It’s again the moment for a summary of the space news worth discussing this week (and in the past few). This time there are a few interesting subjects picked up here and there. As usual, links and a couple of comments included.
Cold Brown Dwarf discovered close to our Solar System
This is quite an interesting story: “Brown dwarfs, sometimes called “failed stars,” are spread throughout the Milky Way. They lack enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion but they are hot enough to glow in the infrared range of the light spectrum. Brown dwarfs are strikingly similar to Jupiter so we study their atmospheres in order to look at what weather on other worlds might look like. It’s possible that there is a cold world closer than what we believe to be the closest star to the Sun.” Read the article here.
Rover findings indicate stratified lake on ancient Mars
That water was once flowing on Mars is common knowledge by now. This article explains that “a long-lasting lake on ancient Mars provided stable environmental conditions that differed significantly from one part of the lake to another, according to a comprehensive look at findings from the first three-and-a-half years of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission. While previous work had revealed the presence of a lake more than 3 billion years ago in Mars’ Gale Crater, this study defines the lake’s chemical conditions and uses Curiosity’s powerful payload to determine that the lake was stratified.”
Scientists are reporting yet another burst of gravitational waves
This one made the news two years ago, but the implications are still not well understood. “The signals were picked up by the Advanced LIGO facilities in the US and are determined to have come from the merger of two huge black holes some three billion light-years from Earth. It is the third time now that the labs‘ laser instruments have been perturbed by the warping of space-time. The detection confirms that a new era in the investigation of the cosmos is now truly under way.” More on the BBC website.
Are aliens communicating with neutrino beams
A quite intriguing reflection piece on SETI. If intelligent life does exist beyond our Solar System, would they even communicate as we do, using radio transmitters and similar forms of technology? Here some possible answers.
WISE is certainly doing a great job in exploring our nearby outer space. More to come in future for sure.
As ever, a fascinating and informative roundup, Steph. Many thanks for sharing and I hope you have a great week:)
You too, Sarah, and thanks for stopping by! 🙂
A pleasure:)
🙂