Another good week for space news. These are the headlines that have caught my attention -all worthy of a follow-up.
The Universe Is Expanding So Fast We Might Need New Physics to Explain It -It is not the first time I read about it, but until today I’ve never stopped considering the implications. And yet, cosmology is certainly the most compelling (and complex, too) branch of astrophysics. “The revised expansion rate is about 10% faster than that predicted by observations of the universe’s trajectory shortly after the Big Bang, according to the new research. The study also significantly reduces the probability that this disparity is a coincidence, from 1 in 3,000 to just 1 in 100,000.”
Does a Neptune-Size Exomoon Really Exist Around This Alien Planet? Just when we thought the space creatures couldn’t get any stranger (see my series on exoplanet), scientists discover something else: a moon of the size of a (giant) planet, which is, incidentally, also the first exomoon ever detected. “NASA’s Kepler and Hubble space telescopes have spotted evidence of a Neptune-size satellite orbiting the Jupiter-like planet Kepler-1625b, which lies about 8,000 light-years from Earth, a new study reports.” While debates are still ongoing (read the article), the fact itself is absolutely fascinating.
How an Asteroid Flyby in 2017 Is Helping NASA Defend Earth from Armageddon – In case you’re worried we’re going to end like the dinosaurs, read what NASA is doing to protect our planet for all “incoming” asteroids that routinely visit our orbit. “A very strange series of memos arrived at the White House during the fall of 2017, detailing a would-be nightmare scenario: an asteroid apparently on track to hit Earth. But those memos were covered in bright red warnings noting that they were just part of a drill; humanity didn’t have any more reasons than normal to fear civilization’s end.”
Oh, and this week makes also 40 years of ALIEN: still one of the best SF (and horror) movie ever made! Happy (re)watching.