Representatives from across the university, including LASP, CU Boulders AeroSpace Ventures initiative, and the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS), are jointly hosting an exhibit booth at this years Space Symposium. Together, they will highlight CUs prominence in aerospace engineering and climate and space-weather research, as well as the crucial role the university plays in developing Colorados aerospace workforce.

This coordinated presence at the Space Symposium is a great example of how leaders and units from across the university system collaborate to highlight CUs extensive aerospace expertise and the many resources our campuses have to offer, said Chris Muldrow, the Smead Director and Department Chief of Staff in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. We are a world leader in aerospace, and our impact is multiplied when we bring the best of CU aerospace to the space ecosystem.

The College of Engineering and Applied Science at UCCS produces highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students with solid technical backgrounds plus crucial experiential learning. The colleges new Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, which launched this fall with a full cohort of students, will leverage the existing expertise in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. This summer, to stand up the program, the college broke ground ona new facility, the Anschutz Engineering Center,slated to open for classes in January 2024, says Sue McClernan, the colleges career and industry outreach program director. Student and workforce demand prompted the new degree, and we believe the Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering at UCCS is well suited for a thriving aerospace economy in Colorado Springs and the region.

AeroSpace Ventures brings together researchers, students, industry leaders, government partners, and entrepreneurs to envision and create the future for space and Earth systems. This initiative is helping to drive the discovery and innovation that will shape the 21stcenturysaerospaceeconomy, says George Hatcher III, executive director of industry and foundation relations at CU Boulder. AeroSpace Ventures brings together CU Boulder departments, institutes, centers, and programsacross the universityto amplify the more than $120 million in aerospace-related research that happens on campus each year.

CU Boulder also hosts the Space Weather Technology, Research and Education Center to serve as a catalyst site for space weather research and technology development among CU and other Front Range space research and technology organizations. The campus also hosts the Center for National Security Initiatives. It provides high-impact national security research to government and industry partners and addresses the ever-increasing demand for qualified and experienced aerospace and defense professionals in Colorado and across the nation.

From LASPs humble beginnings 75 years ago, the University of Colorado has developed into an epicenter of space research and aerospace workforce development crucial to Coloradoand our nation.

Founded a decade before NASA, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder is on a mission to transform human understanding of the cosmos by pioneering new technologies and approaches to space science. LASP is the only academic research institute in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in our solar system. LASP began celebrating its 75th anniversary in April 2023.

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CU to showcase 75 years of innovation and impact at the 38th ... - University of Colorado Boulder

The vast universe is filled with strange and mysterious phenomena, from quasars and black holes to the Botes void. One bizarre element in space is rogue planets, worlds just like our own, untethered by a star, wandering free and alone through the abyss.

Could one of these lonely planets find its way to our own solar system or even collide with the Earth?

Rouge planets, also known as free-floating planets, are thought to be a result of gravitational interactions in the early days of the formation of solar systems. Or they could be a result of the failed formation of stars.

"Modern theories of planetary system formation suggest that many planets are formed around young stars when they are in the short-lived phase of growing their planetary systems. But many of these are ejected due to gravitational scattering as the planetary systems organize themselves over time," Michael Zemcov, an associate professor of physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, told Newsweek.

As a solar system forms, numerous chunks of rock of varying sizes and speeds whirl around each other in chaotic orbits. As these bodies soar past each other, they alter the orbits of other bodies as a result of their gravity.

"In typical three-body interactions characteristic of these ejection events, it is usually the lowest-mass object that gets ejected," Zemcov said. "So I think a generic prediction of these 'clearing out' episodes during planetary system formation is that the heavier objectswhether rocky or, more likely, ice or gas giantssurvive and the smaller ones don't."

Rogue planets may also come from another source, which is a star that failed to ignite and instead became stuck as a lone gas giant.

"They might form out of gas clouds in space, in the same way stars do, or they may have formed in a disc around a star and then been ejected due to an encounter with another star or an interaction with another planet in the same system," Richard Parker, a lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., told Newsweek.

"In the former case, they are likely to be predominantly gas giants like Jupiter. In the latter case, they could be rocky like Earth," he said.

Scientists aren't sure how many rogue planets are in our Milky Way galaxy since they are extremely hard to observe.

"[There are] likely many billions, or more, but they are ferociously hard to see," Zemcov said. "They would emit very little light on their own, mostly at very long wavelengths that are extremely difficult to pick out of the background emission. As a result, our primary way of detecting them is via gravitational microlensing, where we monitor a field of stars and then look for the light of a background source being temporarily magnified by the mass of a rogue planet as it passes precisely between our telescopes and the background star.

He continued: "We have found many objects this way, but without other information the lensing objects are impossible to weigh. So we don't have a good idea of demographics except in the general sense that larger things should be easier to see just because their temporary magnification is brighter and longer."

While we don't have a true idea of the number of rogue planets, scientists expect it is large.

"We expect a really big population," Alberto Fairn, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at Cornell University, told Newsweek. "Think this way: The smallest the object in our galaxy, the larger the number of them we expect."

According to Dorian Abbot, a geophysical sciences professor at the University of Chicago, it is likely that most rogue planets are terrestrial because there are probably more terrestrial planets in general.

"It's easier to throw them out through an interaction with a gas giant because they are less massive. But gas giants can be ejected too. The Hot Jupiters detected in [around] 1 percent of systems suggest major dynamical evolution of those systems since Jupiters have to form where it is cold. This dynamical evolution could be associated with generating rogue planets," Abbot told Newsweek.

With all these invisible planets zipping around the galaxy, could one enter our solar system or even collide with the Earth?

"Assuming that there is a rogue planet for every star in the Milky Way, and we assume the solar system will be in a similar region of the galaxy over its lifetime, then I would estimate that the likelihood of a rogue planet coming within the solar system over the next 1,000 years to be a 1 in a billion chance," Garrett Brown, a celestial mechanics and computational physics researcher at the University of Toronto, told Newsweek.

"Here, I define 'coming within the solar system' to mean that we could see the rogue planet in such a way that when we look at it with a telescope it would look like Neptune or Pluto," Brown said. "For a rogue planet that were to come at least this close, there would be a 1 in 2,000 chance that it would directly alter Earth's orbit."

He continued: "It's difficult to say how likely it would be to actually collide with Earth without a more detailed analysis, but it would be much, much less likely. Thus, I would estimate the likelihood of a rogue planet coming closer to the Earth than Mars or Venus to be 1 in 2 trillion in the next 1,000 years. If there is one heading our way within the next 1,000 years, it would currently be about 0.2 light-years away."

Even if a rogue planet came close to the Earth, the interaction may not even destroy the planet if there wasn't a direct hit.

"It would need to come close enough to Earth to either collide with it or, a bit less unlikely, alter its orbit. If it does collide, this would be at high speed and likely destroy Earth, if it is comparable in mass and density to Earth," Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University, told Newsweek.

"A planet like Jupiter might even swallow Earth. Or Earth might come out the other way if it is a grazing encounter, but probably without its atmosphere," he said.

Rather than destroying the Earth, a passing rogue planet could even bump our planet out of orbit and cause it to become a rogue planet itself.

"I would say the more scary thing, rather than a direct collision, is having the Earth be scattered by a brief encounter by, say, an exo-Neptune passing through, which would move us to a different orbit or perhaps eject us from the solar system altogether," Zemcov said. "Then we would likely all freeze, or possibly cook, in a matter of weeks. That said, I am not losing any sleep over such a possibility."

It's very unlikely that interactions of the planets already in our solar system could suddenly boot Earth out into the abyss, thanks to our planet's orbits having had billions of years to settle into an equilibrium.

"One open and extremely good question is why our own solar system has been stable over 4.5 billion years," Zemcov said. "In many ways, it shouldn't be. As an example, some models for planet formation suggest that Jupiter was formed much closer in and then somehow migrated out to where it is today, likely by exchanging momentum with something that got ejected from our solar system."

He continued: "How we might retain the four rocky planets in the inner solar system in such a scenario is a complete mystery. And then we look around our solar system and see evidence for massive disruptionsfor example, Uranus rotating on its side. And it's clear that over astronomical time scales the details of these [solar systems] are not terribly robust."

One possibility is that there were once more planets in our early solar system but one was ejected as a rogue planet, leaving the solar system to never return.

"What's possible is that our sun would have ejected a rogue billions of years ago, when Jupiter and Saturn traveled from their original inner orbits to their actual positions. That's a scenario we cannot discard but we cannot confirm either," Fairn said.

Could a planet be ejected after life has evolved on its surface, or could life evolve after the planet left its star?

"Another much more interesting, to me, possible feature of rogue planets [is] the possibility that they can host life," Lorenzo Iorio, an astronomy and astrophysics professor at the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, told Newsweek.

Even without a star, life could be sustained under certain conditions. According to the Planetary Society, if a rogue planet had a large moon that orbited at close quarters, it could keep the center of the planet hot enough so that life could exist in volcanic vent environments.

So, while a rogue planet's collision would likely spell the end of life on Earth, such planets may be capable of hosting their own unique ecosystems.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about rogue planets? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

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Could a Rogue Planet Destroy the Earth? - Newsweek

The sun is having an identity crisis: Because it shows different magnetic activity and rotation rates than other stars in its current classification, scientists have debated whether the sun is really like the other stars in its family.

Now, the debate may finally be settled, as an investigation has found that the sun does indeed belong in this group.

The research was led by ngela Santos, a scientist at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal, whose work focuses primarily on how solar and stellar rotation and stellar magnetic activity change as stars evolve. She explained the controversy over the sun's classification.

Related: Our sun is a weirdly 'quiet' star and that's lucky for all of us

"In the community, there is an ongoing debate on whether the sun is a 'sun-like' star," Santos said in a statement (opens in new tab). "In particular, about its magnetic activity; several studies suggested that stars similar to the sun were significantly more active. However, the problem doesn't seem to be with the sun, but with the stars classified as sun-like, because there are several limitations and biases in the observational data and the inferred stellar properties."

To investigate the question of whether the sun is truly a sun-like star, Santos and the team turned to data from NASA's now-retired Kepler space telescope, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, and the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

They focused on multiple stars that have similar stellar properties and magnetic activity to the sun and compared the data with observations of the sun's last two 11-year solar cycles collected by SOHO, which launched in 1995.

One star featured in the data, which is nicknamed "Doris" and officially designated KIC 8006161, is a blue star of a similar size and mass to the sun. The researchers had previously noted that the amplitude of Doris' stellar cycle was twice that of the last two solar cycles, indicating that Doris became twice as strong as our star, even though the two stars were similar in many ways.

The difference was caused by a disparity in the proportions of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium that make up the two stars' compositions. Astronomers call elements heavier than helium "metals," and they refer to the proportion of these elements as the "metallicity" of the star. Doris has a higher metallicity than the sun, and the researchers linked this difference to stronger activity.

"The difference was the metallicity," Santos said. "Our interpretation is that the effect of metallicity, which leads to a deeper convection zone, produces a more effective dynamo, which leads to a stronger activity cycle."

The researchers then went back and disregarded metallicity to select stars from their catalogs that demonstrated similar behavior to Doris. They found that most of these stars also had high metallicities, though Doris was still the most active of these stars.

"In our selection, the only parameter that could lead to this excess is the rotation period," Santos said. "In particular, Doris had a longer period than the sun. And, in fact, we found evidence of a correlation between the rotation period and metallicity."

In addition, despite being younger than the sun, Doris rotates more slowly. This is typical; astrophysicists think all stars are born spinning and slow down, or "spin down," as they age. This slowdown happens because of a phenomenon called "magnetic braking," in which material is caught by the star's magnetic field and eventually flung into space, carrying some of the sun's angular (rotational) momentum with it.

Doris' stronger magnetic activity is causing more magnetic braking, leading it to spin more slowly than the sun, the researchers explained.

Despite some key differences, however, the sun fits in nicely with a family of stellar objects aptly called sun-like stars, the team concluded.

"What we found is that although there are stars which are more active than the sun, the sun is indeed a completely normal sun-like star," Santos said.

The research was published in the April edition of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (opens in new tab).

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).

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Does the sun really belong in its family? Astronomers get to the ... - Space.com

Taifa 1, Kenya's first operational 3U nanosatellite, was set to launch aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in the U.S. state of California on Friday after being delayed twice. But the launch was scrubbed at the last minute because of unfavorable weather.

Teddy Warria, with Africa's Talking Limited, a high-tech company, traveled to the University of Nairobi in Kenya from Kisumu, 563 kilometers west of Nairobi. He said he'll stay as long it takes to witness the historic day.

"It shows us through science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and if we apply the lessons learned from STEM, we can go as far as our minds and imagination can take us," Warria said.

Regardless of the delay, Charles Mwangi, the acting director of space sector and technology development at the Kenya Space Agency, said the satellite is quite significant.

"... [I]t's initiating conversations we've not been having in terms of what our role within the space sector should be," Mwangi said. "How do we leverage the potential space to address our societal need. More importantly, how do we catalyze research and activities of developing systems within our region."

FILE - Delegates attend the preparation of the launch of Kenya's first operational 3U Earth observation satellite, the Taifa-1, at the University of Nairobi's Taifa Hall, in Nairobi, Kenya, April 11, 2023.

Mwangi told VOA that launching the satellite will have some major benefits "that will help us in monitoring our forests, doing crop prediction, determine where the yield for our crops, disaster management, planning."

The satellite was developed by nine Kenyan engineers and cost $385,000 to build. The engineers collaborated with Bulgarian aerospace manufacturer Endurosat AD for testing and parts.

Pattern Odhiambo, an electrical and electronics engineer at the Kenyan Space Agency, who worked on the Taifa 1 mission, said, "I took part in deciding what kind of a camera we are supposed to have on this mission, so that we can meet the mission's objectives, which is to take images over the Kenyan territory for agricultural use, for urban planning, monitoring of natural resources and the likes."

And, as the communication subsystem lead, he also had other tasks.

"I took part in the design of the radio frequency link between the satellite and the ground station, the decision-making process on the kind of modulation schemes you can have on the satellite, the kind of transmitter power, the kind of antenna you are supposed to have," he said.

Samuel Nyangi, a University of Nairobi graduate in astronomy and Astro physics, was also at the university to witness his country's history making.

"If you look at the African countries that are economically strong Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt they all have very strong space industries. We are so proud of the Kenya Space Agency, having taken this initiative, because the satellite data that we use [is] from foreign nations, specifically NASA in the United States. For us having our own data, tailoring it to our own needs as Kenyans, it's a very big step," Nyangi said.

This sentiment is echoed by Paul Baki, professor of Physics at the Technical University of Kenya, who participated in a panel discussion on education and research to help answer students' questions. Baki told VOA this is a big leap for Kenya.

"We have walked this journey, I think, for over 20 years when the first draft space policy was done in 1994," Baki said. "We've decided that we are going to walk the talk and build something domestically. It has happened in approximately three years, which to me is no mean feat, and this is quite inspiring to our students because they have something to look up to."

Student James Achesa, who is in his fourth year studying mechanical engineering at Nairobi University, explained his understanding of the Taifa 1 mission.

"It'll help the small-scale farmer, as well as just general people in Kenya to see and understand where our country is going to. So, they might not enjoy the science of putting a spacecraft into space, but the science that does will come and disseminate to them at grassroots levels and will help them plan for their future," Achesa said.

Ivy Kut, who has a bachelor's degree in applied sciences and geoinformatics from the Technical University of Kenya, said, "It's going to benefit Kenyans in that we are going to get our own satellite data with better resolution and that is going to inform a lot of decisions in all sectors, especially in the analysis of earth data."

The next launch attempt is scheduled for Saturday.

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Kenya's Third Attempt to Launch First 3U Observation Satellite Delayed - Voice of America - VOA News

RV (top panel) and FWHM (bottom panel) time-series. The purple markers in each panel represent the HARPS RV and FWHM measurements with inferred offsets extracted. The inferred multi-GP model is shown as a solid black curve, where the dark and light shaded areas show the 1- and 2- sigma credible intervals from said model, and can also explain the data but with a correspondingly lower probability. The solid red line in the top panel shows the star-only model, while the teal sine curve the Keplerian for TOI-733 b. In both panels the nominal error bars are in solid purple, and the jitter error bars (HARPS) are semi-transparent purple. astro-ph.EP

We report the discovery of a hot (Teq 1055 K) planet in the small planet radius valley transiting the Sun-like star TOI-733, as part of the KESPRINT follow-up program of TESS planets carried out with the HARPS spectrograph. TESS photometry from sectors 9 and 36 yields an orbital period of Porb = 4.884765+1.9e52.4e5 days and a radius of Rp = 1.992+0.0850.090 R.

Multi-dimensional Gaussian process modelling of the radial velocity measurements from HARPS and activity indicators, gives a semi-amplitude of K = 2.230.26 m s1, translating into a planet mass of Mp = 5.72+0.700.68 M. These parameters imply that the planet is of moderate density (p = 3.98+0.770.66 g cm3) and place it in the transition region between rocky and volatile-rich planets with H/He-dominated envelopes on the mass-radius diagram.

Combining these with stellar parameters and abundances, we calculate planet interior and atmosphere models, which in turn suggest that TOI-733 b has a volatile-enriched, most likely secondary outer envelope, and may represent a highly irradiated ocean world one of only a few such planets around G-type stars that are well-characterised.

Iskra Y. Georgieva, Carina M. Persson, Elisa Goffo, Lorena Acua, Artyom Aguichine, Luisa M. Serrano, Kristine W. F. Lam, Davide Gandolfi, Karen A. Collins, Steven B. Howell, Fei Dai, Malcolm Fridlund, Judith Korth, Magali Deleuil, Oscar Barragn, William D. Cochran, Szilrd Csizmadia, Hans J. Deeg, Eike Guenther, Artie P. Hatzes, Jon M. Jenkins, John Livingston, Rafael Luque, Olivier Mousis, Hannah L. M. Osborne, Enric Palle, Seth Redfield, Vincent Van Eylen, Joseph D. Twicken, Joshua N. Winn, Ahlam Alqasim, Kevin I. Collins, Crystal L. Gnilka, David W. Latham, Hannah M. Lewis, Howard M. Relles, George R. Ricker, Pamela Rowden, Sara Seager, Avi Shporer, Thiam-Guan Tan, Andrew Vanderburg, Roland Vanderspek

Comments: Accepted for publication in A&ASubjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)Cite as: arXiv:2304.06655 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2304.06655v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)Submission historyFrom: Iskra Georgieva[v1] Thu, 13 Apr 2023 16:35:36 UTC (3,171 KB)https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.06655Astrobiology

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TOI-733 b - A Planet In The Small-planet Radius Valley Orbiting A ... - Astrobiology News

Now in its fifth year in space, NASAs TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) remains a rousing success. TESSs cameras have mapped more than 93% of the entire sky, discovered 329 new worlds and thousands more candidates, and provided new insights into a wide array of cosmic phenomena, from stellar pulsations and exploding stars to supermassive black holes.

Using its four cameras, TESS monitors large swaths of the sky called sectors for about a month at a time. Each sector measures 24 by 96 degrees, about as wide as a persons hand at arms length and stretching from the horizon to the zenith. The cameras capture a total of 192 million pixels in each full-frame image. During its primary mission, TESS captured one of these images every 30 minutes, but this torrent of data has increased with time. The cameras now record each sector every 200 seconds.

The volume of high-quality TESS data now available is quite impressive, said Knicole Coln, the missions project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. We have more than 251 terabytes just for one of the main data products, called full-frame images. Thats the equivalent of streaming 167,000 movies in full HD.

TESS extracts parts of each full-frame image to make cutouts around specific cosmic objects more than 467,000 of them at the moment and together they create a detailed record of changing brightness for each one, said Christina Hedges, lead for the TESS General Investigator Office and a research scientist at both the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Goddard. We use these files to produce light curves, a product that graphically shows how a sources brightness alters over time.

To find exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, TESS looks for the telltale dimming of a star caused when an orbiting planet passes in front of it. But stars also change brightness for other reasons: exploding as supernovae, erupting in sudden flares, dark star spots on their rotating surfaces, and even slight changes due to oscillations driven by internal sound waves. The rapid, regular observations from TESS enable more detailed study of these phenomena.

Some stars give TESS a trifecta of brightness-changing behavior. One example is AU Microscopii, thought to be about 25 million years old a rowdy youngster less than 1% the age of our Sun. Spotted regions on AU Mics surface grow and shrink, and the stars rotation carries them into and out of sight. The stormy star also erupts with frequent flares. With all this going on, TESS, with the help of NASAs now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, discovered a planet about four times Earths size orbiting the star every 8.5 days. Then, in 2022, scientists announced that TESS data revealed the presence of another, smaller world, one almost three times Earths size and orbiting every 18.9 days. These discoveries have made the system a touchstone for understanding how stars and planets form and evolve.

Here are a few more of the missions greatest hits:

New discoveries are waiting to be made within the huge volume of data TESS has already captured. This is a library of observations astronomers will explore for years, but theres much more to come.

Were celebrating TESSs fifth anniversary at work and wishing it many happy returns! Coln said.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASAs Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MITs Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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NASAs TESS celebrates fifth year scanning th - EurekAlert

A tremendous pulse of gamma-ray radiation that swept through our solar system on October 9, 2022, overwhelmed the gamma-ray detectors on multiple orbiting satellites and sent astronomers on the run to investigate the event using the most potent telescopes in the world.

The newly discovered source, designated GRB 221009A in honor of the time it was found, ended up becoming the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever observed.The gamma-ray burst, which lasted for more than 300 seconds, is thought to be the first sign of the birth of a black hole, which is created when the center of a large, rapidly spinning star shatters under the weight of itself.At nearly light speed, powerful plasma jets are ejected from the growing black hole, penetrating the falling star and emitting gamma rays.

Observations of GRB 221009A from radio waves to gamma rays, including crucial millimeter-wave observations with the Centre for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonians Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii, shed new light on the decades-long quest to understand the origin of these extreme cosmic explosions, according to a new study that appears today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

What would happen after the initial burst of gamma rays was the mystery of GRB 221009A, the brightest explosion ever seen. The studys principal author is Tanmoy Laskar, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah. According to him, a dazzling afterglow of light spanning the entire spectrum is produced as the jets collide with the gas surrounding the dying star. We must be quick and nimble to capture the light before it vanishes and take its secrets because the afterglow fades because the afterglow fades pretty quickly, he added.

In an effort to employ the greatest radio and millimetre telescopes in the world to analyse the afterglow of GRB 221009A, astronomers Edo Berger and Yvette Cendes of the Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) immediately obtained data with the SMA.

Garrett Keating, a SMA project scientist and CfA researcher, states they were able to swiftly turn the SMA to the site of GRB 221009A due to its capacity to respond quickly. The crew was impressed by the brightness of the GRBs afterglow, which we could observe for more than 10 days before it faded.

Astronomers were perplexed when they combined and analyzed data from the SMA and other telescopes around the world and discovered that the millimeter and radio wave measurements were significantly brighter compared to what the visible and X-ray radiation would suggest.

According to Cendes, CfA research associate, one explanation is that the potent jet created by GRB 221009A is more complicated than in other GRBs. Its likely that one part of the jet produces visible light and X-rays while another part generates radio waves and early millimeter waves.

According to researchers, this afterglow is so intense that we will keep looking into its radio emission for months, if not years. With this much longer time span, they hope to solve the riddle of the early excess emissions mysterious origin.

Unrelated to the specifics of this GRB, astronomers now have a crucial new skill: the capacity to react quickly to GRBs and other comparable phenomena with millimeter-wave telescopes.

According to Edo Berger, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and the CfA, the key lesson from this GRB is that without fast-acting radio and millimeter telescopes, such as the SMA, We would not be able to learn more about the most intense explosions in the cosmos. If we want to benefit from these gifts from the cosmos, we have to be as responsive as we can because we never know when such events will occur.

Read more on : https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-missions-study-what-may-be-a-1-in-10000-year-gamma-ray-burst/

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Unraveling new insights on cosmic explosions - Asiana Times

The University of Miami professor, National Geographic Explorer, inventor, and fashion photographer has created and developed next-generation remote sensing instruments capable of mapping the seafloor in remarkable detail.

One misstep and Ved Chirayath would have been a goner. Cut off from civilization and his cell phone useless, he knew that medical aid would never reach him in time if he were bitten by one of the countless sea snakes that surrounded him.

Theyre curious creatures, the University of Miami researcher and National Geographic Explorer said of the highly venomous snakes. Theyll swim right up to you and lick you. And when they sleep, they sleep head down in the rocks. So, my real concern was not to step on one.

But despite the very real prospect of death, Chirayath concentrated on the task at hand: mapping a colony of stromatolites in Australias snake-infested Shark Bay.

He would spend the entire two months of that 2012 field campaign navigating around the deadly snakes, the thought of dying only occasionally entering his mind. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge allowed him to stay focused.

Its that same thirst that drives him today in his quest to explore Earths last unexplored frontier: its oceans.

We have mapped more of Mars and our Moon than we have of our planets seafloor, and we know more about the large-scale structure of our universe and its history than we do about the various systems in our oceans, said Chirayath, the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. And we know so much more about our universe because we can see very far into space and in different wavelengths.

Peering into the deep ocean, however, is another matter. Light penetrates only so far below the sea surface, and ocean waves greatly distort the appearance of undersea objects.

But using a camera he invented that literally sees through ocean waves, Chirayath is removing those distortions and helping to reveal the trove of deep secrets hidden by our oceans. Mounted on a drone flying above the water, FluidCam uses a technology called Fluid Lensing to photograph and map the ocean in remarkable clarity. From American Samoa and Guam to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, he has used the device to map more than a dozen shallow marine ecosystems such as coral reefs at depths as low as 63 feet.

That still pales in comparison to the average depth of the ocean, which is nearly 4,000 meters. And 99 percent of the habitable volume of our planet is in that region, said Chirayath, who also directs the Rosenstiel Schools Aircraft Center for Earth Studies (ACES).

So, he created the more powerful MiDAR. The Multispectral Imaging, Detection, and Active Reflectance device combines FluidCam with high-intensity LED and laser light pulses to map and transmit 3D images of the sea floor at greater detail and depths. Chirayaths research will be on display April 2021 at the Universitys showcase exhibit during the eMerge Americas conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Recently, he used MiDAR to conduct multispectral mapping of corals in Guam, validating the airborne images during subsequent dives.

Still, even MiDAR will not illuminate objects 4,000 meters deep. But install the device on a robot sub that can dive thousands of meters deep, and the possibilities of imaging the seafloor in the same detail and volume that satellites have mapped land are limitless, according to Chirayath.

It keeps me up at night, he said of MiDARs potential. He envisions his creation, awarded NASAs invention of the year in 2019, exploring not only the Earths deep oceans but worlds beyondfrom sampling minerals on Mars to looking for signs of life beneath the icy ocean moons like Jupiter's Europa.

Chirayaths fascination with studying and surveying the ocean deep was born out of his love of the stars.

He grew up in Los Angeles, looking up at the stars and contemplating the possibility of life on other planets. As a youngster, he would attend open house events at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in nearby Pasadena, learning from the scientists and engineers who were building the Cassini space probe that explored Saturn and its intricate rings.

I knew at 5 years old that I wanted to work for NASA and make a contribution to discovering other worlds, Chirayath said.

By the time he was a teenager, astronomy had been his passion for more than half his life. It was also an escape, a methodology, he said, to deal with some of the challenges he faced at that time. I was homeless for about three years, and I used that time to sit on top of a mountain and do as much astronomy as I could, Chirayath noted.

At 16, he detected an exoplanet one and a half times the size of Jupiter and 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, doing so with a consumer digital camera he modified and attached to a telescope. His refashioned scope allowed him to employ the transit photometry method for detecting exoplanets. Whenever a planet passes directly between a star and its observer, it dims the stars light ever so slightly. Chirayaths modified telescope detected just such a dip in light.

Earth- and space-based observatories that look continuously at stars for weeks and even months at a time use the technique. It took Chirayath three years to locate the planet, but his patience paid off in the form of a scholarship he won and used to help study theoretical physics at Moscow State University in Russia.He later transferred to Stanford University, where he earned his undergraduate degree.

To help pay the bills while he attended college, he worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue. His pictures have also appeared in Elle, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair.

He earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University, reconnecting with his passion for astronomy and always asking himself, What can I do with small telescopes? How can I make an impact? How can I develop new technologies and explore our solar system?

He came to the University of Miami in 2021 after a decade-long career at NASAs Ames Research Center, where he founded and led its Laboratory for Advanced Sensing, inventing the suite of next-generation remote sensing technologies that are now the cornerstones of his work at ACES.

While at NASA, he also created NeMO-Net, a single player video game in which players help NASA classify coral reefs. The space agency awarded Chirayath with its 2016 Equal Employment Opportunity Medal for organizing its first participation in the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade.

His fluid lensing mapping of the ocean promises to improve the resilience of coastal areas impacted by severe storms as well as assess the effects of climate change on coastal areas around the world.

While his origins are in astronomy, today he is more of a marine scientist than an astrophysicist. Still, the two fields are incredibly similar, Chirayath pointed out. Theyre both very difficult to study and require thinking beyond our terrestrial comfort zone. I love them both, and they can easily coexist. You can have large space observatories, and they can even help one another. A lot of the technologies that Ive created were inspired by things I learned in astrophysics and applied astronomy. But theres not that curiosity for understanding our own planet in a way that there is for space, and Im hoping to change that.

He applauds the $14 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which has been taking the deepest infrared images of our universe ever taken.

But weve never invested $14 billion into an ocean observatory, into something that looks critically at a piece of the puzzle that if we miss, we do so at our own peril, Chirayath explained. Im one of the many technologists who are looking inward and saying, This is what we understand about the universe and its large-scale structure, but a lot of the questions that are being posed to understand our universe and whats in it can also be posed for the ocean. If we dont map it, if we dont understand it, if were not able to characterize it, then when it fails or changes, humans may not be a part of the future.

The University of Miami is a Titanium Sponsor of eMerge Americas. Visit the Universitys research and technology showcase April 2021 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Registration for an Unlimited TECH Pass is free for all University of Miami students and faculty and staff members.

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Ved Chirayath is on a mission to map the world's oceans - University of Miami: News@theU

According to a report, scientists have discovered and produced a new type of uranium isotope, known as uranium-241.

This is the first time a new neutron-rich isotope of uranium has been discovered since 1979, and it was identified by researchers at the High-energy Accelerator Research Organization located in Japan. Uranium-241 is an extremely radioactive element with 92 protons and 149 neutrons, and it is predicted to have a brief half-life of around 40 minutes.

Uranium, one of the most radioactive elements, is a member of the actinide series, which includes all elements with atomic numbers between 89 and 103. Uranium-241 is known as a neutron-rich isotope because it has more neutrons than is typical for uranium isotopes. This discovery has significant implications for the study of nuclear and astrophysics, as well as our understanding of heavy elements' behavior and stability.

The researchers utilized a technique called multinucleon transfer to create uranium-241 by firing uranium-238 at platinum-198 nuclei using Japan's RIKEN accelerator. The resulting nuclei were observed to determine their mass as they traveled a certain distance through a medium. This process led to the creation of 18 new isotopes with between 143 and 150 neutrons.

The discovery of uranium-241 illustrates the capabilities of modern particle accelerators and experimental methods in advancing scientific knowledge and exploration. The collision of atomic nuclei at high speeds and energies enables the creation and study of short-lived and exotic isotopes that were previously unobservable and unobtainable.

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Multinucleon transfer creates short-lived uranium isotope - Interesting Engineering