Astronomical Geological Anomaly

"[While the chemical composition of the 656-gram rock suggests a terrestrial origin, the presence of a] fusion crust [caused by a fiery trip through the atmosphere points to it having arrived from space]."

"[Certain isotopes in the meteorite] point to a very short [10,000-year] but significant exposure to galactic cosmic rays, and preclude that NWA 13188 is a man-made 'fake' meteorite."

Geophysicist Jerome Gattacceca, French National Centre for Scientific Research

The Northwest Africa 13188 meteorite found in the Sahara desert in Morocco a few years ago. (Image credit: Albert Jambon)

A meteorite discovered a few years ago in the Sahara desert has been revealed by scientists studying it that the space rock startlingly appears to have originated on Earth itself. Their careful studies have led to the conclusion that this is a boomerang meteorite. It became such when a small asteroid hit Earth a few thousand years ago, disturbing terrestrial rocks with sufficient physical force to propel them into space. One of these pieces of rock, now catalogued and named Northwest Africa 13188 (NWA13188) has been orbiting Earth for millennia until it fell back to the Sahara.

And while this explanation, informed as it is geologically and astronomically, is intuitively speculative in nature, the fact is this unusual specimen was discovered by a meteorite hunter in 2018 and subsequently sold to a French collector, Albert Jambon. "I purchased this one just because it was odd. Nobody knows what this stone is really worth", he explained.

 

The hypothesis of the mysterious 'boomerang' meteorite was formally presented at an international geochemistry conference that took place in Lyon, France, by geophysicist Jerome Gattacceca. His and his colleagues' hypothesis has been called into question by other geologists who find it concerning that an asteroid sufficiently large to knock rocks into space has left no trace of its impact with Earth. There appear to be no known craters large enough and young enough in space-time to qualify for identification as to the source of the mystery. 

Dr. Gattacceca feels that a huge volcanic eruption might also have been the source of sufficient power to violently blast a rock into orbit, and so he plans to conduct more tests on NWA 13188 to accurately assess its age and devote a more investigative approach to realize a reliable amount of time it could have spent circuiting in space. Should it be proven that this is indeed a boomerang meteorite it would qualify as the first of its kind.

There was another confirmed sample of a meteorite from Earth, discovered in 1971 when the crew of Apollo 14 brought back a rock from the moon containing a small fragment of Earth which had been knocked awry by a collision with an asteroid four billion years ago which landed on the moon. It only took a few million additional years to be uncovered by another impact 26 million years ago.

The fall of an asteroid to Earth in the artist’s image. Source: Dzika Mowka/iStock/NASA

Rare Celestial Sightings : Green Comet, February 10

"Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but if this one continues its current trend in brightness, it'll be easy to spot."

" It's just possible it could become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies."

NASA Blog   

 

"I'm telling you - binoculars, dark site - you'll see something. Bring friends and you all will see something of a lifetime."

"Whenever you have a lake system around you, or ocean system, it causes a smoother airflow. Smoother airflow means the stars don't twinkle as much so you get more details."

Astrophotographer Dan Bartlett, Yosemite National Park, California

A photo of comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)  (Image credit: Chris Schur)

 

 As objects in the night sky this one is remarkable for several reasons, its green colouring and its age. Come to think of it, its name is also fairly remarkable: Comet C/2023 E3(ZTF). It's on a visit to Earth on its way elsewhere within the endless space of the universe. And while it's whizzing by, some  fortunate people will be able to sight it. It's thrilling, like seeing shooting stars, or satellites, bright specks in the velvet deep-dark-blue of the nighttime sky, illuminated here and there by constellations and numberless stars.

It's been around here before, but not since the last 50,000 years when our distant relatives roamed Earth. Astronomers casually call comet "dirty snowballs" for their constituents; ice, dust and rocks. They emerge from icy matter called the Oort cloud at the outer edge of our solar system. Comprised of a solid rock core, covered with ice and dust, a thin, gassy atmosphere of more ice and dust called a coma travels with comets, their tails. Which melt in their approach to the sun, releasing a gas stream and dust blown off the comet's surface by solar radiation and plasma, which forms a cloudy, outward-facing tail.

Gravitational forces capture the comets from where they park themselves at the inner solar system, moving them from the Oort cloud. They become more visible moving closer to heat exhaled by the sun. Observatories around the world discover up to a dozen comets annually. Back when Neanderthals called Eurasia their home and homo sapiens was streaming out of Africa, when Ice Age creatures such as mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers called the landscape home, someone may have noticed the comet passing by.

 

Astrophysicists studying comets' formation and longevity can detect clues of the primordial solar system before its formation during its earliest stages of explosive turbulence and massive dispersal. Astronomers making use of the Zwicky Transient Facility telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego discovered the comet on March 2nd 2022. The comet's  chemical composition expresses itself in its unique emerald colouring; the result of interaction between sunlight and carbon-based molecules in the coma of the comet.

"We're going to be looking for the fingerprints of given molecules that we can't access from the ground."

"Because JWST's so sensitive, we're expecting new discoveries"

Planetary scientist Stefanie Milam, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland

Retired science teacher, Dan Bartlett, captured this image from his cabin near Yosemite National Park in California

 

 

Distant Galaxy's Voracious Black Hole

"When a star dangerously approached a black hole -- no worries, this will not happen to the sun -- it is violently ripped apart by the black hole's gravitational tidal forces similar to how the moon pulls tides on Earth but with greater strength."

"Then, pieces of the star are captured into a swiftly spinning disk orbiting the black hole. Finally, the black hole consumes what remains of the doomed star in the disk."

"In some very rare cases, which we estimated to be 100 times rarer, powerful jets of material are launched in opposite directions when the tidal disruption event occurs."

Michael Coughlin, astronomer, University of Minnesota

Artwork depicting a tidal disruption event (TDE). TDEs are causes when a star passes close to a supermassive black hole and get torn apart by the gravity of the latter. The debris forms a fan-shaped pattern around the black hole before eventually falling in. (Image credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

In one of only four examples, the first detected since 2011, a black hole has been observed while ripping a passing star apart in a phenonenon referred to as a tidal disruption. Following which luminous jets of high-energy particles were launched into space, according to researchers. No previous such event has ever been sighted. The event was described in two studies, each published in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy.

 

The Zwicky Transient Facility astronomical survey detected the event in February, with the use of a camera to which was appended a telescope, at the Palomar Observatory in California. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope located in Chile, enabled the calculation of the distance involved.

 

The sighting captured the epic drama of a supermassive black hole -- whose size is estimated to be hundreds of millions of times the mass of our sun -- whose location is approximately 8.5 billion light years' distance from Earth, shredding and swallowing a large, bright star that had 'wandered' too close in proximity to this massively rapacious black hole with its overwhelming gravitational grasp. (The disance that light travels in a year is termed a 'light year').

 

An artist's illustration of a black hole shredding a star. (Image credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab)

"We think that the star was similar to our sun, perhaps more massive but of a common kind", explained astronomer Igor Andreoni, of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who was lead author of one of the studies.

 

Both astronomers, Andreoni and Coughlin, described the black hole as in all probability spinning rapidly, which might explain how it was that two powerful jets were launched into space at close to the speed of light. Astronomer Dheeraj Pasham, lead author of the other study -- with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- explained that the researchers had been able to observe the event early in its occurrence -- within a week of the black hole beginning to consume the star.

 

Most galaxies have a black hole at their core. The supermassive black hole involved in this epic cosmic event is believed to centre a galaxy similar to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, although located far distant from our galaxy. The astonishing tidal disruption event was bright enough that it obscured the light of the stars situated in the black hole's galaxy.

 

This animation depicts a star experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a black hole during a ‘tidal disruption event’. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

 

The Young Universe and Its Offspring

"We found two very compelling candidates for extremely distant galaxies."

"If these galaxies are at the distance we think they are, the universe is only a few hundred million years old at that point."

Rohan Naidu, graduate student, astronomy department, Harvard and Smithsonian Centre of Astrophysics, Massachusetts

 

"It was dark for a long time until you started to get an accretion and what they call the age of ionization. And, then the first stars started to form."

"So we don't know exactly when that happened, the models show somewhere between 150 million and 300 million years after the Big Bang."

"So we think that looking about 300 million years after the origin of the universe, what we will be seeing is the first stars and the first galaxies forming."

Pam Melroy deputy administrator, NASA/former shuttle commander

Dr.James O'Donoughue, Twitter

In just the first week of its operation in sending back extraordinary images of the far reaches of the university the James Webb telescope has revealed undreamt-of leaps of visual acuity from distant space; much further than its predecessor which itself had ushered the world of astronomy and astrophysics into a new era revealing nature's time-distant origins of the universe. The revelations just keep rolling in, astonishing in their breadth, filling knowledge gaps and prompting new questions as scientific enquiry struggles to comprehend the full meaning of the revealing images.

In the initial images, themselves revelations of unimaginable time and space, fainter distant light sources even more intriguing than the closer aspects of those distant stars and their presumed worlds -- unseen specks of probability in the formation of the minute details of the universe where ongoing investigation may yet answer that eternal question: is there anyone out there? -- the suspense of discovery and the analytical minds of scientists are grinding overtime in excited hypotheses.

Now, NASA's James Webb Telescope has captured images of the assumed earliest formation of a galaxy brim with stars -- named GLASS-z13 -- that may date back as far as 13.5 billion years. The hard-working Hubble Space telescope's earliest image was seen to date 100 million years later. "We're potentially looking at the most distant starlight that anyone has ever seen," Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Centre for Astrophysics stated.

 When the universe formed 13.5 billion years ago everything was dark before matter began to clump in dense formations sufficiently so, to allow stars to burst into life. GLASS-z13's actual age of formation cannot yet be known with confidence, but it is hypothesized by the Harvard team analyzing the data received that it could have formed at any time within the first 300 million years of the existence of the universe.

When the early telescope data was released a week ago from the James Webb Observatory scanning the universe from about a million miles from Earth, its presence was identified. The James Webb telescope incorporates instruments designed to capture light in the infrared spectrum which, since the universe is expanding, sees light emitted by faraway objects as it stretches distantly, increasing in wavelength and becoming more red until finally reaching the infrared spectrum human eyes can no longer discern.

This is known as a cosmological redshift, similar to the Doppler effect where sounds, as they move further away, are heard differently.

Wonder of Wonders -- Behold the Universe!

"From the data I've seen so far, from the work we've seen in commissioning and then this first week of science, yeah, this is going to be revolutionary."

"These are incredible capabilities we've never had before."

Jane Rigby, Webb operations project manager, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

 

"Those releases represented five days of observation with this observatory."

"And they include something that is a deeper infrared image than has ever been taken in history, deeper than Hubble images that required weeks to acquire. That was done in half a day with Webb."

Randy Kimble, Webb project scientist, Goddard. 

 

"I am so thrilled, and so relieved."

"It's just impossible to convey how hard it really was. We risked so much to say we're going to go do this, and it's so near impossible. But we did it."

John Mather, Nobel Prize winner, senior scientist, Webb project.

The James Webb Space Telescope's view of the Carina Nebula.  NASA

 Astronomers have awaited the results of the first photographs to be released, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful such telescope yet to search the Universe beyond our solar system, beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. The clarity of the photographs and the wide scope of far distant galaxies will in due time explain much about the Universe. Photographs are now being seen that reflect the birth and death of stars, nature's most mysterious secrets now on the verge of being unlocked through observation of what could never be imagined might be possible to analyze.

 

Clouds on another world.

@NASAWebb

Webb captured the signature of water on giant gas planet WASP 96-b, which orbits a star 1,150 light-years away. For the first time, we've detected evidence of clouds in this exoplanet's atmosphere: http://nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse

"[The initial deep look unveiled on July11 is] proof of concept ... whetting our appetite for the record-breaking results we now know will come from this exceptional facility."

Heidi Hammel, planetary astronomer, scheduled to use the Webb

"[The telescope, the successor to the Hubble which is still in operation] has capabilities that far surpass my most optimistic dreams."

"The capabilities of Webb are truly out of this world."

Garth Illingworth, astronomer, University of California, Santa Cruz

A world-achievement, expectations were high for the success of this new eye in the sky that would send back messages and photographs from the most distant areas of the Universe. And what was revealed in those exceptional photographs of never-imagined detail was beyond extraordinary and exciting beyond measure to the fertile, now febrile minds of the world's greatest astronomers and astrophysicists. The $10-billion investment in the James Webb Telescope sent the world of space science into orbit yesterday.

 

The first image to be revealed at the White House is that of a cluster of galaxies called SMACS 0723. which only the massive lens of the Webb could have penetrated and portrayed so stunningly. Behind the magnification of the cluster are seen faint objects of vast cosmic distance. The "highest resolution images of the infrared universe ever captured", in the words of the American president who presided over the unveiling of the images.

 

Stephan's Quintet   Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

 

The European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency partnered with NASA, maintaining a close grasp on the first images derived from the Webb during its initial sequence of observations as it orbits the sun a million miles from Earth. A few testing-phase images of the telescope were previously released, astounding astronomers with their detailed clarity. The newly-released photographs, however, were in full colour.

This initial first scrutiny deep into the universe by the Webb has excited the appetite of the world of astronomy for what is yet to come; revolutionary views of the universe crossing cosmic distances with unrivalled resolution. The coming months will transform what is currently known and assessed as an expansion of the understanding of the most basic rules and origin of the universe will gradually be resolved.

Now the formation of the earliest galaxies will be enabled by the Webb toward more intensive study along with the evolution of the expanding universe. Even our own solar system, hosting small worlds we hardly are aware of beyond the orbit of Neptune will come under scrutiny as nature's genius is examined and understood in time and space.

SMACS 0723  Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

So Far Yet So Near

"Surprisingly the crater is actually two craters, an eastern one [18-metre diameter] superimposed on a western one [16-metre diameter]."

"The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the body had large masses at each end."

"Typically a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end, the rest of the rocket stage mainly consists of an empty fuel tank."

"Since the origin of the rocket body remains uncertain, the double nature of the crater may indicate its identity."

NASA

China's 2014 orbiter rocket / DW

We gaze on the moon and admire its luminosity in the dark space of night when we're facing away from our life-giving source, the sun. The lunar surface hosts hundreds of pieces of debris. We never think of that; to do so is beyond our ken to begin with, and that lack of awareness retains the romance of the moon that lights our night sky. The moon hosts lunar landers and the waste of astronauts left in zip-lock bags, reminiscent of dog owners carefully picking up the waste, tying the plastic bag and leaving it to (?) decompose in the woods.

 

A number of craters were impressed on the surface of the moon, some of them 40 yards in width, from the Apollo mission. Anywhere humankind lingers there is waste and neglect. In the remote Himalaya, Mount Everest is littered with human waste from high-level expeditions. Having done so to the Earth, our home planet, we now look elsewhere in the universe as potential migrants seeking a new home. And in our search we litter space and on occasion the objects that occupy space.

 

A new mystery has reared its presence of late where NASA scientists feel baffled at the presence of a mysterious spacecraft which had crashed into the moon and created two large craters. No possible source has yet claimed the rocket, though its presence has been known since 2015. It was known to have travelled at 3.3 miles per second when it crashed onto the lunar surface on the fourth of March. Images by NASA's lunar reconnaissance orbiter show an impact unlike any before seen.

\

At first it was suspected by amateur astronomers that SpaceX could be responsible. That was changed when it was speculated that a 2014 Chinese lunar mission (Chang'e 5-1) could be the source. Beijing, however, in denial, stated that its booster had "safely entered the Earth's atmosphere and was completely incinerated". 

 

An approximate orbit had been computed by Bill Gray, an astronomer whose software tracks space objects, and who feels otherwise. He is aware that China does not reveal the routes of its orbiting space objects, only their launches. "I'm 99.9 percent sure it's the China 5-T1", he confided, prepared to discard his previous conviction it was a SpaceX booster.

 

The new double crater was spotted by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

 

 

 

Portal to Expiration

"[Wonderful to see] the first direct image of the gentle giant in the centre of our galaxy."

"They [supermassive black holes] go through periods where there is a lot of material around them. And then they go through these quiescent phases like the one at the centre of our galaxy where matter is just trickling in."

"We love our black hole."

Feryal Ozel, astronomer, University of Arizona

"The smaller physical size of Sgr A* [Sagittarius A*] also means that everything changes about a thousand times faster for Sgr A* than M87.

"We must also peer through the messy disk of our own galaxy to view Sgr A*, which blurs and distorts the image."

Lindy Blackburn, radio astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

The second-ever direct image of a black hole — Sagittarius A*, at the centre of the Milky Way.   Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration

They're ravenous collapsars, are black holes, so dense and heavy their inexorable gravity pull ensnares any celestial object that ventures too near its portal's event horizon, the point at which stars, planets, gas dust, ice and any forms of electromagnetic radiation is pulled deep within and ceases to exist. Nature's ultimate waste bin. Nature's ways are infinite and mysterious, humanity specializing in attempting to understand its motivations and blueprints and outcomes along with all the elements that comprise nature's great project, the expanding universe, can only be hypothesized.

And some of those educated theories turn out to be right, just ask Einstein's ghost. The very effort in straining the human brain to try to understand the vastness of the universe and its complexities is itself a conundrum. Time and space are beyond our full comprehension. We speak in light years' distance, of origins back to the unimaginably faint passage of time. We are not even certain that time exists. We search for answers and nurture the hope that more advanced, more intelligent creatures may one day guide us to the answers of these mysteries.

So far they seem determined -- if indeed any extraterrestrials exist, and why should they not? -- to avoid us. If they are intelligent and they observe human behaviour, that is not entirely inexplicable. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy that revolves like a pinwheel to the music of the celestial rhythm of existence, contains an estimated 100 billion stars. Our sun is not, relatively speaking, a very large star, and our Earth, a little rock revolving around our sun, is dependent for life itself on its existence.

Now, an image has been produced of a formerly theorized-existence black hole, a ravenous end-of-life phenomenon for matter teetering close to its hungry maw. The first such black hole's existence to be verified through the Event Horizon Telescope, an international collaboration that produced the first photograph of an immense black hole at the centre of a different galaxy was revealed in 2019. That image was of a super-massive black hole in a galaxy about 54 million light years from Earth with a mass 6.5 billion times of our son, called Messier 87 (M87).

Now the second image to be produced by the Event Horizon Telescope has been identified within the Milky Way Galaxy, our very own. As imaging technology becomes more technically acute there are hopes a video might some day be produced that might offer a closer observation point to clear up lingering fundamental questions about these mysterious giant objects, the central vacuum cleaners of the galaxies housed in the Universe, the abode of all that exists.

Sagittarious "A" star has a mass four million times greater than that of our sun, located roughly 26,000 light-years which represents the distance light travels in a year, 95. trillion kilometres from Earth. Astrophysicist Michael Johnson describes Sagittarius A* as "ravenous but inefficient", for it seems to be resting rather than actively engorging. Like a boa constrictor that has swallowed a large creature whole after crushing it with its massive musculature, and now just relaxes, replete, allowing its gastric juices to slowly digest its meal over a lengthy period of time.

Hello! Anyone There?

"[The Beacon in the Galaxy is not the first message created to be sent into space; it] contains more information about basic mathematics and science [than its predecessor, Arecibo]."

"The main part of this BITG Message contains a new set of graphical information in the form of images and special 'alphabets' to represent numbers, elements, DNA, land, ocean, and human, etc., starting by an artificial header and footer that consists of prime numbers."

Matthew Chong, physics/math student, Cambridge University

A sample from a new message intended to be sent toward potential intelligent extraterrestrials in the galaxy. Credit: “A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects,” by Jonathan H. Jiang et al. Preprint posted online March 4, 2022 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

"[Even if a signal is received from Gliese 832c, an exoplanet that may possibly be habitable], we should be wary of answering back."

Stephen Hawking, British physicist extaordinaire (deceased)

Humanity reaches out to whatever/whoever elevated life form may exist on a planet somewhere in the universe. Science refuses to believe that in the vastness of the universe, and the uncountable array of galaxies, stars and planets only the Milky Way's Planet Earth brought forth the organic life that developed the animals that inhabit the planet, including homo sapiens. Radio telescopes have been attempting for decades to pick up even the faintest signals of life elsewhere in the universe, to no avail.

Now a new initiative, the latest in a long series of outreaches to any intelligent beings assumed to have the capacity to receive and analyze and interpret a message from Earth, has been updated, the radio message to be sent into the cosmos, essentially pinpointing Earth's location to aid an interested intelligence in understanding precisely where this planet is located in the geography of the universe. 

The BITG message is comprised of 13 portions consisting of approximately 204,000 effective binary digits; 25,500 bytes in total. The goal of the scientists involved is to start a dialogue with ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) "no matter how far in the future that might occur". Should intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe as astrophysicists believe, it could potentially receive a radio message as a guide to finding Earth.

Jonathan Jiang, the lead on the project, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, elaborated that a group of cosmic landmarks are meant to be conveyed as an assist to indicate Earth's position within the Milky Way Galaxy. The intention is for the Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California to transmit the message.

 

 General view of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province of China. The 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST), also known as China's 'Sky Eye', will open to global scientific community from March 31. (Photo by Li Jin/VCG via Getty Images)

Analyzing Deep Space

James Webb Space Telescope   NASA

"It's extremely satisfactory seeing everything coming into place. It's a sense of amazement and happiness."

"[The sensor ... Fine Guidance Sensor ...] is mission critical. There was a lot of pressure on us. Everybody was very happy."

"You would be able to point at a human hair [with the sensor] from a couple kilometres away. It's pretty much pushing the limit of what can be done."

"I can't wait to see the data we'll get."

 Jean Dupuis, senior mission scientist, Canadian Space Agency

Canada's Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) and the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. (Credit: NASA)

Canada is an integral part of the massive James Webb Space telescope functioning, joining with NASA with the ambitious to make this space exploration project operational, from the beginning. Up to half of the 600 scientists in the Canadian Astronomical Society are or have been involved with the project. Dozens of Canadian scientists and engineers are involved in the design team that produced vital Canadian technology used in the functioning of the telescope. 

 

The systems meant to give direction to the telescope have been designed and built through the Canadian Space Agency.

The cost of the James Webb, launched in late December, designed to study the nature of planets beyond our solar system, and to enable study of what the oldest galaxies reveal about the birth of the universe, was $13 billion, and represents over two decades of work. Designed and builtt as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb is meant to orbit deeper into space -- about 15 million kilometres out -- with a sensitivity more than a hundred to a million times greater than its predecessor.

It is deemed to be sensitive enough through the newer technology with which it is outfitted to analyze exoplanetary atmospheres and to gather data from "First Light" galaxies, whose formation extends back 13.6 billion years. Without the installed Fine Guidance Sensor none of these ambitious prospects would be possible. Up and running, the sensor is used to align the telescope's 18 mirrors. It will probably take until summer for the sensor to cool down to below -200C to be fully operative.

Once that happens the sensor will function to aim the James Webb with a precision scarcely believable; down to a few milli-arcseconds. Operational and functional success appears to be the hallmark of the telescope and its launch. In December, NASA announced that the telescope had succeeded in slipping into its orbit so wonderfully well, the fuel savings could operate the telescope for significantly longer a period than the original ten-year lifespan foreseen. 

As well as the sensor, another Canadian contribution is its Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectograph, meant to assist in analyzing light observed by the telescope. As a result of Canadian involvement to the extent and degree that it has been, Canadian astronomers have a special entitlement to five percent of the observation time the telescope offers.

Canadian researchers plan to use the Webb telescope to study asteroids and comets close to Earth as well as the effect that stars have on the space around them in distant regions of the galaxy where new stars are born.

 

In Our Galactic Backyard

"It's mind-bogglingly wonderful t at the universe is still full of surprises."

"This is an entirely new kind of source that no one has ever seen before. And while we know the Milky Way must be full of slowly spinning neutron stars, no one expected them to be able to produce bright radio emissions like this."

"It's a dream come true to find something so totally unexpected and amazing."

"This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations."

"That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that."

"And it’s really quite close to us—about 4000 lightyears away. It’s in our galactic backyard."

"It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically. But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright."

"Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before."

Natasha Hurley-Walker, radio astronomer, Curtin University, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

"This is more likely to be the 'first of its kind' rather than 'one of a kind'.:

"We are now monitoring this object using many different radio telescopes in the hope it switches 'on' again."

"When studying transients, you’re watching the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind."

Gemma Anderson, Curtin ICRAR node astrophysicist, study co-author

The location of the source in the sky in January 2022, marked with a large white star marker. At this time of year, it is above the horizon during the day. Image source: Stellarium

"It's incredibly bright when it's 'on'. It's one of the brightest radio sources in the sky."

"It’s exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object."
"The MWA’s [Murchison Widefield Array telescope] wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected."

Tyrone O'Doherty, Curtin ICRAR node doctoral student, study co-author

Tile 107, or “the Outlier” as it is known, is one of 256 tiles of the MWA located 1.5km from the core of the telescope. The MWA is a precursor instrument to the SKA. Photographed by Pete Wheeler, ICRAR

In what may be the first known example of an 'ultra-long period magnetar', a type of neutron star -- a compact collapsed core of a massive star that became a supernova at explosion, highly magnetized and rotating slowly  unlike fast-spinning neutron stars called pulsars that appear as though they're blinking off and on in seconds or milliseconds -- evidence has been detected of an object that had previously been thought to exist but never before detected. 

A celestial object like none other seen before was spotted with the use of the Murchison Widefield Array telescope located in the outback of Western Australia as it unleashed gigantic energy bursts about three times hourly when viewed from Earth during a two-month period in 2018, according to researchers. It appears to the scientists studying it to be an absolutely dense star whose behaviour is quite unlike any ever seen previously, an astrophysical object hypothesized to exist but never before has proof been seen.

Continuous beaming of strong radio waves may be emanating from the object's north and south poles, the beam sweeping through the line of sight from Earth's vantage point, appearing to switch on every 18 minutes and 11 seconds for 30 to 60 seconds, then off again. A lighthouse with its rotating light seeming to blink on and off from the perspective of a stationary observer has a similar effect.

In cosmic terms, the object's location is relatively close to Earth -- about 4,200 light years in distance, the distance that light travels in a year; 9.5 trillion kilometres away. Astronomically speaking the object is in a category known as "transients" which are astrophysical objects appearing to turn on for limited time periods. A supernova is known as a 'slow transient', which can suddenly appear and then disappear months later with the dissipation of the stellar explosion. Rapidly blinking on and off, pulsars are known as 'fast transients'.

The search for transients between the two extremes had been until now, without success. Among the universe's densest objects, neutron stars, including pulsars, are approximately 12 kilometres in diameter, similar to the size of a city, but containing greater mass than our sun. A magnetar, a neutron star with an extreme magnetic field, has the potential to power the radio pulsations, according to the researchers' expectations.

Magnetar
An artist’s impression of what the object might look like if it’s a magnetar. Magnetars are incredibly magnetic neutron stars, some of which sometimes produce radio emission. Known magnetars rotate every few seconds, but theoretically, “ultra-long period magnetars” could rotate much more slowly. Credit: ICRAR.

 

Hitting The Moon

"I realized that my software complained because it couldn't project the orbit past March 4. And it couldn't do it because the rocket had hit the moon."

"[This may constitute] the first unintentional case [of space junk hitting the moon, a crash that would create a new crater, but not do significant damage to the moon as it's] built to take this sort of abuse."

"When a couple of them [astronomers] sent in their results, they confirmed the initial data and made the actual impact time and location considerably more certain."

Bill Gray, researcher in orbital dynamics

Photo taken of a view of the moon from Cannes, southern France.

"As more players get into deep space, we need to have more attention paid to the junk that we're leaving out there."

"It's not as much about what SpaceX does now because it's a perfectly standard practice to leave your junk in deep Earth orbit and just abandon it."

"It's a big space out there, and if something ends up hitting the moon or ends up re-entering the Earth's atmosphere or going into orbit around the sun, the attitude has kind of been, 'So be it'. That may change as we get busier on the moon."

"Deep-space junk is by no means a threat or a crisis at the moment, but it is something that we're in the early stages [of] now."

"This SpaceX case is a marker that deep space is just starting to get busier, and it's time to start thinking about our policies for deep space."

Jonathan McDowell, astronomer, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

"For launches of spacecraft intended to orbit the Earth, the best practice is to reserve enough fuel in a rocket's upper stage to return it to Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up."

"This is what SpaceX and most Western rocket companies customarily do to help control debris in low Earth orbit."

"The moon, of course, has no atmosphere for the stage to burn up in."

"[The rocket also] lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system [resulting in the booster's chaotic orbit for close to seven years]."

Eric Berger, meteorologist, Ars Technica

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 2015   Getty Images

Tracking the orbit of the SpaceX rocket with his Project Pluto astronomical software designed to provide commercial and freeware data research to both professional and amateur astronomers, the meteorologist, Bill Gray was puzzled when he received an unexpected reading on the Falcon 9 booster launched in 2015, part of a mission for a space weather satellite to be sent on a million-mile trip. The second stage of the rocket has been hurtling haphazardly through space for years.

And then he realized why it was that he was unable to obtain readings on the booster from his software since early March, as he finally understood that the SpaceX rocket is veering off on a collision course with the moon. He posted his finding on his blog post and since then other space observers confirmed the data to be correct, agreeing that the rocket, which weighs in at about four tonnes, is on a course to crash into the far side of the moon by March.

Some astronomers think of this news as "not a big deal", albeit interesting. What the situation does highlight is the potential for increasing numbers of such occurrences rising out of space junk floating about in deep space. The first interplanetary mission was launched by SpaceX in February of 2015 from Cape Canaveral, Florida where the Falcon 9 travelled a million miles in assisting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory to begin its journey to Lagrange Point 2, a gravitationally stable solar orbit on the far side of the sun to Earth.

SpaceX's 50th Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the moon looks on, March 6, 2018.  Getty

What went against expectations to see the rocket's second stage reaching a transfer orbit and a long burn, was that the booster was absent sufficient fuel to return to Earth because it was so high in its orbit to enable it to return to Earth's atmosphere. Instead it was caught in the Earth-Moon system of gravity, resulting in its chaotic orbit for close to seven years. Meteorologist Gray felt that such a chaotic orbit could result in three possibilities: hitting the moon; hitting Earth; or picking up enough energy to zoom past the moon and propelled toward the sun.

When, on January 14 he realized the rocket could be expected to crash into the moon, Dr.Gray contacted a group of astronomers for verification of his data. Space junk is beginning to pose a real threat to space travel and to the uninterrupted operation of weather and communication satellites. NASA tracks roughly 20,000 pieces of space junk, mostly old and broken satellites. A spacewalk was abruptly called off in November following notification that space junk threatened astronaut activity outside the International Space Station after Russia fired a missile destroying a dead satellite, sending over 1,500 pieces of debris into low Earth orbit.

In April 20198, the lunar lander Beresheet by Israel Aerospace Industries was the first private spacecraft to land on the moon, by crashing. As it did, the lunar lander spilled thousands of tardigrades -- microscopic creatures known also as 'water bears' regarded as the toughest animals on the planet -- onto the moon's surface.

Tardigrade, American Scientist

Ancient Beyond Time Itself

"I have been working on meteorites for more than 20 years now, and this is possibly the most fantastic new meteorite I have ever seen."

"When you go close to the beginning of the solar system, it’s more and more complicated to get samples."

"We probably will not find another sample older than this one."

"When we saw the first descriptions of this rock, it was really obvious that this rock was unusual."

"The age was not the sole point of interest. We were extremely interested by the genesis of such extraterrestrial andesitic melts and on the processes of formation of primordial crusts. Such samples are extremely precious."

"It is not a meteorite freshly fallen on Earth. It is slightly weathered, but we know since the study of the Tatahouine meteorite that terrestrial weathering is fast even in the Sahara."

Jean-Alix Barrat, University of Western Brittany, France 

Pieces of the meteorite Erg Chech 002 were found to contain andesite, which was likely formed from an ancient protoplanet. Steve Jurvetson / Flickr

"This meteorite is the oldest magmatic rock analyzed to date and sheds light on the formation of the primordial crusts that covered the oldest protoplanets."

"[Previous studies have found that such silica-infused andesite crusts were likely common during our solar system’s protoplanet-forming stage], contrary to what the meteorite record suggests."

"EC 002 is clearly distinguishable from all asteroid groups, and no object with spectral characteristics similar to EC 002 has been identified to date."

"[Remnants of primordial crusts are] not only rare in the meteorite record, but they are also rare today in the asteroid belt."

Researchers study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

Wonders never cease and science, like nature, never sleeps. A 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite rock has been discovered in the Sahara Desert by researchers who say their find was in primordial times part of a protoplanet that failed to develop, its constituent parts simply vanished or were absorbed by other like protoplanets. It is fairly certain, however, that this meteorite may be the oldest such mineral that has ever been identified, analyzed and now reigns as one-of-a-kind. A Methusala of all minerals extant in the Universe. 

A veritable marvel of a remnant of a once-existing cluster of chemicals, gases, metals and minerals aspiring to become a planet. The rock is a reminder of once was and what became; existing as one of the rare pieces of natural evidence that the solar system has its own planetary ancestors. The rock was named Erg Chech 002 and its discovery took place in May of 2020 in the Erg Chech area of southwestern Algeria where the rock was immediately identified by the scientists studying it as unusual.

Most meteorites are composed of basalt -- produced in the wake of a fiery explosion producing lava which cools to become the mineral we know as basalt. This meteorite, however has a much different composition; a rare volcanic rock named andesite. According to the research paper, the rock was classified as an chrondite -- igneous rock produced from molten magma emanating from a body's internal melting, distinguishing the core from its crust.

 

Big Think

According to the Meteoritical Bulletin Database there are only 3,179 achrondites identified, 75 percent of which originated in the crust and mantle of the asteroid 4 Vesta in the asteroid belt within our solar system. They are limited in what can be revealed regarding the solar system's planetary history diversity, since they emanate from a limited source of only several planetary bodies. 

 

And this is another thing that makes this andesitic achrondite so different from any others that have been discovered. It was once molten and had solidified some 4.6 billion years ago, as revealed by chemical analysis.

Such andesitic rock, it appears from the experience of the researchers, are rarely to be found in the asteroid belts within our solar system. Which led the researchers to conclude the rock must represent a remnant of a long-lost protoplanet once in the early formation stage and as such EC 002 may be the sole evidence that a primordial protoplanet ever existed, failing to mature and expiring. 

 

Had any other relics existed they might have been smashed beyond existence or absorbed within the constituents of other protoplanets.

 

The CEERS Survey researchers will use the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the Extended Groth Strip in infrared light. Their observations employ three of the telescope’s instruments and will provide both images and spectra of the objects in the field — which includes at least 50,000 galaxies — helping to expand what we know about galaxies in the very early universe.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Davis (University of California, Berkeley)

 

Venusian Life? Not Quite as SciFi Anticipated

"I was very surprised -- stunned, in fact."

"We know that the molecule phosphine is a biomarker on Earth. It's been suggested that there are possible habitats in the cloud decks of Venus, so somewhere where little lifeforms could live."

"This is very encouraging for the hypothesis of life, but at the same time we are being very careful."

Jane Greaves, astronomer, Cardiff University, Wales, study lead author

  Venus   MPI Getty Images

"With what we currently know of Venus, the most plausible explanation for phosphine, as fantastical as it might sound, is life."

"This is important because, if it is phosphine, and if it is life, it means that we are not alone [as living beings on Planet Earth]."

"I can only speculate on what life might survive on Venus, if indeed it is there. No life would be able to survive on the surface of Venus, because it is completely inhospitable."

"But a long time ago, Venus could have had life on its surface, before a runaway greenhouse effect left the majority of the planet completely uninhabitable."

Clara Sousa-Silva, molecular astro-physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, study co-author

 

In 1977 astronomer/writer Carl Sagan, convinced that extraterrestrial life exists somewhere in the universe, sought to take advantage of deep-space probes like Voyager, so in conjunction with NASA, he and a team put together a time capsule, a record of humanity on this planet meant to convey information on the human race living on Earth; a time capsule of human civilization, to "communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials", to quote NASA. And while they didn't envision intelligent creatures living somewhere in our Milky Way Constellation having an appearance approximating our own, they did believe in the existence of intelligent species.

 

Golden Record

Intelligence allowing them to inspect and make sense of the message sent by Mr. Sagan and company: Hello, we're here, where are you?" The kind of life form imagined as potentially existing in chemical clouds above the over-heated Venus, would be basic life forms, unlikely to be endowed with awareness and the ability to think and communicate. But life, withal. And life begins somewhere; at the very basic steps of existence that time and evolution bring to maturity, and with that maturity over infinite ages, presumably sentience and eventually intelligence. 

 

The team assembled the sounds of Earth, producing two recordings of the sound of the ocean, wind, birdsong, calls of humpback whales, chimpanzee hootings, and spoken greetings from earthlings in 55 languages from ancient Akkadian to a modern Chinese dialect. And 90 minutes' worth of classical music featuring cultures from around the world. Clearly nothing that would impress a basic lifeform such as a microbe.

The study just published in the journal Nature Astronomy, produced by researchers in a collaboration between academics concludes that quite possibly living organisms have been detected in the acidic clouds of Venus, where a gas called phosphine was detected. The gas, which exists on Earth is the product of bacterial life here. Thus, the speculation that microbes may inhabit the life-inhospitable climate above the even greater inhospitability of Venus itself, in its far above the surface of the planet clouds.

The international scientific team detected the phosphine while using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope located in Hawaii, later confirming their finding with the use of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array radio telescope in Chile. Scientists have used every method at their advanced disposal in the seminal search for life elsewhere than Earth, convinced that among the billions of planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, somewhere conditions exist for the emergence of life forms.

"Biosignatures", indirect signs of life -- possibly existing on planets other than our own, and moons in our solar system and beyond have been sought out with the use of probes and telescopes of ever-increasing sophistication and reach. Phosphine is a phosphorus atom containing three hydrogen atoms and is highly toxic to humans. The study of the chemistry makeup and other characteristics of celestial bodies with the use of powerful telescopes has revealed much in the past. This latest revelation is yet another infinitely small unravelling of the endless mysteries of the natural world.

In the Venusian atmosphere a trace concentration of phosphine was detected at 20 parts per billion when researchers examined potential non-biological sources like volcanism, meteorites, lightning and chemical reactions of various kinds, all failing the viability test. As Earth's nearest planetary neighbour Venus which is smaller than Earth, is similar in structure as the second planet from the sun. As the third planet from the sun, Earth's distance made it a candidate for the emergence of life.

The surface temperature on Venus is hot enough to melt lead, reaching 471C, scorching, searing heat.

"Planets can produce phosphine through ordinary geological and atmospheric processes. Known processes don’t work for Venus, so there must be a process we haven’t considered yet. The data [in the new paper] look robust. Now we will need to spend several years brainstorming explanations. It’s fine to consider the possibility that phosphine is a signature of life on Venus, but there will be other explanations as well."

Andy Skemer, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz