Monday, April 29, 2024

4400 - Index of Reviews 4400 to 4450

 

  

            -  4400  -   Index of Reviews 4400  to 4450

            -     This index is of the 50 reviews from 4400 to 4450.  Indices of all previous reviews is available upon request.      Writing style is stocatto with each paragraph an idea and limited to a few pages in total.  Comments are always welcome.  See  https://jimdetrick@blogspot.net

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            ----------------------------------  4400  -   Index of Reviews 4400  to 4450

           

       

            -     4400 - BLACKHOLES  -  stretch the mind?  -   Is there anything stranger in the universe than black holes? These bizarre, gravitational monstrosities don't only warp space and time; just thinking about them stretches and bends people's imaginations .

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            -     4401  - EMERGENT  GRAVITY  -  instead of dark matter?  -    In 2009, theoretical physicists proposed a radical reformulation of gravity. In this theory, gravity is not a fundamental force but rather a manifestation of deeper hidden processes. But in the 15 years since then, there hasn't been much experimental support for the idea. So where do we go next?

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            -      4402  - DARK  MATTER  TESTS  -     Most, if not all galaxies are surrounded by halos of this mysterious, unknown, but ubiquitous material.  This stuff also played a role in galaxy formation. The nature of that role is something astronomers are still figuring out. Today, they’re searching the infant Universe, looking for the tiniest, brightest galaxies. That’s because they could help tell the tale of dark matter’s role in galactic creation.

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            -    4403  -  BRIGHTEST  QUASAR -    The brightest quasar ever seen is powered by black hole that eats a 'sun a day'.   This quasar, as bright as 500 trillion suns, has evaded astronomers for over 40 years because of its incredible luminosity. Not only is it the brightest quasar ever seen, but it's also the brightest astronomical object in general ever seen. It's also powered by the hungriest and fastest-growing black hole ever seen.   It consumes the equivalent of over one sun's mass a day.

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            -     4404  -   PLANETS  -  why is solar system flat?  -    Have all 8 planets in our solar system ever aligned?    All eight planets will never truly be in a straight line, but they can get close to it.  The Sun, followed by Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune & Pluto.

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            -     4405  -  PLANETS  -  how do atmospheres vary?   -   What can they teach us about finding life beyond Earth?   Why study impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, and comets, and what these fantastic scientific fields can teach researchers and space fans regarding the search for life beyond Earth?

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            -      4406  -  UNIVERSE  -  expanding at different rates?  -   James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.  Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.

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            -     4407  -   MOON   -  how old is the moon?   -    Moon is 40 million years older than we thought, tiny crystals from Apollo mission confirm.  A new analysis of zircon crystals from the Apollo 17 mission has revealed that the moon formed around 40 million years earlier than past geological evidence suggested. However, our cosmic companion may be even older than that.

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                  4408  -    SUN  -   eruption on March 24, 2024.  -  The sun erupted over the weekend,  flinging electromagnetic radiation towards Earth, even illuminating skies with spectacular aurora borealis. For the first time, ESA's satellites, unlikely space weather duo of SMOS and Swarm, tracked the severe solar storm which warped Earth's magnetic field.

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            -   4409  -   LIFE  -  on Mars and the farthest galaxy?    -    NASA's Perseverance rover may already have found signs of life on Mars.  The discovery of an ancient lake bed beneath the Perseverance rover's location on Mars could mean the robotic scout has already scraped up microbial fossils. But we won't know for sure until we fetch the sample.

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            -     4410  -    CENTAURS  -   are small planetary bodies ?  -   These planetary bodies orbit between Jupiter and Neptune and have baffled astronomers for sharing characteristics with both asteroids and comets. Centaurs got their name after the mythical half-horse, half-human creatures called centaurs due to their dual characteristics.

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            -     4411  -    SPEED  OF  LIGHT  -  think about it, amazing!    Light travels fast but space has enormous distances.   Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest thing you can see with the naked eye. Check it out. It took  2.5 million years to reach your eyes.

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            -      4412  -   CLIMATE  CHANGE  -    time, of course it is changing?  -    Climate change is messing with how we measure time.  It may have delayed the need for the world's timekeepers to add a "negative leap second" to standard time.   Struggle to wrap your head around daylight savings? Spare a thought for the world's timekeepers, who are trying to work out how climate change is affecting Earth's rotation, and in turn, how we keep track of time.

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            -    4413  -  NEUTRINO  FACTORY  -  making stardust particles? -    A stardust particle locked in meteorite holds secrets of a star's explosive death.  These particles are like celestial time capsules, providing a snapshot into the life of their parent star.

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            -     4414  -   NUCLEAR  ENERGY  -  solution waiting to happen?  -    In December 2022, after more than a decade of effort and frustration, scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had set a world record by producing a fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed, a phenomenon known as “ignition”.

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            -     4415  - SOLAR  ECLIPSE  -    in 2024, what we hope to learn? -  A total solar eclipse will be seen across the United States in April 2024.  When a rare total solar eclipse sweeps across North America on April 8, scientists will be able to gather invaluable data on everything from the sun's atmosphere to strange animal behaviors and even possible effects on humans.

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            -      4416  -    SUPERNOVA  EXPLOSION  -  we live on what's left behind?  -   The threat posed by stellar cataclysms such as supernovae and related phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts are cataclysms are remote, but when they occur closer to home they can pose a threat to life on Earth.

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            -     4417    -   EXOPLANET  -   search for life.  -    With all the in-motion SETI research underway, just how prepared are we for a confirmed, door-ringing neighborhood watch revelation?  We should begin to think about how we convey this information, possible impacts to society, to religion, to politics, to technology, to governments.

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            -  4418  -  EXOPLANET  FOUND  -  will it host life?      Hycean Planet Found? “TOI-270 d”.  It may be able to host life even though being outside what scientists consider the regular habitable zone. Exoplanet's thick atmospheres can trap enough heat to keep the oceans warm even though they’re not close to their stars.

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            -      4419  -  SOLAR  ECLIPSE – 2024 , much more to learn?       Although Earth-based telescopes can provide images of the sun in a higher resolution, these telescopes can't study the extreme ultraviolet part of the solar light spectrum. Because these frequencies are filtered out by Earth's atmosphere, ground-based telescopes therefore don't see many of the key phenomena driving the sun's behavior.

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            -     4420  -  UNIVERSE  EXPANSION  RATE?  -   how fast is it,  really?  -   The notion of the absolute speed limit comes from special relativity, but who ever said that special relativity should apply to things on the other side of the universe? That's the domain of a more general theory. A theory called “general relativity”.

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            -    4421  -   DARK  ENERGY  SURVEY  -  to explain the universe?  -    By the time DESI has completed its five-year run, it will have mapped over three million quasars and 37 million galaxies. That massive trove of data should help scientists understand if dark energy is changing. Whatever the eventual answer, the question is vital to understanding the Universe.

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            -      4422  -   STARS  -   from birth to death?  -    Hubble Telescope witnesses a new star being born in a stunning cosmic light show.  The infant star FS Tau B is blasting out a powerful jet of matter that is slamming into sounding material.

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            -     4423  -   PARKER  SOLAR  PROBE?   -    Parker Solar Probe was blasted by Coronal Mass Ejections 28 times in 4 years.  PSP was launched on August 12, 2018, with the goal of becoming the first spacecraft to touch the Sun while teaching us more about our host star than any spacecraft or solar instrument in human history.

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            -     4424  -  SOLAR  ECLIPSE  SPEED  -   only the shadow knows ?  -    April's total solar eclipse will travel at speeds ranging from 10 million miles an hour, half the speed of the fastest supernova explosion ever detected, to as slow as 1,565 mph, about twice the speed of a supersonic aircraft.

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            -     4425  -  MARS  -  craters filled with water?  -    New research shows that the Gale Crater, the landing spot for NASA’s “MSL Curiosity”, held water for a longer time than scientists thought. Life needs water, and it needs stability. So, if Gale Crater held water for a long time, it strengthens the idea that Mars could’ve supported life.

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            -     4426  -  MILKY  WAY  GALAXY  -  from birth to today.   As galaxies merge and collide, their hydrogen gas clouds are disrupted, which can create a frenzy of star birth.   Over time, the Milky Way’s long filaments of gas and dust coalesced and resulted in the modern spiral structure of the galaxy today.

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            -     4427  -  MILKYWAY GALAXY   -  how big is it?   -    Exactly how massive is the Milky Way? How do you weigh a galaxy? It's an astronomical challenge, particularly if it's the galaxy you call home. It turns out there are several ways to get a handle on the mass of the Milky Way.

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            -     4428  -  GAMMA  RAY  BURSTS  -  from stars that collide?  -  Two neutron stars begin to merge blasting jets of high-speed particles creating short gamma-ray bursts. These are the most powerful events in the known universe.  Gamma-ray bursts are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. They can erupt with a quintillion (a 10 followed by 18 zeros) times the luminosity of our sun.   They are now thought to announce the births of new black holes, they were discovered by accident.

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            -     4429  -  FAST  RADIO  BURSTS  -     Fast radio-wave explosion ever found could be used to weigh the universe.    Astronomers traced a mysterious radio source to three merging galaxies 8 billion light-years away. Studying it could help uncover the universe's missing matter.

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            -     4430  - AGES  OF  STARS  -  how to measure it? -   The upcoming Roman Space Telescope will gather data from hundreds of millions of stars through its “Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey”, one of three core community surveys it will conduct. Roman will look toward our galaxy's center a region crowded with stars—to measure how many of these stars change in brightness over time. These measurements will enable multiple science investigations, from searching for distant exoplanets to determining the stars' rotation rates.

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            -     4431  -  BLACK  HOLES  CAME  FIRST?  -       Black holes not only existed at the dawn of time, they birthed new stars and supercharged galaxy formation.    New theories are challenging classical understanding that they formed after the first stars and galaxies emerged.

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            -     4432  -    MOON  HISTORY  -  splashed off the Earth?  -   Scientists recently solved a long-standing mystery surrounding the moon's 'lopsided' geology. About 4.5 billion years ago, a small planet smashed into the young Earth, flinging molten rock into space. Slowly, the debris coalesced, cooled and solidified, forming our moon.

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            -     4433  -  AGE  OF  THE  UNIVERSE?  -  was it the beginning?      If we count from the start of the hot Big Bang, we learn that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, with only a very tiny (1%) degree of uncertainty. But what gives us the right to call the start of the hot Big Bang "the beginning," particularly if we now can confidently state that a period of cosmic inflation preceded it?

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            -     4434  -  CALIFORNIA  EARTHQUAKE? -  did you feel the ground shake?  -    Fears grow over supervolcano that 'may swallow this entire US state' in apocalyptic eruption.  2 hours ago, Monday, April 15, 2024, fears are mounting over the potential eruption of a supervolcano in California, which has been dormant for hundreds of thousands of years.

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            -     4435  -  SUN'S  CORONA  PROBE  -  to touch the Sun?  -    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) was launched on August 12, 2018, with the goal of becoming the first spacecraft to touch the Sun while teaching us more about our host star than any spacecraft or solar instrument in human history.

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            -     4436  -    MARS  ROBOTS  -  what have they found?  -    Perseverance is a rover on Mars.  It finds its “dream rock” to be a specific type of rock so important that it holds convincing clues to Mars’ ancient habitability.   If scientists could design the perfect rock for Perseverance to find, it would be one that displayed evidence of ancient water and was the type that preserves ancient organic material.

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            -    4437  -  METEORITES  -  teach us about our solar system? -   Meteorites provide our best information about how the solar system formed and evolved. This includes planet formation. We also obtain information on astrophysics (stellar processes) through studies of pre-solar grains.

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            -    4438  -    ATOMS  -  are mostly empty space?      Practically all of the matter we see and interact with is made of atoms, which are mostly empty space. Then why is reality so... solid?   Although, at a fundamental level, the Universe is made up of point-like quantum particles, they assemble together to create objects of finite sizes and masses, occupying specific amounts of volume, that is space..

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            -     4439  -  OCEAN  TEMPERATURES  -  control the weather?   -    El Niño to flip to La Niña are the names of ocean cyrrents in what could be the hottest year on record.  A quick flip from El Niño to La Niña is coming soon, but what does that mean for the U.S.?  El Niño is likely to give way soon, ushering in a quick switch to its opposite atmospheric and ocean pattern, La Niña.

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            -     4440  -   ASTEROIDS  -  a close flyby?  -    The asteroid discovered Tuesday (April 9, 2024) made an extremely close, but harmless, pass by planet Earth on April 11.   Asteroid 2024 GJ2 is roughly the size of a car and, since its discovery, astronomers calculated that the space rock would graze by Earth at a mere 12-thousand-mile distance.     That's just three percent the distance between the Earth and the moon.

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            -     4441  - MARS  - Curiosity,  Ingenuity helicopter, Perseverance?      There was no intelligent life, but there may have been simple life in those lakes. Once we get Comet Geyser and the other samples back to Earth, we may find out for sure.

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            -    4442  -  NEUTRINOS  -      The Ghost Particle: What is a “Neutrino” and could it be the key to modern physics?   It came from deep space, moving at the speed of light, and crashed into Antarctica. Deep below the ice, it met its end. It wasn't an asteroid or alien spacecraft, but a particle that rarely interacts with matter, known as a “neutrino”. 

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            -      4443  -   DARK  MATTER  -  what is it , really?  -     Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that fills the universe but no one has ever seen.  “Dark matter” makes up over 80% of all matter in the universe, but scientists have never seen it.   We only assume it exists because, without it, the behavior of stars, planets and galaxies simply wouldn't make sense.

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            -     4444  -  “IO”  JUPITER'S  MOON  -  an active volcanic world?  -    Close flybys of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons and the most volcanically active world in our solar system, have revealed a lava lake and a towering feature called “Steeple Mountain” on the moon’s alien surface.

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            -      4445  -  UNIVERSE  EXPANDING   -  how to measure it?  -   James Webb Telescope continues to confirm that the Universe is behaving strangely?  Over a century ago, astronomers Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaitre independently discovered that the Universe was expanding. Since then, scientists have attempted to measure the rate of expansion (known as the Hubble-Lemaitre Constant) to determine the origin, age, and ultimate fate of the Universe.

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            -      4446  -   OLDEST  GALAXY  -   and the oldest stars ? v  A new program to photograph one-quarter of the southern sky is using the “Blanco” 4 meter telescope in Chile and equipment designed to identify the most ancient fossil stars in the Milky Way and our galactic neighbor. By uncovering these relics, astronomers hope to paint a better picture of how stars have enriched the cosmos with the elements that make up all that we see around us.

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            -     4447  -  CLOSE  ENCOUNTERS  -  will we know it if we see it?      To spot potential intelligent life out there in the great beyond, first you must cast a net wide by using an array of techniques and technologies.   Any "fishing expedition" for Extra - Terrestrials includes close-in studies of life in extreme environments right here on Earth, to help us recognize any signatures we might find on Mars or deep diving through the icy shell of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

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            -    4448  -   EXOPLANETS  -  can we find them?  -   The Hubble Space Telescope joins the hunt for newborn exoplanets.   James Webb Space Telescope quickly spotted signs of a forming exoplanet, but,  not the one that astronomers had expected to see.

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            -     4449  -     COMET  DISCOVERIES  ?   The spacecraft 'SOHO' discovers its 5,000th comet.  In December 1995, an observatory traveled nearly a million miles from Earth as part of a $1 billion mission to study the sun.

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            -   4450  -  CONSTELLATION  CASSIOPEIA  -  stars after explosion?  -   When a massive star runs out of fuel, it collapses in on itself and then explodes. It leaves behind a dense core where the protons and electrons are crushed into neutrons. It’s called a “neutron star”, and they’re the smallest and densest stellar objects in the Universe other than black holes.

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            March 24, 2024             Index of Reviews 4400 to 4450                          4450                                                                                              ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            -----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ---

            ---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 

            --  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews

            ---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------

            --------------------- ---  Monday, April 29, 2024  ---------------------------