RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist  ·  5 days ago

Content Warning

Primordial black holes and dark matter, oh my! Hard SF writers will want to read this article.

https://phys.org/news/2025-01-gravitational-black-holes-quantum-effect.html

@orionkidder : if recollection serves me, this article will be of interest re one of your SF universes.

#BoostingIsSharing

#Writer#Author#ScienceFiction#SF #scifi#WritingCommunity#WritersOfMastodon#BlackHole #pbh #ligo#Science#Physics#Astrophysics#QuantumPhysics#QuantumMechanics#Space#BlackHoles #gravitywaves

Corey S Powell
Corey S Powell  ·  last week

Content Warning

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

Corey S Powell
Corey S Powell  ·  2 weeks ago

Content Warning

Newly discovered: A pair of supermassive black holes (40 million times as massive as the Sun) cuddling in a distant galaxy.

"Cuddling" in this case means they're about as far apart as Voyager 1 is from Earth...which is really close for such monster objects.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/swift/nasas-swift-studies-gas-churning-monster-black-holes/ #science #space #astronomy

Watch as a gas cloud encounters two supermassive black holes in this simulation. The complex interplay of gravitational and frictional forces causes the cloud to condense and heat. Some of the gas is ejected from the system with each orbit of the black holes.
SETI Institute
SETI Institute  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

#PPOD: This image from ESA’s #Mars Express shows a beautiful slice of the #RedPlanet from the northern #polarcap downwards, and highlights cratered, pockmarked swathes of the Terra Sabaea and Arabia Terra regions. It comprises data gathered on 17 June 2019 during orbit 19550. This image was created using data from the nadir and color channels of the High-Resolution Stereo Camera. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

#science #space #scicomm

Astro Hawk (Ian Kluft) 🚀🛰️
Astro Hawk (Ian Kluft) 🚀🛰️  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

The pace of #space launches has reached the point that lots of stuff is always happening. But some things don't go as planned. @LiveScience was able to make a Top 10 list of mishaps in space in 2024. #Starliner figures prominently on the list. But also 3 #Falcon9 groundings, #Starship explosions, and misc probes and rovers. https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/10-times-space-missions-went-very-wrong-in-2024#NewSpace#NASA#SpaceX#Boeing
Daniel Pomarède
Daniel Pomarède  ·  4 weeks ago

Content Warning

Wowzer! Map of cosmic flows, by yours truly, makes it to the cover of the Nature Astronomy journal.

"Galaxies from
wherever flock
together"

I'm no poet, but could this be a Haiku?

https://www.nature.com/natastron/volumes/8/issues/12

Credits:
Image: Daniel Pomarède, Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l’Univers, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay.
Cover design: Bethany Vukomanovic.

#Cosmology#Galaxies#Astronomy #Astrodon#Astrophysics#Cosmography#Cartography#Map#Cosmicflows #science#STEM #news #space

A cover of the Nature Astronomy journal, dated December 2024, Volume 8, issue number 12, featuring a three-dimensional visualization of the cosmic velocity field inferred from the Cosmicflows-4 catalog of galaxies' distances and velocities. This map spans two billion lightyears from top to bottom. The velocity field is mapped by means of tens of thousands of very thin streamlines, seeded at the positions of the catalog's galaxies. Streamlines are shown white and semi-transparent, against a black background. They exhibit a very complex pattern with multiple attractors, seen as points of convergence of the lines. A text reads Galaxies from wherever flock together.
A cover of the Nature Astronomy journal, dated December 2024, Volume 8, issue number 12, featuring a three-dimensional visualization of the cosmic velocity field inferred from the Cosmicflows-4 catalog of galaxies' distances and velocities. This map spans two billion lightyears from top to bottom. The velocity field is mapped by means of tens of thousands of very thin streamlines, seeded at the positions of the catalog's galaxies. Streamlines are shown white and semi-transparent, against a black background. They exhibit a very complex pattern with multiple attractors, seen as points of convergence of the lines. A text reads Galaxies from wherever flock together.
A cover of the Nature Astronomy journal, dated December 2024, Volume 8, issue number 12, featuring a three-dimensional visualization of the cosmic velocity field inferred from the Cosmicflows-4 catalog of galaxies' distances and velocities. This map spans two billion lightyears from top to bottom. The velocity field is mapped by means of tens of thousands of very thin streamlines, seeded at the positions of the catalog's galaxies. Streamlines are shown white and semi-transparent, against a black background. They exhibit a very complex pattern with multiple attractors, seen as points of convergence of the lines. A text reads Galaxies from wherever flock together.
David August
David August  ·  last month
They're gonna get people killed and in so doing also poison the public's view of #SpaceExploration, all because they cannot be bothered to buy an mf-ing generator or something that a f-ing 8th grader could sort out. This recklessness is bad and so typical of the apartheid space douche and his cascading bad ideas. All he does is accumulate money for himself and hurt others.

#Musk is a hazard to all living things, and some non-living things.

https://gizmodo.com/spacex-reportedly-lost-communication-with-private-astronaut-mission-before-historic-spacewalk-2000540517

🧵 2/3

David August
David August  ·  last month

Content Warning

Footnotes:

₁ three points-safe - at least three independent components or safety features must fail simultaneously for major disaster happen.

₂ failover - NIST defines as the process of automatically switching to a backup system when the primary system fails. The goal of failover is to minimize or eliminate the impact on users and keep critical systems running.

🧵 3/3 end

#spaceX #space #safety#3PointsSafe#ThreePointsSafe #failover#GroundControl #musk #elon#ElonMusk #disaster #aerospace

David August
David August  ·  last month

Content Warning

"...a power outage at #SpaceX’s California facility caused a loss of #GroundControl, meaning that the mission control team was briefly unable to command the #spacecraft."

Single outage brought GROUND CONTROL down?! On the ground where power grids & diesel generators at a nearby home improvement store are! Have they never heard of battery backups and generators?! They have no idea what 3 points-safe₁ means, nor failover₂, and have no business trying to send so much as a spatula to #space.

🧵 1/3

Corey S Powell
Corey S Powell  ·  last month

Content Warning

Intriguing "hey, that's weird" discovery: Astronomers have found 14 asteroids that seeming move under their own power.

These objects are classified as "dark comets." Presumably they are emitting puffs of gas that shifts their orbits. But ...so far, nobody can spot any sign of activity.

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/nasa-researchers-discover-more-dark-comets/ #space #science #astronomy #nature

The orbits of the fourteen currently known dark comets, Jupiter, and the Earth. One orbital period is shown for each object starting on the vernal equinox in 2023 March, and the points represent the corresponding initial positions of the Earth and of Jupiter. The left and right panels highlight the orbits of the outer and inner dark comets respectively. Orbits of the newly discovered dark comets are labeled with italicized font, and the orbits of previously reported objects are labeled in roman font.
The orbits of the fourteen currently known dark comets, Jupiter, and the Earth. One orbital period is shown for each object starting on the vernal equinox in 2023 March, and the points represent the corresponding initial positions of the Earth and of Jupiter. The left and right panels highlight the orbits of the outer and inner dark comets respectively. Orbits of the newly discovered dark comets are labeled with italicized font, and the orbits of previously reported objects are labeled in roman font.
The orbits of the fourteen currently known dark comets, Jupiter, and the Earth. One orbital period is shown for each object starting on the vernal equinox in 2023 March, and the points represent the corresponding initial positions of the Earth and of Jupiter. The left and right panels highlight the orbits of the outer and inner dark comets respectively. Orbits of the newly discovered dark comets are labeled with italicized font, and the orbits of previously reported objects are labeled in roman font.
Corey S Powell
Corey S Powell  ·  last month

Content Warning

Astronomers are closing in on a radically new kind of cosmic map--a map that shows the universe in gravitational waves.

The process is hard. This new, preliminary version is uncertain. But we're seeing a fresh view of reality come into focus.

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/mapping-gravitational-wave-universe #space #science #astronomy #nature

This map, which measures the directional power of the gravitational wave signal, reveals some intriguing results. Astrophysicists generally expect the gravitational wave signal to be approximately the same in all directions. This arises from key cosmological assumptions that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, generally evenly distributed in all directions and evenly mixed. Surprisingly our map shows a ‘hot spot’ - an area of stronger gravitational wave signal in the Southern Hemisphere. This hot spot could suggest that a nearby, extraordinarily massive black hole binary is drowning out others, but it may also just be a statistical anomaly.
This map, which measures the directional power of the gravitational wave signal, reveals some intriguing results. Astrophysicists generally expect the gravitational wave signal to be approximately the same in all directions. This arises from key cosmological assumptions that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, generally evenly distributed in all directions and evenly mixed. Surprisingly our map shows a ‘hot spot’ - an area of stronger gravitational wave signal in the Southern Hemisphere. This hot spot could suggest that a nearby, extraordinarily massive black hole binary is drowning out others, but it may also just be a statistical anomaly.
This map, which measures the directional power of the gravitational wave signal, reveals some intriguing results. Astrophysicists generally expect the gravitational wave signal to be approximately the same in all directions. This arises from key cosmological assumptions that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, generally evenly distributed in all directions and evenly mixed. Surprisingly our map shows a ‘hot spot’ - an area of stronger gravitational wave signal in the Southern Hemisphere. This hot spot could suggest that a nearby, extraordinarily massive black hole binary is drowning out others, but it may also just be a statistical anomaly.
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