In The News: Department of Physics and Astronomy
Astronomers have spotted a bright gamma-ray burst that upends previous theories of how these energetic cosmic eruptions occur.
Last December, astronomers caught sight of an extremely bright, extremely close gamma ray burst that lasted for a little under a minute — close as far as gamma ray bursts, anyways: about a billion light-years away. Ordinarily, it would be interesting, but nothing groundbreaking, something to be filed away with the tens of thousands of other long gamma ray bursts that have been observed over the past half-century. But then, something didn’t happen: the supernova required to create such a lengthy explosion was nowhere to be found.
Social media is flooded with posts that claim to prove the Earth is flat. A recent example is a post that claims a photo of Chicago taken from Indiana demonstrates the Earth's flatness.
Since Hubble Space Telescope was launched and deployed in April 1990, scientists have used it to observe the most distant stars and galaxies. One of these cosmic wonders that Hubble captured was the image of the star cluster NGC 2660.
Some social media users are sharing a meme that claims to present evidence that Earth is flat instead of spherical.
Humans discovered the curvature and rotation of the Earth thousands of years ago, dating back to ancient Greece. Since then, scientists have only discovered more evidence to prove this is true – including seeing Earth itself from space.
During the early hours of Wednesday morning, James Rice waited anxiously at Kennedy Space Center’s Banana Creek viewing platform in Florida as NASA’s Moon rocket geared up for its inaugural liftoff. “Today I saw a piece of history,” Rice, associate director at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, told Gizmodo in an email.
NASA's Artemis ONE launch is an attempt to return America to "Space Race" form.
NASA's Artemis launch is attempting to return America to 'Space Race' form, paving the way for humans on the moon for the first time since the 1970s.
Some social media users are saying that Alexander Gleason’s 19th Century “New Standard Map of the World” is proof that the earth is flat and that Antarctica is not a continent but an ice ring that circles the earth’s edges. They are wrong. The earth is not flat. The map has been misinterpreted.
In a recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of researchers at the ҳ| 鶹ýӳ (UNLV) investigated the potential for life on exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars, also known as red dwarfs, which are both smaller and cooler than our own Sun and is currently open for debate for their potential for life on their orbiting planetary bodies. The study examines how a lack of an asteroid belt might indicate a less likelihood for life on terrestrial worlds.
Earlier this month, on October 9th, one of the most intense gamma ray bursts hit the Earth. It was spotted by a number of space telescopes including Nasa’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and China’s High Energy Burst Searcher (HEBS) and Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT), according to an article by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) published on Friday. The telescopes were scanning the skies for cosmic explosions and now their scientists are weighing in on the incredible discovery.