Depending on my mindset, a dying planet makes me think of events happening right now...or it reminds me of Superman.
For Superman fans, K2-22b is a disintegrating planet circling a distant red star. I wonder if one visionary scientist there tried to warn of impending doom...
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Studies of dying world K2-22b show that "there's still meat left on the bones," researchers say.
For an planet, the "meat" is silicate from an outer rocky outer layer, along with surprising signs of carbon dioxide and nitric oxide.
Research article here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08301
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This is what it looks like when a planet dies.
K2-22b orbits so close to its star that its outer layers are vaporizing, meaning that we can directly study the insides of a world 787 light years away.
(JWST data, left; artist's interpretation, right)
https://eos.org/articles/scientists-finally-get-a-good-look-at-a-disintegrating-exoplanet #space #science #nature
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Firefly's Blue Ghost mission looked back at Earth & is now looking ahead to the Moon. The spacecraft is on track for a lunar landing in early March.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/ #science #space #nature
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The Apollo flight path to the Moon was a lot faster and more energy-intensive than what Firefly is doing. It had to be, because Apollo was transporting fragile, perishable human cargo.
https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/apollo-11 #space #science #exploration
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Firefly is taking the high-efficiency, slow-motion path to the Moon -- 45 days of transit time, but very economical.
http://fireflyspace.com/news/blue-ghost-mission-1-live-updates/ #science #space
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New findings from JWST bolster the case that a lot of the heavy elements in the universe (including most of the gold on Earth) formed during collisions between neutron stars.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-colliding-neutron-star/
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You've probably heard that "we are stardust," but this graphic breaks it down further & tells you what kind of stars your dust came from--and which elements didn't come from stars at all.
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13873/ #science #nature #space
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This may be the strangest planet yet discovered. It seems to be a Pluto-size world circling the remains of three dead stars: two white dwarfs & a pulsar, as massive as the Sun but no bigger than Brooklyn.
If confirmed, it would also be the smallest exoplanet known.
https://astrobiology.com/2025/01/have-we-discovered-the-smallest-extra-solar-planet.html #space #science #astronomy #nature
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A reminder that humans are capable of great acts of wonder when we work together & embrace knowledge.
An international team of astronomers has discovered swarms of cold comets circling 74 nearby stars -- and got clear pictures of these "exocomet belts."
https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/astrophysicists-reveal-structure-74-exocomet-belts-orbiting-nearby-stars-landmark-survey #space #science #astronomy #nature
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However nasty the weather is where you are, it's worse on WASP-127b. This planet has howling winds blowing at 9 km/sec (20,000 mph). Temperatures drop 175° C (315° F) across its night side.
WASP-127b is also a weird puffball, less dense than balsa wood! What a world.
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2502/ #science #nature #astronomy #weather
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Remembering another notable date in history: 100 years ago this month, Edwin Hubble proved that our galaxy is just one small island in a vast cosmic sea.
Our awareness of galaxies is just one century old! I dig into the full story in my latest Invisible Universe column:
https://invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/the-100th-birthday-of-the-universe #space #science #astronomy #history
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A Canadian man narrowly avoided being struck by a meteorite that crashed into the walkway outside his home.
The offending space rock has since been bagged & tagged.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-charlottetown-meteorite-strike-first-audio-1.7430018 #science #space #nature #disaster
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Here's the article describing the new "kiss and capture" theory of how Pluto ended up with a moon more than half as large as it is. Full text at link.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01612-0.epdf?sharing_token=9Q4L9YJs0dXIOXIb7dJ9F9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NvCuY-CCmAUDS-e_nTUnvNU1gexpN1yz5LgFWb6OYeZtFJos0bQQeDtkY5TswjWh9TsZvZ6a44fcxf1Kw-c1KkueYZqv6G1Lx7wrnS7EBY4v1kIZ-srQuT1Md7nJKtojM%3D
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A sweet astronomy story, for a little break:
Earth & its Moon were forged from a violent collision. But Pluto and its giant moon, Charon, came together with a gentle kiss. A similarly soft process may have occurred all across the outer solar system.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/pluto-charon-moon-kiss #space #science #astronomy #love
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This is what BepiColombo was doing very early on Jan 8, while you were sleeping (* depending on your time zone).
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New pics just in from planet Mercury!
Yesterday, the BepiColombo probe made an ultra-close flyby & took images with its monitoring cameras (selfie-cams, basically), so you see the spacecraft in the frame. Next year it will enter orbit around Mercury and begin full science.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo/Top_three_images_from_BepiColombo_s_sixth_Mercury_flyby #space #science #astronomy #nature
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Credulous, pot-stirring stories about physics & astronomy are hardly the biggest problem going on right now. But they're emblematic of a "nobody knows anything" culture that is deeply corrosive.
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Catchy news stories often report bold claims like "new theory overturns cosmology," which then seem to vanish without a trace.
Here's a peek behind the scenes. A recent study allegedly debunked dark energy -- but it has its own big problems when examined closely.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/lumpy-explain-dark-energy/ #space #science #astronomy
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Clever composite photo lets you see a side of the universe normally hidden to human vision. A camera tuned to hydrogen-alpha light reveals glorious interstellar clouds swirling around the familiar stars of the constellation Orion.
(Photo: Włodzimierz Bubak)
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241228.html #science #space #astronomy #nature #art
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