A curious human. Opening minds @openmind_mag. Casting pods with @BillNye. AKA: https://xitter.cf/t.co/CpYNl1MZWR and https://xitter.cf/t.co/8DXboHh4d5
Brooklyn, NY
Joined February 2009
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Corey S. Powell retweeted
Voyager 1 has been in space for almost 50 years, and just reached one light-day from Earth. The probe and its twin have been finding that the solar system’s boundaries are not very sharp.
sciencenews.org/article/voya…
There's more to the universe than meets the eye. We may be surrounded by dark galaxies--blobs of gas & dark matter, up to a billion times as massive as the Sun but starless.
These galaxies would "shine" in gravity (illustrated) but emit no light.
iac.es/en/outreach/news/gala…
Now astronomers using China's FAST radio telescope may have tracked down one of these dark galaxies, by tuning into radio emissions from the galaxy's (starless) gas clouds.
We're getting better and better at seeing into the unseen.
arxiv.org/html/2609.29852v1
Here's some time travel to start your weekend.
Using 3 years of computer runtime, researchers simulated billions of years of cosmic history in unprecedented detail. The result shows how pulses of collapse, star formation & explosions shaped our galaxy.
news.uchicago.edu/story/new-…
This map doesn't look like much...until you realize what it is.
This is a measurement of *all the mass in the universe* between here & the cosmic microwave background (the edge of the visible cosmos), as deduced from its collective gravitational pull.
news.uchicago.edu/story/sout…
Out of a wreckage of a dying star, a new planet was born. And now that planet is evaporating like a comet, leaving a trail that whips around every 4 days.
It's a remarkable story written in chemical clues. Nobody's ever seen anything like it before.
esahubble.org/news/heic2613/
Remarkably, this Jupiter-size planet is likely to survive. More remarkably, if it has large moons they will (briefly) reside in the habitable zone around their white dwarf star. Imagine how strange life would be there...
nature.com/articles/s41550-0…
Today in space: The Hera spacecraft is about to perform a hard burn so it can meet up with asteroid Dimorphos.
4 years ago, NASA deliberately crashed a probe into Dimorphos. Starting next month, Hera will map the wreckage.
esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/Br…
After Hera reaches Dimorphos on November 25, it will map the asteroid at 1-meter resolution, study its gravity & inner structure, deploy 2 cubesats, and test rendezvous techniques that could be crucial for deflecting or mining asteroids in the future.
heramission.space/
The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Francis Halzen, who figured out how to turn a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into a huge neutrino detector. The resulting IceCube experiment is now studying extreme events across the universe.
nobelprize.org/prizes/physic…
We can't touch the deep interior of our planet, but we can now see it in the "light" of neutrinos emitted by radioactive elements. Early results suggest our Earth is intriguingly lopsided.
quantamagazine.org/neutrinos…
This is your periodic reminder that humans are clever & are capable of great feats of discovery. We can solve huge problems when we set our minds to it, too.
Here, seeing neutrinos from the bottom of a Canadian mine:
snoplus.phy.queensu.ca/geo.h…
In astronomy, modest data points can hide stories of extreme drama. Here, each purple and white dot indicates a place where planets are colliding & destroying each other, releasing huge clouds of debris. (Artist's interpretation at right.)
science.nasa.gov/missions/we…
The birth of Earth's Moon would have created a similar debris cloud around the Sun 4.5 billion years ago. We might be seeing analogous catastrophic moments of destruction & rebirth around other stars.
(Art by Chesley Bonestell, one of my favorites.)
iopscience.iop.org/article/1…
Enigmatic flashes of x-rays in the sky may come from the catastrophic merger of two stars, creating an ultra-dense and ultra-magnetc remnant called a "magnetar."
The finding come from another kind of merger: one of Chinese & EU science missions.
sciencedaily.com/releases/20…
China's Einstein Probe satellite uses "lobster eye" optics to provide a unique, wide-field look at the x-ray sky. If something goes bump in the night (in x-rays!), Einstein will see it.
ep.bao.ac.cn/leia/
Here comes the nor'easter, seen by the GOES-19 satellite. It's building outside my apartment, and it is *loud*. (The storm, that is, not the satellite.)
star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/co…
There's a lot we still don't know about how the Moon formed, but new computer simulations show that the Moon might have come together in just a *few hours*.
Which makes me feel really unproductive today.
swri.org/newsroom/press-rele…
A surprise in the computer simulations: The outcome of a giant impact depends sensitively on the temperature & composition of the protoplanet that (probably) struck Earth.
A slight change would have produced a different kind of Moon, or no Moon at all.
iopscience.iop.org/article/1…
The Moon shaped a lot of life on Earth, including holidays (like Yom Kippur) anchored to the lunar calendar. But moons are delicate things. We managed to keep ours. Venus may have eaten its moon. One more way it lost out...
news.ucr.edu/articles/2026/0…
How does a planet devour a moon? Full technical answer at the link.
iopscience.iop.org/article/1…
