Mike

@centyone

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Astronomers have detected the largest black hole-launched jet ever seen in the early universe. The twin-lobed jet that existed when the universe was just 1.2 billion years old stretches out for an incredible 200,000 light-years at the very least, making it twice as long as the width of the Milky Way. Even more surprisingly, the black hole that powers the quasar from which this jet erupts, designated J1601+3102, is relatively small. (For a quasar-powering supermassive black hole, that is. It still has a mass equivalent to 450 million suns).

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A brilliant comet waved its tail above the site of the world's largest telescope as it lit up the night sky last month. Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) soared through the starry skies above the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, home to the Very Large Telescope and future site of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is currently under construction. When completed, the ELT will be the world's largest telescope capable of observing the cosmos in visible light. Veteran comet hunters have called G3 (ATLAS) the "Great Comet of 2025" due to its daytime visibility and spectacular nighttime sightings. In these gorgeous photos from the Paranal Observatory, it's not hard to see why.

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Two gigantic canyons on the moon — both deeper than the Grand Canyon — were carved in less than 10 minutes by floods of rocks traveling as fast as bullets, a new study finds. Scientists analyzed the lunar canyons, named Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck, to find that these huge valleys measure 167 miles long (270 kilometers) and nearly 1.7 miles (2.7 km) deep, and 174 miles long (280 km) and nearly 2.2 miles deep (3.5 km), respectively. In comparison, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long (446 km) and is, at most, about 1.2 miles deep (1.9 km), the researchers noted.

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The moon may still be geologically active, judging from the way the lunar far side is wrinkling as the moon contracts. At least, that's what planetary scientists who have discovered 266 lunar "wrinkle ridges," say, as all of these ridges appear to have formed during the past 160 million years in the rare volcanic plains on the lunar far side. "Knowing that the moon is still geologically dynamic has very real implications for where we’re going to put our astronauts, equipment and infrastructure on the moon," said one of those scientists, Jaclyn Clark of the University of Maryland, in a statement.

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The rapid unscheduled disassembly (aka explosion) of SpaceX's Starship megarocket that rained scorching fragments of metal across the Caribbean in mid-January may have released significant amounts of harmful air-pollution into the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere. The rocket's upper stage blew up at an altitude of around 90 miles (146 kilometers) according to astronomer and space debris expert Jonathan McDowell, and weighed some 85 tons without propellant. Its plunge back to Earth through the atmosphere may have generated 45.5 metric tons of metal oxides and 40 metric tons of nitrogen oxides, according to University College London atmospheric chemistry researcher Connor Barker. Nitrogen oxides in particular are known for their potential to damage Earth's protective ozone layer.

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Throughout February, a striking gathering of the five brightest planets—Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Saturn—along with the more elusive Uranus and Neptune, will be the main celestial attraction in the evening sky. Later in the month, anyone with a clear, unobstructed view of the horizon may be able to see all five bright planets stretching across the sky. Two of these planets, Mercury and Saturn, will appear especially close together on Monday, Feb. 24 — the highlight of this month-long planetary display. While this planetary alignment isn't particularly rare, it is relatively uncommon. Spotting two, three, or even four bright planets at once is not unusual, but the chance to see all five together doesn't come around often. Looking ahead, a similar alignment will occur in late October 2028, though that event will take place before sunrise, requiring early risers to catch the view.

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New data is challenging what scientists previously knew about one of the youngest geological features on the Red Planet. That feature is Athabasca Valles, a system of valleys carved into volcanic plains on Mars. The Athabasca Valles system offers key insights into the history of water on the Red Planet, and its volcanic features such as crater-like rootless cones hint at brief episodes in Mars' past when water flowed on its surface. These small, conical mounds formed when lava interacted explosively with water or ice, marking the presence of underground ice near the surface at the time of eruption. The new findings raise questions about Mars' history, suggesting either that ancient floods were far more colossal than previously believed, or that the planet's climate once supported more extensive and persistent water than scientists imagined.

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At first glimpse, it may seem like infant stars and supermassive black holes have very little in common. Infant stars, or "protostars," haven't yet gathered enough mass to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores, the process which defines what a main sequence star is. Supermassive black holes, on the other hand, have masses equivalent to millions, or even billions, of suns crammed into a space no more than a few billion miles wide. For context, the solar system is estimated to be 18.6 trillion miles wide. Yet, protostars and supermassive black holes do have at least one thing in common: They both launch high-speed astrophysical jets from their poles while gathering mass to increase in size. And new research suggests the mechanism creating these jets may be the same for these objects at opposite ends of the astrophysical spectrum.

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There are 20 amino acids that create the proteins required for life on our planet — and scientists have now found exactly 14 of them on an asteroid millions of miles away. The asteroid in question, named Bennu, was the focus of a very dreamy NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx that launched in 2016. The first goal of OSIRIS-REx was to blast a spacecraft toward the grayish, lumpy object and get it really close to the surface so the probe could pluck up some space rock samples with a robotic arm. The second goal was to seal those samples within the craft for the long journey back to Earth in order to safely bring them down through our planet's atmosphere. In other words, OSIRIS-REx was meant to deliver untouched asteroid chunks home to be analyzed in a lab. This brilliant plan worked. The samples landed in the Utah desert in 2023, and scientists have been wringing those priceless pieces of Bennu for data ever since.

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A colossal coronal hole, nearly 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) wide, has opened in the sun's atmosphere, spewing fast-moving solar wind toward Earth. Coronal holes are regions where the sun's magnetic fields have opened up, allowing solar wind, to escape freely into space, according to spaceweather.com. These areas appear darker in ultraviolet images because the hot, glowing gases typically trapped within the magnetic fields are no longer contained, instead streaming outward into space.

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Hidden information in maps of galaxies spread across the universe could soon come forth, thanks to a new way of interrogating the data that preserves the three-dimensional nature of these maps. The hidden information could be vital in telling us whether the standard model of cosmology is correct, or whether there are deviations from it that could affect our understanding of the "dark universe," which comprises dark matter and dark energy. The research, led by astronomer Minh Nguyen of the University of Tokyo, utilizes powerful computer algorithms that are able to compare the relative positions of galaxies in a 3D map of the universe with detailed simulations that depict the growth and behavior of galaxies and haloes of dark matter.

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@centyone Spacecraft powered by electric propulsion could soon be better protected against their own exhaust, thanks to new supercomputer simulations. Electric propulsion is a more efficient alternative to traditional chemical rockets, and it's being increasingly used on space missions, starting off with prototypes on NASA's Deep Space 1 and the European Space Agency's SMART-1 in 1998 and 2003, respectively, and subsequently finding use on flagship science missions such as NASA's Dawn and Psyche missions to the asteroid belt. There are even plans to use electric propulsion on NASA's Lunar Gateway space station.

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@centyone Astronomers have found winds on a distant world that blow at a phenomenal 5.6 miles per second (9 kilometers per second), or 20,500 miles per hour (33,000 kilometers per hour) — the fastest winds ever measured on a planet. The faraway world, a gas giant called WASP-127b that was discovered in 2016, orbits a star 520 light-years from Earth. It zips around its host star in just four days, following a slightly skewed orbit. The exoplanet is also likely tidally locked to its star the same way the moon is to Earth — but perhaps its biggest eccentric trait is that it is slightly larger than Jupiter, yet only 16% as massive, making it one of the puffiest planets known to astronomers. So, its heavily inflated nature enables eager astronomers to look through the upper layers of its atmosphere.

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@centyone Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost moon lander caught haunting images of Earth while preparing to make its way towards lunar orbit. Blue Ghost launched on the "Ghost Riders in the Sky" mission on Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lander is currently orbiting Earth, and will continue to do so for about two more weeks before it performs an engine burn that will take it on a four-day journey to the moon. Firefly Aerospace's lander will then perform another burn to insert itself into orbit around the moon, where it will spend 16 days before descending to the lunar surface. On Friday (Jan. 24), Firefly Aerospace shared photos of Earth taken by the lander as it fired its engines to raise its orbit. "Our GhostRiders captured the beauty of our home planet during another Earth orbit burn. This second engine burn (and first critical burn) adjusted Blue Ghost's apogee (the furthest point from Earth) using just our Spectre RCS thrusters," the company posted to X.

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Mike pfp

@centyone Astronomers have, for the first time, watched the moment a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy spat out a jet of material at one-third of the speed of light. Plus, the structure is technically made up of two jets, each about half a light-year across. The black hole in question, which has a mass around 1.4 billion times that of the sun, is located at the heart of a galaxy designated 1ES 1927+654. It's located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. "The launch of a black hole jet has never been observed before in real-time," discovery team leader and University Eileen Meyer said in a statement. "We think the outflow began earlier, when the X-rays increased prior to the radio flare, and the jet was screened from our view by hot gas until it broke out early last year."

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Mike pfp

@centyone An incoming solar storm, also known as coronal mass ejection (CME), erupted from the sun on Jan. 21 and is currently on track to strike Earth with a glancing blow on Jan. 24-25. The possible impact could spark minor geomagnetic storm conditions and possible northern lights at high latitudes such as northern Michigan and Maine. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center forecasts that the Kp index will peak at 5.33 over the next 48 hours, with G1 geomagnetic storm conditions possible tomorrow night (Jan. 24) from 10:00 p.m. EDT through 4:00 a.m. EDT on Jan. 25 (0300-0900 GMT on Jan. 25).

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@centyone Japanese scientists have created the first-ever long-term dataset about Earth's entire atmosphere, stretching all the way to space. They hope the project will help shed light on some little-explored processes taking place inside our planet's gaseous shroud, including the magnificent northern lights. Some parts of Earth's atmosphere are studied continuously in incredible detail. For example, millions of weather stations all around the world, hundreds of meteorological balloons and countless airplanes provide daily measurements of the entire troposphere, the atmosphere's lowest region. The balloons also reach the lower part of the stratosphere, the layer above the troposphere. The amount of data generated by these measurements is so high that it makes modern computational weather models nearly infallible.

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Mike pfp

@centyone You can tell a lot about a human being's ancestry from their general characteristics. A child can have their father's eyes, their mother's smile, or maybe even their grandfather's male pattern baldness (thanks, grandpa). However, black holes have few defining characteristics — as theoretical physicist John Wheeler put it, "black holes have no hair" (much like your humble author). Of course, though, testing a child's parentage based on physical features is far too subjective — that's typically where DNA tests come in. Such tests can offer a far more scientific way of checking a person's lineage, and new research suggests an analogous ancestry test for black holes. Rather than relying on a cheek swab or a little blood, however, these cosmic DNA tests utilize tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, first proposed by Albert Einstein 110 years ago.

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Dark matter can't be too heavy or it might break our best model of the universe, new research suggests. We have an abundance of evidence that something fishy is happening in the universe. Stars orbit within galaxies far too quickly. Galaxies move around inside clusters much too fast. Structures grow and evolve too rapidly. If we count only the matter we can see, there simply isn't enough gravity to explain all of these behaviors. The vast majority of cosmologists believe all of these phenomena can be explained through the presence of dark matter, a hypothetical form of matter that is massive, electrically neutral and hardly, if ever, interacts with normal matter. This dark matter makes up most of the mass in the universe, far outweighing the amount of luminous matter.@centyone

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Mike pfp

@centyone In a race against time, clouds and the setting sun, photographer Josh Dury captured this dramatic photograph of Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) at dusk on Jan. 15. The comet is a rare visitor to our cosmic neighborhood, orbiting our sun every 160,000 years or so. It reached peak brilliance this week after surviving its closest approach to the sun — perihelion — passing within 8.7 million miles (14 million km) of our star on Jan. 13. "This comet as it stands, is only possible to photograph during the glare of the sun," Josh Dury told Space.com. "Being near the apparent brightness of Venus makes it a possible target at dusk; after sundown."

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