Space

Soon, there will be three new ways to study the Sun’s influence across the solar system with the launch of a trio of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spacecraft. Expected to launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23, the missions include NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1) spacecraft.

...has directly measured the mass of one of the mysterious 'Little Red Dots' (LRDs) spotted by JWST in the Epoch of Reionization, just 600 million years after the Big Bang...the rotation curve of QSO1 is neatly consistent with a galaxy rotating around a mass of about 50 million solar masses..."The only scenarios that can account for such a system are those invoking 'heavy seeds', such as direct collapse black holes (DCBHs, resulting from the direct collapse of massive pristine clouds), or primordial black holes (PBHs, formed in the first second after the Big Bang),"...The paper remains to be peer reviewed

Engineers have designed a spacecraft that could take up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to our own. The craft, called Chrysalis, could make the 25 trillion mile (40 trillion kilometer) journey in around 400 years, the engineers say in their project brief, meaning many of its potential passengers would only know life on the craft.

Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.

This plan is purely hypothetical, as some of the required technology, like commercial nuclear fusion reactors, don't yet exist. However, hypothetical projects like this one can still add to our existing knowledge base and help engineers improve upcoming designs.

Their presentation on Canva

...In this framework, inflation is driven by a de Sitter space time, where tensor metric fluctuations (i.e., gravitational waves) naturally arise from quantum vacuum oscillations, and scalar fluctuations are generated via second-order tensor effects. We compute the power spectrum of such scalar fluctuations and show it to be consistent with near scale invariance...

On a cold winter night in a rural area, I looked through a scope to see the rings of Saturn for the first time. Connecting grade school science book descriptions with a real life view amazed me.

Even without a telescope or binoculars, many of us have had similar memorable moments — like watching the Milky Way galaxy, identifying constellations and safely observing a solar eclipse.

Dark skies are places mostly free of light pollution and where one can see celestial features easily. Dark skies can be awe-inspiring, but they are also vitally important for both animal health, human health and local economies.

Even though our current night skies have become polluted with excessive light, there are ways to promote understanding, reduce light pollution and support local communities. Tourism researchers in Australia have defined dark sky tourism (DST) as “tourism based on unpolluted night skies involving observation and appreciation of naturally occurring celestial phenomena.”

My colleague Clark Banack and I have researched factors contributing to the success of the Jasper Dark Sky festival in Alberta. This research was informed by our combined expertise studying protected areas and environmental education (my areas) and sustainable rural communities (Banack’s area).

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Opening paragraphs:

Few ideas in modern science have reshaped our understanding of reality more profoundly than space-time — the interwoven fabric of space and time at the heart of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Space-time is frequently described as the “fabric of reality.” In some accounts, this fabric is referred to as a fixed, four-dimensional “block universe” — a complete map of all events, past, present and future.

In others, it’s a dynamic field that bends and curves in response to gravity. But what does it really mean to say that space-time exists? What kind of thing is it — is space-time structure, substance or metaphor?