- 3564 - ASTRONOMY MYSTERIES - need for more science? Our own planet represents a tiny fraction of the peculiar phenomena that can be found lurking throughout the cosmos, and every day astronomers turn up new surprises. Here are some examples. Starting with the random appearances of “fast radio bursts”
--------------------- 3564 - ASTRONOMY MYSTERIES - need for more science?
- Earth exhibits strange, self-reproducing flora and fauna, crawling upon a blue ball of semimolten rock covered in a thin, hard shell and blanketed by a tenuous film of gases. Who would have designed such a thing?
-
- There are the random appearances of “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) across the sky. Astronomers in 2022 discovered 13 of the mysterious signals, including one that repeated from the same location over several months.
-
- Since 2007, researchers have been receiving these ultrastrong, ultrabright radio signals lasting only a few milliseconds. These enigmatic flashes have been called fast radio bursts and they appear to be coming from billions of light-years away. Scientists managed to capture a repeating FRB, which flashed six times in a row, the second such signal ever seen and one that could help them unravel this mystery.
-
- The strongest substance in the universe forms from the leftovers of a dead star. According to simulations, protons and neutrons in a star's shriveled husk can be subject to insane gravitational pressure, which squeezes them into linguini-like tangles of material that would snap if you applied to them 10 billion times the force needed to shatter steel.
-
- The dwarf planet “Haumea“, which orbits in the Kuiper Belt out beyond Neptune, is unusual. It has a strange elongated shape, two moons and a day that lasts only 4 hours, making it the fastest-spinning large object in the solar system.
-
- But in 2017, Haumea got even weirder when astronomers watched it pass in front of a star and noticed extremely thin rings orbiting around it, likely the result of a collision sometime in the distant past.
-
- Is there such a thing as a moon orbiting a moon, dubbed a moonmoon. Calculations suggest that there's nothing impossible about their formation. Perhaps astronomers may one day discover one.
-
- Dark matter, that unknown substance comprising 85 percent of all matter in the universe is strange enough. But researchers are at least sure about one thing: Dark matter is everywhere.
-
- Astronomers were scratching their heads over a peculiar galaxy they spotted in March 2018 that seemed to contain hardly any dark matter. Subsequent work suggested that the celestial oddity did in fact contain dark matter.
-
- The star known as “KIC 846285“, nicknamed “Tabby's star“, would dip in brightness at irregular intervals and for odd lengths of time, sometimes by as much as 22 percent changes in duration. Most researchers believe the star to be surrounded by an abnormal ring of dust that's causing the darkening.
-
- The weirdest moon in the solar system could go to Jupiter's overly volcanic Io, Neptune's geyser-spewing Triton. But another of the strangest looking is Saturn's Hyperion, a pumice-stone-like irregular rock pockmarked with numerous craters. The Cassini spacecraft, visited the Saturn system between 2004 and 2017, found that Hyperion was charged with a "particle beam" of static electricity flowing out into space.
-
- The single, high-energy neutrino that struck Earth on Sept. 22, 2017, wasn't, on its own, all that extraordinary. Physicists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica see neutrinos of similar energy levels at least once a month.
-
- But this one was special because it was the first to arrive with enough information about its origin for astronomers to point telescopes in the direction it came from. They figured out that it had been flung at Earth 4 billion years ago by a “flaring blazar“, a supermassive blackhole at the center of a galaxy that had been consuming surrounding material
-
- DGSAT I is an “ultradiffuse galaxy” (UDG), meaning it is as big as a galaxy like the Milky Way but its stars are spread out so thinly that it is nearly invisible. In 2016, astronomers noticed that it was sitting all alone, quite unlike other UDGs, which are typically found in clusters. Its characteristics suggest that the faint object formed during a very different era in the universe, back just 1 billion or so years after the Big Bang, making it a living fossil.
-
- Massive objects curve light, enough so that they can distort the image of things behind them. When researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to spot a quasar from the early universe, they used it to estimate the universe's expansion rate and found that it is expanding faster today than it was back then.
-
- Neutron stars are extremely dense objects formed after the death of a regular star. Normally, they emit radio waves or higher-energy radiation such as X-rays, but in September 2018, astronomers found a long stream of infrared light coming from a neutron star 800 light-years away from Earth, something never before observed. The researchers proposed that a disk of dust surrounding the neutron star could be generating the signal, but the ultimate explanation has yet to be found.
-
- Drifting through the galaxy are rogue planets, which have been flung away from their parent star by gravitational forces. One particular peculiarity in this class is a planet-size object 200 light-years away whose magnetic field is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter's. This is strong enough to generate flashing auroras in its atmosphere, which can be seen with radio telescopes.
-
May 1, 2022 ASTRONOMY MYSTERIES - need for more science? 3564
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- 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, May 2, 2022 ---------------------------
--------------------- 3564 - ASTRONOMY MYSTERIES - need for more science?
-
- Earth exhibits strange, self-reproducing flora and fauna, crawling upon a blue ball of semimolten rock covered in a thin, hard shell and blanketed by a tenuous film of gases. Who would have designed such a thing?
-
- There are the random appearances of “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) across the sky. Astronomers in 2022 discovered 13 of the mysterious signals, including one that repeated from the same location over several months.
-
- Since 2007, researchers have been receiving these ultrastrong, ultrabright radio signals lasting only a few milliseconds. These enigmatic flashes have been called fast radio bursts and they appear to be coming from billions of light-years away. Scientists managed to capture a repeating FRB, which flashed six times in a row, the second such signal ever seen and one that could help them unravel this mystery.
-
- The strongest substance in the universe forms from the leftovers of a dead star. According to simulations, protons and neutrons in a star's shriveled husk can be subject to insane gravitational pressure, which squeezes them into linguini-like tangles of material that would snap if you applied to them 10 billion times the force needed to shatter steel.
-
- The dwarf planet “Haumea“, which orbits in the Kuiper Belt out beyond Neptune, is unusual. It has a strange elongated shape, two moons and a day that lasts only 4 hours, making it the fastest-spinning large object in the solar system.
-
- But in 2017, Haumea got even weirder when astronomers watched it pass in front of a star and noticed extremely thin rings orbiting around it, likely the result of a collision sometime in the distant past.
-
- Is there such a thing as a moon orbiting a moon, dubbed a moonmoon. Calculations suggest that there's nothing impossible about their formation. Perhaps astronomers may one day discover one.
-
- Dark matter, that unknown substance comprising 85 percent of all matter in the universe is strange enough. But researchers are at least sure about one thing: Dark matter is everywhere.
-
- Astronomers were scratching their heads over a peculiar galaxy they spotted in March 2018 that seemed to contain hardly any dark matter. Subsequent work suggested that the celestial oddity did in fact contain dark matter.
-
- The star known as “KIC 846285“, nicknamed “Tabby's star“, would dip in brightness at irregular intervals and for odd lengths of time, sometimes by as much as 22 percent changes in duration. Most researchers believe the star to be surrounded by an abnormal ring of dust that's causing the darkening.
-
- The weirdest moon in the solar system could go to Jupiter's overly volcanic Io, Neptune's geyser-spewing Triton. But another of the strangest looking is Saturn's Hyperion, a pumice-stone-like irregular rock pockmarked with numerous craters. The Cassini spacecraft, visited the Saturn system between 2004 and 2017, found that Hyperion was charged with a "particle beam" of static electricity flowing out into space.
-
- The single, high-energy neutrino that struck Earth on Sept. 22, 2017, wasn't, on its own, all that extraordinary. Physicists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica see neutrinos of similar energy levels at least once a month.
-
- But this one was special because it was the first to arrive with enough information about its origin for astronomers to point telescopes in the direction it came from. They figured out that it had been flung at Earth 4 billion years ago by a “flaring blazar“, a supermassive blackhole at the center of a galaxy that had been consuming surrounding material
-
- DGSAT I is an “ultradiffuse galaxy” (UDG), meaning it is as big as a galaxy like the Milky Way but its stars are spread out so thinly that it is nearly invisible. In 2016, astronomers noticed that it was sitting all alone, quite unlike other UDGs, which are typically found in clusters. Its characteristics suggest that the faint object formed during a very different era in the universe, back just 1 billion or so years after the Big Bang, making it a living fossil.
-
- Massive objects curve light, enough so that they can distort the image of things behind them. When researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to spot a quasar from the early universe, they used it to estimate the universe's expansion rate and found that it is expanding faster today than it was back then.
-
- Neutron stars are extremely dense objects formed after the death of a regular star. Normally, they emit radio waves or higher-energy radiation such as X-rays, but in September 2018, astronomers found a long stream of infrared light coming from a neutron star 800 light-years away from Earth, something never before observed. The researchers proposed that a disk of dust surrounding the neutron star could be generating the signal, but the ultimate explanation has yet to be found.
-
- Drifting through the galaxy are rogue planets, which have been flung away from their parent star by gravitational forces. One particular peculiarity in this class is a planet-size object 200 light-years away whose magnetic field is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter's. This is strong enough to generate flashing auroras in its atmosphere, which can be seen with radio telescopes.
-
May 1, 2022 ASTRONOMY MYSTERIES - need for more science? 3564
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- 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, May 2, 2022 ---------------------------
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