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Category: space

The Chinese inroads into space have got strategic circles abuzz with discussions about a possible revival of a Cold War-type competition between the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union.

China has yet again made headlines with a move that goes beyond just sending missions to the Moon or Mars. It has claimed to have launched a satellite that could take high-resolution photos of American cities from space, which can capture even details of a vehicle’s number plate.

According to experts, a Chinese satellite captured photographs of a vast region around a US city in just 42 seconds, crisp enough to recognize a military vehicle on the street and tell what type of weapon it might be carrying.

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An international scientific group with outstanding Valencian participation has managed to measure for the first time oscillations in the brightness of a magnetar during its most violent moments. In just a 10th of a second, the magnetar released energy equivalent to that produced by the sun in 100,000 years. The observation was carried out without human intervention, thanks to an artificial intelligence system developed at the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL) of the University of Valencia.

Among , objects that can contain a half-million times the mass of the Earth in a diameter of about 20 kilometers, are magnetars, a small group with the most intense magnetic fields known. These objects, of which only 30 are known, suffer violent eruptions that are still little known due to their unexpected nature and their duration of barely 10ths of a second. Detecting them is a challenge for science and technology.

Over the past 20 years, scientists have wondered if there are high frequency oscillations in the magnetars. The team recently published their study of the of a magnetar in the journal Nature. They measured oscillations in the brightness of the magnetar during its most violent moments. These episodes are a crucial component in understanding giant magnetar eruptions. The work was conducted by six researchers from the University of Valencia and Spanish collaborators.

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It will take about five days to deploy the James Webb Space Telescope’s fragile sunshade in a complex and high-risk procedure.

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With hundreds of times more food per acre than regular farms.

Vertical farming is a revolutionary form of agriculture. As its name suggests, it’s a form of agriculture that is specifically designed to facilitate agricultural production inside vertical structures. These farms can be created inside old warehouses, used shipping containers, greenhouses, or other buildings, saving space and energy.

As a more sustainable method of farming, vertical farming tends to require much less energy than regular farming which is estimated to be 95% less water since the used water in farming can be recycled and reused.

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The material that the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft returned from asteroid Ryugu is the most pristine sample we’ve ever gotten our hands on.

Tests at two laboratories show that the dark grains that the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft collected from the carbon-rich near-Earth asteroid 162,173 Ryugu are the most primitive materials known in the solar system.

“In this body you see hydrated materials and signs of organics from very early in the formation of the solar system — that’s exciting!” says Deborah Domingue (Planetary Science Institute), who was not involved in those studies but did earlier analysis of remote sensing data of Ryugu.

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All we can say about most of the 4,000+ known exoplanets is that they exist. Their physical characteristics are unknowable with current technology, but a few have given up some secrets. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified a magnetic field around the exoplanet HAT-P-11b. Earth’s magnetic field is essential for our continued existence, and this is the first time we’ve confirmed one around an exoplanet.

Earth and several other objects in our solar system have magnetic fields, a consequence of the way planets and moons interact with the solar wind. On Earth, the magnetosphere deflects damaging radiation, which would otherwise render the surface inhospitable. Fields surrounding exoplanets could serve a similar purpose. There was every reason to think exoplanets could have magnetic fields like the ones we see locally, but this is the first time we’ve been able to confirm that.

Astronomers from the University of Arizona observed the exoplanet HAT-P-11 b across six transits — that’s when the exoplanet passes in front of its host star from our perspective. This is how the HATNet Project discovered HAT-P-11 b in 2009. It was confirmed and further characterized later using radial velocity measurements from the Keck Observatory, which is the other standard method for detecting distant planets. Although, HAT-P-11 b is relatively close in the grand scheme at just 123 light years away.

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