additional activity indicators, including the Ca H & K lines in ultraviolet light, and compare them to those investigated here.

If you are an undergraduate that took part in an REU this summer and would like to share your research on Astrobites, please contact us atsubmissions@astrobites.org!

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UR #23: Investigating the Stellar Activity of FGK Dwarfs in the Dharma Planet Survey - Astrobites

Another telescope is helping us better understand the age of the universe and its future.

Using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile, a group of astronomers say their observations support an earlier estimate as to the age of the universe: 13.77 billion years, give or take 40 million years. Their paper was released on the pre-print publishing service arXiv.org on Wednesday and submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

The estimate supports observations taken by the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope in the early 2010s.

Over the years, there have been other studies that have disputed that number. For example, in 2019, a study published in the journal Sciencesuggested the universe was 11.2 billion years old.

"For a half dozen years, I'd say even more ... within the past three years, there has been one conference after another all over the world completely focused on this issue where one group comes up and they say, 'Oh, this is what we get,' and the other group comes up and says, 'This is what we get," said Richard Bond, co-author of the paper and director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Toronto.

"We call it the Hubble tension."

Why isn't there a clear-cut answer?

It all comes down to the methods used to calculate the expansion of the universe.

In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble found that the universe is expanding. Ever since, scientists have attempted to calculate just how fast that's occurring. The rate of expansion is called the Hubble Constant.

But the challenge with determining the age of our universe which in turn helps us better understand not only its past but also its future is that there are a few methods used to make the calculations.

One involves looking at things that are relatively nearby, cosmologically speaking, such assupernovas (exploding stars) and a particular type of star that varies in brightness, called a Cepheid variable.

Yet another involves looking far, far back, to a time shortly after the universe came to be in particular at the cosmic microwave background radiation, or CMB, left over from the rapid birth of the universe, some 380,000 years following the Big Bang.

ACT also used this method, though from a ground-based telescope. But one advantage it had over Planck was the ability to better measure polarization of the CMB, which tells the scientists in what direction the light is moving. This allows it to be more precise.

Just how close were their findings to Planck's?

The space telescope put the rate of the expansion of the universe at 67.5 kilometres per second per megaparsec (one megaparsec is 3.26 million light years). The new findings put that at 67.6 kilometres per second per megaparsec.

"What ACT has done is taken away the option that the CMB measurements were just a fluke of some kind," said Mark Halpern, a professor at the University of British Columbia's department of physics and astronomy in Vancouver and co-author of the paper.

This is an important step, the authors say, in trying to determine whether astrophysicists truly understand the universe.

"If we want the universe to be consistent, then what we need to understand is: [Is] it that we have [something] we haven't accounted for in any of the measurements?Or is there some kind of new physics?" said Renee Hlozek, co-author and a professor of astrophysics at the Dunlap Institute at U of T's department of astronomy and astrophysics.

"Because it could be that we're living in a universe that looks a certain age close to us, but then either the expansion rate changes over time or there's exotic physics that means it's a different age."

Wendy Freedman is an astronomy professor at the University of Chicago's department of astronomy and astrophysicswho was not involved in the study. She also researches the expansion of the universeand has used a particular type of star a red giant as a method of calculating the expansion.

"I think it's a really superb piece of work," she said of the new paper. "It's a major study andlooking through the papers, they have paid a huge amount of attention to details and possible uncertainties and errors and run tests and checked through their data."

Freedman said while the data supports Planck, there's still something fundamental that we don't understand, something that the authors themselves acknowledge.

Butwith the new ground-based findings, they hope that this will be another piece in the puzzle in an attempt to understand what's going on in our universe in particular how it will ultimately cease to be.

"If we understand the age of the universe now, that can actually help us have a better view of how this is going to end," Hlozek said.

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How old are we? Debate over the age of the universe just got a bit more complicated - CBC.ca

Armenia will showcase the world's great scientific minds and Rockstar talent in celebration of Mars exploration

YEREVAN, Armenia, July 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- STARMUS, one of the world-scale science and art festivals will take place in September 2021 in Yerevan, Armenia, to celebrate science communication with world-class scientists, artists and astronauts.

STARMUS VI will be dedicated to Mars, from the very first Soviet MARS 3 and American MARINER 9 to the spectacular NASA missions and ambitious manned landing plans of Space X. It has been 50 years since MARS 3 performed the first soft landing on the Red Planet and sent back to the Earth the first data from its surface. The same year, in 1971, NASAs MARINER 9 became the first Orbiter around Mars. These milestones were followed by dozens of successful missions by NASA providing us with more accurate images and information from our neighbor in the Solar System. In the summer of 2020, three space agencies around the world plan to launch pioneering missions to arrive at Mars in 2021.

Following the established tradition, the Festival will address pressing issues and screen films about the exploration of Mars. Previous film screenings included the documentary Apollo 11 and The Spacewalker, a film about the legendary Russian astronaut and Starmus Board Member Alexei Leonov.

The festival will be held under the high patronage of the President of Armenia, Dr. Armen Sarkissian. The President has invited Starmus to Armenia during his invited speech in 2019 at the opening ceremony of Starmus V "A Giant Leap" in Zurich.

The Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Armenia (MoESCS) on behalf of the RA Government will support, and working in close partnership with the Ministry of High-Tech Industry of the Republic of Armenia make the festival an outstanding eventthus playing an important role in different educational, scientific and artistic activities of the festival.

As in the previous years, the sixth Starmus Festival will welcome to the stage world-class scientists, artists and astronauts to share breakthrough discoveries, reflect upon pressing questions and inspire new generations of scientists and explorers.

The Starmus Advisory board will announce a further line-up of speakers from art and music later this year. Nobel Laureate scientists Edvard Moser and Michel Mayor, Apollo 16 Moonwalker Charlie Duke, co-inventor of CRISPR gene-editing technology Emmanuelle Charpentier and "the father of ipod" and NEST founder Tony Fadell are among confirmed speakers. For more information visit http://www.starmus.com.

Photos available to download from: here

About Starmus

Since the very first Homo Sapiens looked up at a star-filled sky we have been awestruck by the vastness of the cosmos. Even today we remain humbled by the sheer immensity of space, especially as through our progress in physics and astronomy, we are now aware of the tremendous distances involved even to our closest neighbouring stars.

Created by Dr. Garik Israelian, astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) and Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and the lead guitarist of the iconic rock band Queen, the Starmus Festival is a combination of science, art and music that has featured presentations from Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Nobel Prize Winners and prominent figures from science, culture, the arts and music.

Stephen Hawking and Alexei Leonov, together with the rock star and astrophysicist Dr. Brian May, worked to create the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, awarded to individuals and teams who have made significant contributions to science communication. Previous Stephen Hawking Medal winners include Elon Musk, Jean-Michel Jarre, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Eno, Hans Zimmer and The Particle Fever documentary.

The Starmus Festivals join Nobel laureates, eminent researchers, astronauts, thinkers, men and women of science, culture, arts and music to share their knowledge and experiences in the common search for answers to the great questions of today.

http://www.starmus.com/

SOURCE STARMUS

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STARMUS Returns: The world-renowned festival supported by Stephen Hawking, Brian May and Alexei Leonov announces a landmark event dedicated to Mars in...

Sure, space looks pretty, but just because it sparkles doesn't make it welcoming.

Because, as astrophysicist Paul Sutter realized when he began thinking about phenomena he wanted to write about to share his field with readers, high-energy astrophysics is pretty brutal up close. Dying stars, black holes, the vacuum of space, even unknown dangers like hostile aliens those fascinating-but-brutal scenarios became the beastly specimens catalogued in his new book, "How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena" (Pegasus Books, 2020).

In the excerpt below, Sutter (whose writing you may recognize as a frequent contributor to Space.com) introduces planetary nebulas and explains why, while they're a perennial star of Hubble Space Telescope images, they're best admired from a distance. (Read an interview with Paul Sutter about the book.)

Related: Best space and sci-fi books for 2020

We've come to an interesting place in our journey through the galaxy.

We've broken out of our home solar system after dodging rogue asteroids, evading circuitry-frying coronal mass ejections from the sun, and simply accepting the flood of tiny cosmic rays constantly bombarding our delicate flesh.

Once we reached interstellar distances, we've seen stars born from clouds of vicious turbulence, and we encountered our first truly exotic creatures of this everlasting night that we call outer space: the black holes.

Those black holes are tombstones.

Markers. Memories of what once was. Almost-forgotten remnants of the past. The black holes of our galaxy used to be stars, shining with heat and light and warmth. Dead, gone now, generations ago. Their fusion finished, their hydrogen depleted, their spirit withered.

The stars of our universe will die, one by one. And those deaths are, to a number, nasty.

Many of the hazards that we're about to explore and explain will come from the variety of ways that stars can end their lives, and turn into other, far less pleasant, things.

Needless to say, it won't be pretty.

And when it comes to stars, everybody wants to go out with a bang. Make a big deal out of it. Sadly, not everybody can shine as brightly, as intensely, as ferociously as a supernova. Don't fret, eager explorer, we'll get to supernovas and other overly powerful explosions soon enough. It's best we start small, with weaker explosions and their consequences, and work out way up to the big leagues. Wouldn't want to get ahead of ourselves.

The Earth's own sun will die someday. Best to accept that fact now, deal with it, internalize it. When the moment comes you don't want to be caught off guard, your eggs half boiled, your grilled cheese sandwich only toasted on one side. We'll use the sun as a textbook lesson, so you won't be caught unawares in an unfamiliar system, so you won't pick a star to call home that will go giant on you in a thousand years.

All stars die. Some, the very largest, go out in a tremendous flash of energy, turning themselves inside out to light up the universe. Others, the smallest, slowly fade, never quite sputtering out, never making a scene, spending a trillion years tending to a weak fire.

The middle ones, like the sun, have the most miserable fates. Before they finally die, they become red and bloated, spewing out their innards through the local system. Spasm after spasm, they slowly lose themselves, leaving only a faint dying heart behind.

It's in these later years when they're most dangerous, when their violence overwhelms them, reducing any hapless inner planets to cinders.

Every year, old stars fade while new ones light up. A continuous cycle in the galaxy. Beautiful and poetic, really, except for the fact that when these stars go they cause mayhem and destruction for anybody unfortunate enough to live within their influence.

You can buy "How to Die in Space" on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Book excerpt: 'How to Die in Space' on the beauty and danger of nebulas - Space.com

Overview

We are seeking an R&D Section Head for Nuclear Science and Advanced Technology in the Physics Division. The Division builds on ORNL strengths to perform outstanding leadership research for the Nation in fundamental nuclear science, national security and related areas. Our focus is in the areas of novel Advanced Radiation Detector Development, Applied Data Science, Nuclear Structure Physics, Theoretical Physics and Nuclear Astrophysics

The Nuclear Science and Advanced Technology Section delivers foundational knowledge in nuclear science and astrophysics through world-leading theoretical and experimental studies, as well as associated radiation detection technologies for next generation nuclear solutions needed by the nation and the world.

Purpose

Provide Research and Development (R&D) leadership to a thematic area of science and technology that integrates several thematically aligned R&D groups consistent with ORNLs aspiration to be the worlds premier R&D institution and ORNLs science culture.

The R&D Section Head works closely with the Division Director and section Group Leaders to establish and implement the science and technology directions for the section; support the Group Leaders to ensure their success and the success of the R&D groups as world-recognized leaders in their fields; ensure that staff members understand business opportunities; identify links to current and future funding opportunities and R&D programs; develop and implement consistent processes for the peer-review of proposals consistent with lab standards; model proper Environment, Safety, Security, Health, and Quality practices; and ensure a diverse and inclusive work environment where every employee feels safe, heard and appreciateda workplace that sets an example for the broader community

Major Duties/Responsibilities:

Research

Scientists/engineers/analysts who have significantly advanced knowledge/technology in their respective field. Their work directly impacts the present or future of the laboratory in significant ways. Initiates, leads and performs R&D programs and initiatives on an ongoing basis.

Leadership

Service

Accountabilities:

Authorities:

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Section Head, Nuclear Science & Advanced Technology in Oak Ridge, TN for Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Physics

A short gamma ray burst known to astronomers as SGRB181123B is the second most-distant well-established SGRB ever seen, and the most distant to ever known to display an optical afterglow. Examination of this object could reveal data about the behavior of the densest stars in the Universe at a time when our Universe was still in its adolescence.

Short gamma ray burst are incredibly short-lived events (sometimes lasting for a matter of hours before fading), occurring far from Earth. These characteristics combine to make these events notoriously difficult to detect and study.

The discovery of such an event nearly two years ago led to a hasty coalition oftelescopesaimed at the enigmatic object.

We certainly did not expect to discover a distant SGRB, as they are extremely rare and very faint. We perform forensics with telescopes to understand its local environment, because what its home galaxy looks like can tell us a lot about the underlying physics of these systems, saidDr. Wen-fai Fong, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University.

[Read: The Solar Orbiter just snapped the closest-ever pictures of the Sun]

On Thanksgiving night in 2018, astronomers found a feast of data from the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, revealing a previously-unseenSGRB. The team managing observations for the space-borne observatory contacted astronomers at one of the words greatest ground-based telescopes,Gemini Northon Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

It was unreal. I was in New York with my family and had finished having a big Thanksgiving dinner. Just as I had gone to sleep, the alert went off and woke me up. While somewhat of a nuisance, you literally never know when youll land a big discovery like this! I immediately triggered the Gemini observations and notified Kerry. Thankfully, she happened to be observing at Keck that night and was able to rearrange her original observing plan and repoint the telescope towards the SGRB, Wen-fai recalls.

The international Gemini Observatory (a program of NSFs NOIRLab), quickly confirmed the finding, utilizing their 8.1 meter telescope onMauna Kea. Astronomers there also dated the event to the teenage years of the Universe, less than four billion years after the Big Bang.

We took advantage of the unique rapid-response capabilities and exquisite sensitivity of Gemini North and its GMOS imager to obtain deep observations of the burst mere hours after its discovery. The Gemini images were very sharp, and allowed us to pinpoint the location to a specific galaxy, saidKerry Patersonof the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University.

These observations were reinforced by data recorded at theW.M. Keck Observatoryin Hawaii and Multi-Mirror Telescope (MMT) at Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona.

This was a triumph for this international collaboration of astronomers, quickly networking several observatories, to observe this short-lived event.

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Burst of gamma rays from 10 billion light years away offers glimpse into the early universe - The Next Web

Many exoplanets known today are either super-Earths with a radius of 1.3 times the Earths radius, or mini-Neptune with 2.4 Earth radii. Mini-neptunes, which have always been less dense, have long been thought of as gaseous planets composed of hydrogen and helium. Now scientists from the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory have explored the new possibility and presented their research in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astrophysicists have suggested that the low density of mini-neptune-type planets can be explained simply by the presence of a thick layer of water, which is subject to an intense greenhouse effect.

Where does the greenhouse effect come from on these exoplanets? It is caused by radiation from a star whose radiation the planet is exposed to.

These results indicate that mini-neptuns may be super-Earths with a rocky core surrounded by supercritical water. Water takes on this state at very high pressures and temperatures. This study also suggests that two types of exoplanets super-earths and mini-neptune can form in the same way.

Another study, recently published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, looked at the effect of stellar radiation on the radius of Earth-sized planets containing water. French scientists from the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory used a model of the planets atmosphere developed at the Laboratory of Dynamic Meteorology in their study.

Their results show that the size of the atmospheres of such planets increases significantly when they are exposed to a strong greenhouse effect, in accordance with studies of planets such as mini-neptune. Future observations should allow us to test these new hypotheses put forward by French scientists who are contributing to our knowledge of exoplanets.

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Scientists: mini-neptunes could be planets that have oceans of water - FREE NEWS

A portion of a new picture of the oldest light in the universe, aka the cosmic microwave background. This part covers a section of the sky 50 times the moons width, representing a region of space 20 billion light-years across. Image via Atacama Cosmology Telescope/ ACT Collaboration/ Simons Foundation.

Written by Thomas Sumner for the Simons Foundation. Originally published July 15, 2020.

From a mountain high in Chiles Atacama Desert, astronomers with the National Science Foundations Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) have taken a fresh look at the oldest light in the universe [otherwise known as the cosmic microwave background]. Their new observations plus a bit of cosmic geometry suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years.

The new estimate matches the one provided by the standard model of the universe and measurements of the same light made by the Planck satellite. This adds a fresh twist to an ongoing debate in the astrophysics community, said Simone Aiola, first author of one of two new papers on the findings posted to arXiv.org.

In 2019, a research team measuring the movements of galaxies calculated that the universe is hundreds of millions of years younger than the Planck team predicted. That discrepancy suggested that a new model for the universe might be needed and sparked concerns that one of the sets of measurements might be incorrect. Aiola, a researcher at the Flatiron Institutes Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City, commented:

Now weve come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree. It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable.

The age of the universe also reveals how fast the cosmos is expanding, a number quantified by the Hubble constant. The new measurements from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope suggest a Hubble constant of 67.6 kilometers per second per megaparsec. That means an object 1 megaparsec (around 3.26 million light-years) from Earth is moving away from us at 67.6 kilometers per second due to the expansion of the universe. This result agrees almost exactly with the previous estimate of 67.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec by the Planck satellite team, but its slower than the 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec inferred from the measurements of galaxies.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope. Using new measurements from this telescope of the cosmic microwave background, scientists have refined calculations of the universes age. Image via Debra Kellner/ Simons Foundation.

Steve Choi of Cornell University, first author of the other paper posted to arXiv.org, said:

I didnt have a particular preference for any specific value. It was going to be interesting one way or another. We find an expansion rate that is right on the estimate by the Planck satellite team. This gives us more confidence in measurements of the universes oldest light.

The close agreement between the ACT and Planck results and the standard cosmological model is bittersweet, Aiola said:

Its good to know that our model right now is robust, but it would have been nice to see a hint of something new.

Still, the disagreement with the 2019 study of the motions of galaxies maintains the possibility that unknown physics may be at play, he said.

Like the Planck satellite, ACT peers at the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light, known as the cosmic microwave background, marks a time 380,000 years after the universes birth when protons and electrons joined to form the first atoms. Before that time, the cosmos was opaque to light.

If scientists can estimate how far light from the cosmic microwave background traveled to reach Earth, they can calculate the universes age. Thats easier said than done, though. Judging cosmic distances from Earth is hard. So instead, scientists measure the angle in the sky between two distant objects, with Earth and the two objects forming a cosmic triangle. If scientists also know the physical separation between those objects, they can use high school geometry to estimate the distance of the objects from Earth.

Subtle variations in the glow of the cosmic microwave background offer anchor points to form the other two vertices of the triangle. Those variations in temperature and polarization resulted from quantum fluctuations in the early universe that got amplified by the expanding universe into regions of varying density. (The denser patches would go on to form galaxy clusters.) Scientists have a strong enough understanding of the universes early years to know that these variations in the cosmic microwave background should typically be spaced out every billion light-years for temperature and half that for polarization. (For scale, our Milky Way galaxy is about 200,000 light-years in diameter.)

ACT measured the cosmic microwave background fluctuations with unprecedented resolution, taking a closer look at the polarization of the light. Suzanne Staggs, ACTs principal investigator and the Henry deWolf Smyth Professor of Physics at Princeton University, said:

The Planck satellite measured the same light, but by measuring its polarization in higher fidelity, the new picture from ACT reveals more of the oldest patterns weve ever seen.

As ACT continues making observations, astronomers will have an even clearer picture of the cosmic microwave background and a more exact idea of how long ago the cosmos began. The ACT team will also scour those observations for signs of physics that doesnt fit the standard cosmological model. Such strange physics could resolve the disagreement between the predictions of the age and expansion rate of the universe arising from the measurements of the cosmic microwave background and the motions of galaxies. Mark Devlin, ACTs deputy director and the Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, said:

Were continuing to observe half the sky from Chile with our telescope. As the precision of both techniques increases, the pressure to resolve the conflict will only grow.

Bottom line: Astronomers have taken a fresh look at the oldest light in the universe, otherwise known as the cosmic microwave background. Their new observations suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years.

Source: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR4 Maps and Cosmological Parameters

Source: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Power Spectra at 98 and 150 GHz

Via the Simons Foundation

See the article here:

New view of old light adds twist to debate over universes age - EarthSky

LOS ANGELES, United States: The global Security Screening market is comprehensively analyzed in the report with the main objective of providing accurate market data and useful recommendations to help players to gain strong growth in future. The report is compiled by subject matter experts and experienced market analysts, which makes it highly authentic and reliable. Readers are provided with deep analysis of historical and future market scenarios to get sound understanding of market competition and other important aspects. The report offers exhaustive research on market dynamics, key segments, leading players, and different regional markets. It is a complete package of thorough analysis and research on the global Security Screening market.

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The competitive landscape of the global Security Screening market is broadly studied in the report with large focus on recent developments, future plans of top players, and key growth strategies adopted by them. The analysts authoring the report have profiled almost every major player of the global Security Screening market and thrown light on their crucial business aspects such as production, areas of operation, and product portfolio. All companies analyzed in the report are studied on the basis of vital factors such as market share, market growth, company size, production volume, revenue, and earnings.

Key Players Mentioned in the Global Security Screening Market Research Report: Leidos, Nuctech, OSI Systems, Smiths Detection, Safeway, CEIA, Astrophysics, Analogic, GARRETT, IWILDT, Lornet, Westminster, Security Centres International, Adani, Research Electronics International, Suritel

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The report offers great insights into important segments of the global Security Screening market while concentrating on their CAGR, market size, market share, and future growth potential. The global Security Screening market is mainly segmented according to type of product, application, and region. Each segment in these categories is extensively researched to become familiar with their growth prospects and key trends. Segmental analysis is highly important to identify key growth pockets of a global market. The report provides specific information on the market growth and demand of different products and applications to help players to focus on profitable areas of the global Security Screening market.

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Security Screening Market Size, Growth Analysis by Key Manufacturers, Regions, Types and Applications, Forecast 20202026| Leidos, Nuctech, OSI...

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the life of Prof. Dr. Dilhan Eryurt (Image: Google)

Today's Google Doodle celebrates Dilhan Eryurt, a Turkish astrophysicist who played a huge role in the way we understand how the Sun was formed.

But who was she, what were some of her notable achievements, and why has Google chosen today to honour her?

Here's everything you need to know.

Who was Dilhan Eryurt?

Born in 1926 in zmir - Turkey's third most populous city - Prof. Dr. Dilhan Eryurt grew up across the country, first moving to Istanbul with her family, and then on to Turkey's second city, Ankara, a few years later.

After developing an interest in mathematics in high school, Eryurt enrolled in the Istanbul University Department of Mathematics and Astronomy, and upon graduation, was assigned to open an Astronomy Department at Ankara University.

She relocated to the US to continue her graduate studies at the University of Michigan, and while there completed her doctorate at the Ankara University Department of Astrophysics, becoming Associate Professor.

From 1961, Eryurt held a position at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, her appointment extra notable for the fact she was the only female astronomer working at the institution at the time.

What did she study?

Eryurt's work at Goddard revealed some facts about the Sun that were not yet understood.

For instance, she observed that the brightness of the Sun had not increased - it had in fact decreased - since its formation 4.5 billion years ago, revealing that our nearest star was much brighter and warmer in the past.

Her studies influenced the course of the scientific and engineering research aims of space flights - a new and uncharted territory at the time.

In 1969 she was awarded the Apollo Achievement Award for contributions to the Apollo 11 mission. Today (20 July) marks 51 years since Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins landed and walked on the moon.

Aldrin and Armstrong spent a total of 21 hours and 36 minutes on the moon, but the Apollo 11 mission itself lasted a total of eight days, three hours, 18 min, and 35 seconds.

This is likely the reason Google have chosen today to celebrate Eryurt's life; her research provided NASA engineers with crucial information for modelling solar impact on the lunar environment

She later moved on to work at the California University, where she studied the formation and development of Main Sequence stars - a continuous band of stars that appear on plots of stellar colour versus brightness.

What else did she do?

Throughout her long and successful career, Eryurt became an award-winning astronomer, picking up all sorts of nods for her contributions and work.

Other notable achievements of hers include the organising of Turkey's first National Astronomy Congress in 1968, and the establishment of the Astrophysics Department at the Middle East Technical University.

She retired in 1993 after a long career, and sadly died in September 2012 at the age of 85, suffering a heart attack in Ankara.

Original post:

Here's why today's Google Doodle is celebrating the Turkish astrophysicist Dilhan Eryurt - Morpeth Herald

The Mars 2020 mission is scheduled to launch at the end of July. Its goal is to land the Perseverance rover on the Red Planet and collect samples in the hope of finding signs of past life.

While Mars remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Hollywood films, it equally fascinates NASA, which has made its exploration a priority. Since the early 2000s, the US space agency has successfully carried out eight missionsdesigned to study its geological and climate history. The next step in this programme is the upcoming launch from Cape Canaveral of a massive Atlas V rocket carrying the Perseverance rover on a new mission dubbed Mars 2020, which will land on the Red Planet on 18 February 2021.

Packed with cameras and high-tech scientific instruments, the rover, approximately the size of a car, aims to answer the question that has been nagging the astrophysics community ever since the early days of Martian exploration: could Mars have once been home to life? After focusing on the presence of water on the planet and on its habitability, Mars 2020 marks the third and latest step in a series of missions, and will be primarily dedicated to the search for signs of fossil life, says Sylvestre Maurice, an astronomer at the IRAPin Toulouse (southwestern France). With the support of around 200 scientists, engineers and technicians from several CNRS and French university laboratories,the scientist helped develop the SuperCam laser camera, one of seven scientific instruments carried by the Perseverance rover. Based on many of the features of the Curiosity rovers ChemCam deployed on Mars in 2012, SuperCam was enhanced with new functionalities such as Raman and infrared spectrometers. These techniques, the first of their kind to be used on the Red Planet, can identify bonds between atoms and the way in which molecules are organised. As a result, they are able to detect complex structures favourable to the preservation of biosignatures in SuperCams targets, he explains.

To maximise their chances in the search for Martian biosignatures, the Mars 2020 team chose the Jezero crater as their landing site. Approximately 3.5 billion years ago, this area, 45 kilometres in diameter, was home to a vast lake to which several rivers converged, forming deltas whose remains are still visible today. The very early presence of water, together with extensive sedimentary deposits, makes Jezero a particularly promising environment for the detection of traces of life. The site also includes a wide range of geological features, which will help Mars 2020 achieve its other primary goal, namely the collection of some thirty soil core and rock samples reflecting the geological diversity of the planet. Once the samples have been enclosed in metal tubes kept inside the rover, they will be sealed and stored on the Martian surface, and eventually brought back to Earth during a future sample return mission scheduled by 2030, Maurice explains.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL/ESA

This unprecedented sampling operation will be carried out using the SuperCam instrument. Its high-resolution colour camera attached atop Perseverances mast will make it possible to accurately determine the geological and environmental context associated with each sample of rock or regolith thanks to the analysis performed by the instruments three spectrometers.In addition, SuperCam will be the very first scientific instrument sent to Mars to be equipped with a microphone. By listening to the impact on the rocks each time the laser is fired, this system will provide information about the hardness of the geological samples targeted, Maurice says. The device will also be used to pick up the sound of the Martian wind and detect possible signs of wear and tear to the equipment by continuously recording the noises made by the rover.

Filled with cutting-edge technology, the SuperCam laser camera took five long years to develop by several French research laboratories. Although from the outside the instrument looks like Curiositys ChemCam, which our team had previously helped to design, it contains three additional analysis technologies packed into exactly the same volume. This required the miniaturisation of numerous components, explains Pernelle Bernardi, a systems engineer at the LESIA,in charge of the specifications and performance of the SuperCam. This was a major challenge that the French team met with flying colours. However, just as the production of the flight model to be mounted on the rover neared completion, things went badly wrong when the optical component of the instrument was being tested inside a heat chamber in November 2018. The temperature rose to nearly 250 C, well above the acceptable limits, quite literally roasting the instrument.

Following a crisis meeting with US mission officials and representatives from the French space agency, CNES,the decision was taken to rebuild the entire laser camera, using all the available spare parts. The French team worked flat out, day and night, and rebuilt the instrument in six months, even managing to enhance its performance. The primary mirror of the first SuperCams telescope had a tendency to deform when cold, which resulted in a significant widening of the focus point of the infrared laser beam, Bernardi explains. The November 2018 incident therefore gave us the opportunity to replace this defective mirror and thereby significantly improve the laser shot.

Completed in June 2019, the upgraded version of the SuperCam was then shipped to NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California in order to be attached to the top of the rover mast. We visited the site several times last year to ensure that the instruments laser beams were still perfectly aligned during tests carried out in an environment very close to that of Mars, and it was indeed the case, says Bernardi, who was awarded the CNRS 2020 Crystal Medal for her key role in the construction of the device. A few weeks before the Covid-19 crisis broke out, the fully-assembled rover had reached the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and was docked to the descent vehicle. It was then placed in the capsule that will enter the Martian atmosphere, this structure being itself attached to the cruise stage, which will fly the entire system to its final destination. Sheltering behind its heat shield, Perseverance is now waiting for the green light from NASA to begin its long journey to Mars.

Originally posted here:

A new rover to land on Mars - ScienceBlog.com