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57 Articles

TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon he declared that it was “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Join us as we step further than you have ever imagined – beyond our Solar System and out into deep space. Journey through our home galaxy, explore our neighbour planets and discover the brutal force of our central star. You will find out all about the ongoing search for extra terrestrial life, and delve deeper into the latest research and discoveries on Pluto. There are so many incredible known phenomena in our universe, and you’ll find the greatest and most awe-inspiring here. In this new edition, explore everything from the Milky Way and galactic ghosts to Moon dust and hidden universes. Turn the page and…

TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE

What is a black hole?

All sorts of weird and wonderful things can happen when a star dies, such as neutron stars and white dwarfs. Undoubtedly the weirdest of them all, however, are the birth of stellar black holes. Like all the best enigmas of the universe, black holes are as misunderstood as they are mysterious and as hard to observe as they are to comprehend. Stellar black holes are most commonly formed from the remnants of particularly massive stars when they die – their cores collapsing with a staggering force that defies our understanding of the laws of physics. As the star’s mass is forced into an ever-smaller space, the gravitational forces involved effectively rips a hole in the fabric of the universe creating a singularity – the point at which all calculations break…

What is a black hole?

How the universe will end

Start: The Big Bang During the first 10-32 seconds following the Big Bang, tiny quantum fluctuations ballooned into a size where they would have been visible to the human eye. First light The first heavy elements, essential for the construction of everything around us, were forged in the cores of the first stars in the universe some 400 million years after the Big Bang. One billion years on Another half a billion years on from the first stars, and a billion years after the Big Bang itself, vast collections of millions of stars started clumping together to form the first galaxies. The end: What happens next? What comes next may never be truly understood, but according to one generally accepted model, it’s fair to assume the universe will continue to…

How the universe will end

Mining asteroids

It might sound and look like something out of a sci-fi film, but asteroid mining is very much a reality, and one that could greatly benefit humanity. For decades it has been nothing but a pipe dream and, until recently, nobody had been able to devise a clear plan for long-term mining of an asteroid. That all changed when a new company called Planetary Resources, Inc outlined a clear goal in early 2012 to mine near-Earth asteroids for valuable minerals. Set up by some familiar and rich names, including James Cameron and Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, the company aims to supplement the Earth’s natural resources by developing and deploying robotic asteroid-mining vehicles. Right now, Planetary Resources is still in its very early planning stages, attempting to identify the…

Mining asteroids

Discovering new Earths

Planet hunting is a new and exciting area of astronomy barely two decades old that, thanks to missions such as NASA’s Kepler telescope, is revealing more and more data about intriguing new worlds outside of our Solar System, known as extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Only in the last 20 years has sufficient technology been available to allow us to categorically prove the existence of these planets. While we’re still some way off seeing detailed imagery of direct exoplanet observations, projects like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will bring Earth-size exoplanets into view and even study the composition of their atmospheres. The number of bizarre and familiar new worlds just waiting to be discovered is staggering, if estimates prove to be accurate. In our…

Discovering new Earths

10 fascinating space facts you need to know

Betelgeuse could go supernova The red super giant star Betelgeuse is due to die at any moment. The event could see the star reach a comparable brightness to that of a full moon. The Space Shuttle is no more NASA’s youngest Space Shuttle, Endeavour, having flown its last mission in May 2011 is now on display at the California Science Center in LA. There’s more water on Europa than Earth Data acquired by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft suggests there is up to three times more water under the surface of Saturn’s moon Europa than on Earth. The chance of extraterrestrial life is 100 per cent That's according to the Drake equation, a mathematical equation used to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilisations in our Milky Way galaxy. Mr Drake’s own estimate…

10 fascinating space facts you need to know

JOURNEY THROUGH THE MILKY WAY

Look up at the sky on a dark, clear night and you can’t miss the Milky Way – a broad swathe of pale light winding its way around the sky among many of the brightest individual stars. Ancient astronomers saw it as a stream of milk spilt across the sky by the goddess Hera when she suckled the hero Hercules, but today we know the Milky Way is something very different – an enormous disc of stars some 100,000 light years across, containing (at the latest estimate) around 200 billion individual stars. Unsurprisingly, then, our Solar System is an insignificant speck within the overall scale of the Milky Way – all the planets and other large bodies orbiting the Sun are confined to a region just a few light hours…

JOURNEY THROUGH THE MILKY WAY

The 1969 Lunar lander

This two-stage spacecraft was built by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation to ferry two astronauts and scientific equipment to the surface of the Moon. The 6.7-metre (22-foot) tall craft had an aluminium frame with titanium fittings and was covered with layers of aluminised Kapton and aluminised Mylar to provide thermal protection against micrometeoroids. The Apollo Command Module carried it into lunar orbit, and two of the three crew transferred to it and used the descent engine to land on the Moon. After deploying scientific experiments and collecting samples, the ascent stage blasted off using the descent stage as a launching pad. Back in lunar orbit, it docked with the Command Module, and once the astronauts were back on board the ascent stage was jettisoned. Before the Lunar Module (LM) could…

The 1969 Lunar lander

SEARCH FOR LIFE

Dr John Mather Dr Mather is a senior project scientist on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This giant space observatory will launch in 2018 and will aid in the hunt for potentially habitable planets outside our Solar System. Dr Jerry Ehman Dr Ehman, now retired, is an American astronomer. He previously worked for SETI and in 1977 he discovered the famous Wow! signal, which just might have been our first contact from an intelligent alien race. Dr John Elliott Involved with SETI since 1999, Dr Elliott’s research includes working out how we’d decipher and respond to an alien signal. He is a Reader in Intelligence Engineering at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK. Dr Seth Shostak As senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, Dr Shostak is…

SEARCH FOR LIFE

He’ll be the person to know first

How do you guys analyse incoming data at SETI? The data analysis is all pretty automatic. Unless there’s a signal that’s looking very promising, and that only happens every couple of years, then you don’t actually deal with the data processing. The algorithms in the software analyse them and do rather simple tests to try to prove if it’s really ET, or if it’s AT&T – interference from a telecommunications satellite or whatever. Are there protocols in place for announcing the discovery of an alien signal? We’ve been worrying about the protocols about what to do if we find a signal. We’ve rewritten them and they’re all very nice in a nice little document, but the reality is that nobody’s going to pay a whole lot of attention to protocols…

He’ll be the person to know first

The next great planet hunter

BIO Dr John Mather Dr Mather is a senior project scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope. He is also a senior astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. What’s your role on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project? I’m the senior project scientist, which means that I work with the project management and engineering teams to define the mission requirements to make sure that they are correctly implemented, and with the scientific teams to make sure we have understood the scientific opportunities and their implications for what should be built to enable spectacular discoveries. What work will you be doing in the coming years, and post launch in 2018? I’ll be continuing my role as senior project scientist to make sure our mission…

The next great planet hunter

Did he already make contact

What are you working on at the moment? I am retired. I enjoy bowling and golf and am involved in church activities. I unvolunteered from the Ohio State University Radio Observatory back in 2008, so I am no longer actively working much in SETI. What were you doing at the time you discovered the Wow! signal? I was a professor in Management Science at another university in Columbus, Ohio. I was also a volunteer at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory (OSURO). What was the Wow! signal? It was a strong narrowband signal from an unknown object. The distance to that object could not be determined. Did you believe the Wow! signal was a sign of extraterrestrial intelligence? Since all of the possibilities of a terrestrial origin have either been…

Did he already make contact

Looking for life in small places

BIO Dr Jennifer Eigenbrode Dr Eigenbrode is a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, who specialises in astrobiology. She is also a participating scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory mission. What’s your role at NASA? I am a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. My studies focus on understanding the sources, alteration, and preservation of organic molecules in geological materials on Earth and Mars. I am a participating scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory [Curiosity] and a collaborator for the Sample Analysis at Mars [SAM] instrument suite that can detect organics in Gale Crater sediments. Do you think we’ll find evidence of past or present life on Mars? I think Mars may have harboured life in the past. The conditions of Mars 3.5 billion years ago…

Looking for life in small places

Have we already found life?

Allan Hills 84001 In Antarctica on 27 December 1984, a team of American scientists found a meteorite named Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001) that shot to fame 12 years later when it was announced that it might contain microscopic fossils of Martian bacteria. However, no conclusive evidence could prove whether this was so. The Viking probes In 1976, NASA landed two probes on Mars, Viking 1 and 2, which had instruments to perform biological experiments on the surface. Controversy surrounded the results; early indications suggested they’d found evidence of organic compounds, but some claimed that the nature of the experiment, which heated soil samples, would have destroyed organics, suggesting the results were erroneous.…

Have we already found life?

Translating an alien language

What work do you do for SETI? My contributions in the academic side are in being able to understand the structures in the signal if we receive one. There’s been at least one occasion where I’ve looked at a signal, just to see if there’s any structure in there. So if they pick something up, I’ll be looking at the content to see if there’s anything in there that denotes intelligence, any sort of linguistic phenomena or imagery or anything with structure that’s actually conveying information. How confident are you that you could decipher the message? It obviously all depends on the amount of content you’ve got. If it was just a short burst, like the Wow! signal, then you’re up against it. But if it was someone on the…

Translating an alien language

5 amazing facts about Rockets

The first rocket landed in a cabbage patch The first-ever liquid-fuelled rocket was launched by American Robert Goddard on 16 March 1926, although the Chinese used solidfuel rockets a thousand years prior. Goddard’s rocket climbed 12.5m (41ft) before crashing in a cabbage patch. However, he was widely derided for suggesting a rocket could one day take humans to the Moon. The Saturn V was heavier than 400 elephants Coming in at a massive 2.8 million kg (6.2 million lb), the Saturn V is the most powerful rocket to have ever been launched. It was as tall as a 36-storey building and could take the equivalent of ten school buses into Earth orbit, while the amount of fuel it used could have driven a car around the world 800 times. Paint…

5 amazing facts about Rockets

Landing on Titan

Just over a decade ago, on 14 January 2005, the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe separated from NASA’s Cassini orbiter around Saturn, and began its descent onto Titan. Although it only transmitted data from the surface for 72 minutes before losing contact with Cassini, and a problem with its programming meaning half the images and data it received was lost, Huygens was still considered a huge success. It’s the only successful soft landing on a world in the outer Solar System, the images returned are the first taken from a surface in the outer Solar System, and Huygens remains the most distant landing of any man-made spacecraft today. The images taken here showed, for the first time, what was beneath the impenetrable yellow haze of Titan’s dense nitrogen atmosphere: a…

Landing on Titan

INTERSTELLAR SPACE TRAVEL

To date, mankind has managed to send just one object beyond the boundary of our own Solar System. Voyager 1 received gravity assists from both Jupiter and Saturn that boosted its speed to over 61,000 kilometres (38,000 miles) per hour, but it still took 35 years to spiral outwards into interstellar space, 20 billion kilometres (12 billion miles) away. At this speed, Voyager 1 would take another 75,000 years to reach our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. That’s because 61,000 kilometres (38,000 miles) per hour is actually very slow. It’s just 0.005 per cent of the ultimate speed limit for the universe: the speed of light. If you drove your car at the same fraction of the motorway speed limit, you would be travelling ten times slower than a snail. Clearly,…

INTERSTELLAR SPACE TRAVEL

The father of the warp drive

Does general relativity permit warp bubbles for warp-drive technology? Warp bubbles are theoretically possible in the sense that the required geometry of space-time is easy to write down. However, they are certainly not solutions in a strict sense. What are the biggest obstacles to creating one? 1: The warp drive would require ‘exotic matter’, with negative-energy densities (antigravity) that – as far as we know – do not exist. It would also require some very weird distributions of momentum and stresses. 2: Even if you get your hands on negative energy and manage to manipulate it, you would need star-sized amounts of it. 3: At super-luminal speeds, the front of the warp bubble is disconnected from the centre. This means that a spaceship sitting in the centre of the bubble…

The father of the warp drive

The dangers of warp travel

RADIATION Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia have calculated that particles and radiation could be caught up in the bow wave of a warp bubble as it travels. When the ship decelerates, the accumulated particles would be released in a devastating burst that would destroy anything in the path of the ship. COLLISIONS The physics of warp bubbles aren’t well enough understood yet to know exactly what would happen if your course takes you through the path of a planet or star. Would it be brushed aside? Would you pass harmlessly though it? Or would you be instantly vaporised? If you fly inside the event horizon of a black hole, could you escape? NEGATIVE ENERGY What are the properties of negative energy? How would you store it? What…

The dangers of warp travel

All about... THE SUN

At about 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) from Earth lies a giant incandescent ball of gas weighing in at almost 2,000 trillion trillion kilograms and emitting power equivalent to 1 million times the annual power consumption of the United States in a single second. Since the dawn of Earth 4.6 billion years ago it has been the one ever-present object in the sky, basking our world and those around us in energy and light and providing the means through which environments, and ultimately life, can flourish. We see it every day and rely on its energy to keep our planet ticking, but what exactly is this giant nuclear reactor at the centre of the Solar System that we call the Sun? Over 5 billion years ago a vast cloud…

All about... THE SUN

Solar storms are violent outbursts of activity on the Sun that interfere with the Earth’s magnetic field and inundate our planet with particles. They are the result of outpourings of energy from the Sun, either in the form of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) or a solar flare. The former is a release of a large amount of material, mostly plasma, from the Sun while the latter is a sudden release of electromagnetic radiation commonly associated with a sunspot. While no direct connection has been found between CMEs and solar flares, both are responsible for causing solar storms on Earth. The reason why these two events occur is due to the Sun’s atmosphere and its turbulent interior, with all of its components playing a part in bathing our planet in…

The solar cycle

1994-1996 As the Sun’s activity began to wane, the number of sunspots per year dropped from about 100 per month in 1994 to 75 in 1996. 1991-1993 At the start of this solar cycle there were about 200 sunspots on the surface of the Sun per month. 1997-1998 The Sun reached its period of solar minimum between these years, falling to almost zero sunspots per month. 1999-2001 The Sun’s activity increased again to a solar maximum, with up to 175 sunspots appearing per month. Our Sun may be a great distance away but its fluctuations and perturbations are still felt here on Earth. Every 11 years the Sun moves from a period of low activity, known as a solar minimum, to a period of high activity, known as a solar…

The solar cycle

The SOHO mission

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, also known as SOHO, was launched on 2 December 1995. It was built in Europe by prime contractor Matra Marconi Space, which is now EADS Astrium. The spacecraft is operated jointly by the ESA and NASA. It studies the Sun in depth, all the way from its deep core to its outer corona and its solar wind. SOHO is made of two modules, the Service Module and the Payload Module. The former provides SOHO with power, while the latter houses all of the instruments on the spacecraft. Overall, there are 12 instruments on board SOHO, nine of which are run by Europe as well as three from the United States. SOHO is located near to Lagrangian point 1, which is a point between the Earth…

The SOHO mission

1. Understand life “The Sun provides the energy for all life on Earth. It seems quite natural that we are curious to know more about the star from which we live.” 2. Understand climate “Solar radiation is the dominant energy input into the terrestrial ecosystem. The Sun provides a natural influence on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. To understand mankind’s roles in climate change, the Sun’s impact must be understood.” 3. Predict space weather “Our Sun is very dynamic and produces the largest eruptions in the Solar System. These solar storms can reach our planet and adversely affect technologies such as satellites and power grids. Space weather becomes increasingly important as our society depends more on modern technologies.” 4. Learn about stars “If we want to understand the universe, we…

Observing the Sun

Observations of the Sun have been used for both scientific and religious observations for millennia. Civilisations have used the Sun to keep an accurate count of days, months and years since at least 300BC, while scientists such as Galileo studied the Sun through telescopes to discern some of its characteristics. At the Chankillo archaeological site in Peru can be found the oldest solar observatory in the Americas, a group of 2,300-year-old structures used to track the motion of the Sun known as the Thirteen Towers. These towers provide a rudimentary solar calendar through which the Sun can be traced. The towers, each between 75 and 125 square metres (807 and 1,345 square feet) in size, run from north to west along a ridge along a low hill. From an observation…

Observing the Sun

Orbiting at a distance of anywhere between 362,570 kilometres and 405,410 kilometres (225,000 to 252,000 miles) and moving away from the Earth at almost four centimetres (1.57 inches) per year, all 74 billion trillion kilograms (160 billion trillion pounds) of blasted grey rock that is the Moon never fails to make for fascinating viewing. Its topography is a pattern of ‘maria’ – impact basins once filled with lava – and giant craters that are clearly visible from Earth. Most notable of these is Tycho on the near side of the Moon. Despite being around 86 kilometres (53 miles) in diameter and 4.8 kilometres (three miles) deep, it’s not the largest of the Moon’s impact features: that accolade goes to the South Pole-Aitken basin on the far side, which is 2,500…

Comets, asteroids & METEOR SHOWERS

Every 133 years a comet that goes by the name of Swift-Tuttle makes its return to the inner Solar System. It last made an appearance 15 years ago. Each time it nears the Sun this speeding ball of ice, rock and dust grows a tail that deposits a glittering trail in its wake, replenishing it on each visit. Every year, our very own planet moves through this cloud, causing those dust particles to come crashing through the atmosphere. Most of them are tiny, just centimetres or even millimetres across, but as they burn up 100 kilometres (60 miles) above our heads they leave a bright streak of light. We call this a meteor, although you may know them by their more common name of ‘shooting star’. The space between the…

Comets, asteroids & METEOR SHOWERS

PLUTO Our Last Frontier

It has been on a breathtaking journey 4.8 billion kilometres (3 billion miles) long. It has taken nineand-a-half years. And it has cost $700 million (£460 million). But for patient astronomers working on the New Horizons mission, the spacecraft which is about to make the first-ever reconnaissance of Pluto is more than worth its half-ton weight in gold. Launched on 19 January 2006, New Horizons is set to spend this summer flying by Pluto and its five known moons. It is already the closest man-made object to Pluto, but very soon it will be within a space whisker and scientists are very excited about the possible discoveries it will enable them to make. “Imagine the explorers of old who crossed the oceans,” says Dr Alan Stern, the principal investigator of…

PLUTO Our Last Frontier

Alien volcanoes on Io

Lava Some parts of the surface of Io are covered by lava flows rich in sulphur, giving the ground a slightly yellow appearance. Pele This image from Voyager 1 shows the eruption of the Pele volcano with a plume the size of Alaska rising 300km (185 miles) high. In 1979, NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft flew by Io, the fourth largest moon in the Solar System and the innermost of Jupiter’s four main Galilean moons, and returned some startling information. While moons in the Solar System were once thought to be lifeless hunks of space rock, both spacecraft had directly observed volcanic features on Io. Bearing more resemblance to a pepperoni pizza than a giant moon, it was apparent that Io was one of the most fascinating and significant objects in…

Alien volcanoes on Io

Our angry, stormy Sun

We know our Sun as a brilliantly bright sphere that rises in the east and sets in the west each day. That’s a simple way to describe it; what really goes on on its surface is far from the impression that it gives as it hangs, almost calmly, in the daytime sky. While going anywhere near the Sun would be suicide with the searing heat and penetrating radiation combining to fry you alive in your spacesuit, technology has revealed this star to be an angry, bubbling cauldron of solar activity. First up are solar flares – bursts of radiation from the sudden release of magnetic energy from active regions on the Sun’s surface, the photosphere. These regions are centred on sunspots, which are tangled knots of magnetic fields. The flares…

Our angry, stormy Sun

Dust storms that cover the planet

Now this is really bad weather – a dust storm that doesn’t just cover an area, or even a hemisphere, but the entire planet. During summer in the Red Planet’s southern hemisphere, when Mars is at its closest point to the Sun, solar heating can drive immense storms that blow up red dust and can obscure the surface for months. In 1971, when Mariner 9 arrived at Mars, it found the whole planet hidden under a veil of dust, with only the volcano Olympus Mons visible. More recently, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity would struggle to survive in dust storms as the Sun’s light was blocked and their solar panels covered by a coating of dust. On Earth, moisture arms swirling storms, but on Mars there is only…

Dust storms that cover the planet

Hurricanes bigger than Earth

Easily one of the most famous storms in the Solar System, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is so large that it is visible through many Earth-based telescopes. The Great Red Spot is thought to have been in existence for at least 340 years. The oval red eye rotates in an anticlockwise direction due to the crushing high pressure on the planet. Winds can reach over 400 kilometres per hour (250 miles per hour) around the spot, however, inside the storm they seem to be nearly nonexistent. And that’s not all, this complicated weather system has an average temperature of about -162 degrees Celsius (-260 degrees Fahrenheit). At around eight kilometres (five miles) above the surrounding clouds and held in place by an eastward jet stream to its south and a very…

Hurricanes bigger than Earth

The violent polar vortex

On the outside, Saturn almost looks like a calm, bland world, but once in a while, huge storms flare up on the ringed planet. From the short-lived Great White Spot of 1990, to the more recent storm of 2010, which grew into an atmospheric belt covering around 4 billion square kilometres (1.5 billion square miles), Saturn has proven to be a turbulent world. And what’s more, the storms on Saturn are the second fastest in the Solar System, after ice giant Neptune, peaking at an impressive 1,800 kilometres per hour (1,120 miles per hour) and blowing in an easterly direction. Temperatures on Saturn are normally around -185 degrees Celsius (-300 degrees Fahrenheit), but near the giant swirling polar vortex – a persistent cyclone taking pride of place at the ringed…

The violent polar vortex

Deadly methane rain

With a surface pressure almost one and a half times that of Earth’s, Titan’s atmosphere is slightly more massive than our planet’s overall, taking on an almost chokingly opaque haze of orange layers that block out any light that tries to penetrate the Saturnian moon’s thick cover. Titan is the only other world, other than Earth, where liquid rains on a solid surface. However, rather than the water that we are used to falling from the skies above us, pooling into puddles and flowing as streams and rivers, this moon’s rains fall as liquid methane – liquid hydrocarbons that add more fluid to the many lakes and oceans that already cover the surface. And it is thanks to the moon’s complex methane cycle, similar to the natural processes found on…

Deadly methane rain

Winds at twice the speed of sound

We’ve all got stuck out in or witnessed very strong winds here on Earth, from gusts that turn your umbrella inside out to tornadoes that rip up everything in their path. You might think these winds are a force to be reckoned with, but unless you’ve had a day floating around the gaseous atmosphere of ice giant Neptune you haven’t seen anything yet! You might think that Neptune’s distance from the Sun, which creates temperatures as low as -218 degrees Celsius (-360 degrees Fahrenheit), would mean a world frozen solid by the subzero climate with not much going on in terms of weather. However, you would be incorrect. The winds that race through its hydrogen, helium and ammonia-laden atmosphere can reach maximum speeds of around 2,400 kilometres per hour (1,500…

Winds at twice the speed of sound

Deep space: Lethal gamma rays

Releasing more energy in a mere ten seconds than the Sun will during its entire 10 billion-year lifetime, gammaray bursts reign supreme as the most deadly source of radiation known to man, pipping X-rays to the post. Taking a trip just outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, you’ll find that gamma rays are everywhere, however, one of the greatest difficulties in detecting gamma-ray bursts is their incredibly short life span, lasting from just a fraction of a second to over 1,000 seconds. While they can’t be seen by our visible lightsensitive eyes, space observatories such as NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which is currently performing observations from low Earth orbit, paints a picture of a gamma ray cosmos, proving just how exotic and fascinating our universe is. But such a high…

Deep space: Lethal gamma rays

What happens inside a star?

Anatomy of a star Core The core of stars is where the vast majority of their nuclear fusion reactions take place. Temperatures are incredibly high, often over 10 million degrees Celsius (18 million degrees Fahrenheit). Magnetic field Magnetic fields permeate all stars, with magnetic field lines arranged according to local conditions. Earth’s Sun has a dipole magnetic field. These fields are commonly distorted by the star’s internal dynamo. Radiative zone Each star has a radiative zone where energy from the core is directly radiated outwards through its gaseous material. Lowmass stars have radiative inner layers, while high-mass stars have radiative outer layers. Subsurface flows Subsurface flows are driven by both the distorting effect of the star’s dynamo and also, on low-mass stars, by large convection zones that unstably transfer energy…

What happens inside a star?

Fusion power explained

Proton-proton fusion A nuclear fusion process that fuels stars with core temperatures less than 15 million Kelvin, protonproton fusion is a common reaction. It entails two protons fusing, with one being transmuted to a neutron, forming deuterium. The deuterium then fuses with another proton, generating a helium nuclei, two of which then fuse to generate an alpha particle and the release of two protons. Carbon fusion For stars with central temperatures over 15 million Kelvin, carbon fusion tends to be the dominant process. It revolves around adding protons to carbon and then nitrogen over multiple sequences. The end result is the generation of an oxygen-16 atom, which emits an energetic alpha particle. This is not a major part of the Sun’s reaction cycle, but is prevalent in the star Sirius.…

Fusion power explained

HOW PLANETS FORM

In a sense, planetary birth is a side effect of a larger birth: the formation of a star. Stars form from nebulas, massive clouds of gas and dust dominated by hydrogen and helium. Now and then, a disturbance in a nebula concentrates an area of gas and dust into a denser knot of material. If the knot is big enough and dense enough, it will exert enough gravitational pull to collapse in on itself. The huge volume of super-dense gas concentrates at the knot’s centre, and the gravitational energy heats it up to form a protostar. With sufficient mass, the energy of the protostar increases, eventually initiating a nuclear fusion reaction and graduating to a proper star. Meanwhile, according to the solar nebula theory, surrounding gas and dust form a…

HOW PLANETS FORM

How do planetary orbits work?

If the Sun disappeared tomorrow, Earth would soon become a very cold and dark planet and would tumble out of its orbit. It would follow a straight rather than a curved path, drifting away in whichever direction it was facing. Thankfully, this won’t happen any time soon. Even though the Earth only wants to go forward, the Sun's gravity stops it moving further away and holds it in orbit, doing the same for the Solar System's other planets, dwarf planets, comets and asteroids too. In doing so, the Sun exerts a centripetal force, pulling these falling bodies into an elliptical path around it. The stable orbits that result are a balancing act between the planet's forward motion and the gravitational pull exerted on it. At the optimum balance, although the…

How do planetary orbits work?

What are asteroids made of?

Protecting Earth is one of the main reasons why scientists keep a close eye on asteroids, which are space rocks of all shapes and sizes that can be found scattered throughout the Solar System. It’s unclear how meteoroids, the rocks that become meteors when they crash into Earth’s atmosphere, were generated from asteroids. Still, NASA isn’t ruling a link out and is examining asteroids to learn more about how the Solar System was formed. Since planetary scientists believe planets gradually grew from rocks crashing into each other, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter could be made up of the leftovers of the early Solar System. Therefore, ferreting out the secrets of asteroids could also give scientists clues as to how the Solar System came to be. Possibly, it could…

What are asteroids made of?

Mining asteroids

Deep Space Industries Deep Space Industries plans – at some point – to send robotic probes on a one-way reconnaissance mission to potential asteroid mining sites. Later, larger DragonFly spacecraft would potentially pick up samples or small asteroids for further evaluation on Earth. Power The Harvester will be blasted into space on major launch vehicles such as the Falcon Heavy or Ariane 5. Resources The machinery will be able to produce water, propellant and building materials for use on Earth or in space. Production The missions will be able to generate and return thousands of tons of resources each year. Planetary Resources Planetary Resources first plans to scope out potential asteroids using a telescope. They will then capture a suitable asteroid and reposition it in a stable orbit near Earth,…

Mining asteroids

5 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT Moon dust

1 You shouldn’t breathe it Following a lunar walk, astronaut Harrison Schmitt noted the smell of Moon dust in the air, like gunpowder. NASA pathologist Russell Kerschmann warned that prolonged exposure to Moon dust could seriously damage human lungs. 2 It’s magnetic Because tiny specks of iron are present in the glass shell of each lunar dust particle, magnets can be used to filter the dust out of the air and off sensitive equipment. The dust that makes up lunar soil can also be quickly microwaved into flat sheets, meaning roads and landing pads can easily be created for future missions. 3 It wears through spacesuits Moon dust is very abrasive and clingy. Apollo 17 astronauts had problems moving their arms properly because lunar dust had clogged up the joints,…

5 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT Moon dust

DEADLY SPACE JUNK

It’s perhaps the most electrifying sequence in the awe-inspiring blockbuster film Gravity – the moment a blizzard of incoming space debris travelling at terrifying speed lays waste to everything in its path, destroying both the International Space Station and an orbiting Space Shuttle, leaving two spacewalking astronauts adrift and fighting for their lives. Fortunately, though, it’s the kind of thing that could only happen in a movie… or is it? While the debris storm in Gravity is created by a foolhardy missile test on a defunct satellite, space scientists today are increasingly concerned that something very similar could happen by accident, with a runaway cascade of collisions leaving large areas of near-Earth space dangerously inaccessible. If that happens, the effects wouldn’t just be felt by a few orbiting astronauts –…

DEADLY SPACE JUNK

SUPERNOVAS The energy of a billion suns

Stars are large and volatile masses of energy, finely balanced to allow their existence to continue while also emitting large amounts of energy into their surroundings. Their very presence is one of the wonders of the universe, with these giant hot and dense balls of gas able to survive the harsh reality of space. But when the finely-tuned balance of gravity and pressure within a star is altered, something rather remarkable often happens. Try to imagine an explosion more powerful than a billion suns, and you might start to understand how stars can meet their explosive end when they go supernova. In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers were astounded when a new star appeared in the night sky for eight months. The star appeared from nowhere and was stationary, ruling out…

SUPERNOVAS The energy of a billion suns

Most spectacular supernovas

Crab Nebula Exploded: 7,500 years ago Distance: 6,500 light years This famous supernova remnant has a rapidly rotating star known as the Crab Pulsar at its centre, left behind after the original star exploded. This nebula is now 11 light years across but is still expanding at a rate of 1,500 km (930 miles) per second, 0.5% the speed of light. It is part of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy and the nebula is also referred to as Messier 1 or M1, being the first Messier Object catalogued in 1758. The explosion of the supernova that created this nebula, SN 1054, was recorded around the world in 1054 AD. Kepler’s Supernova Exploded: 24,000 years ago Distance: 20,000 light years Observed by astronomer Johannes Kepler in October 1604,…

Most spectacular supernovas

Coming soon to a galaxy near you...

IK Pegasi Will explode: 5 million years from now Distance: 150 light years IK Pegasi A is expected to evolve into a red giant, which will transfer matter to the smaller IK Pegasi B white dwarf star and cause it to explode in a Type 1a supernova. IK Pegasi is moving away, so while it is currently the closest star to us that can go supernova, when it does in a few million years it will no longer be. Betelgeuse Will explode: 0 to 1 million years from now Distance: 640 light years Currently in the later stages of its life, it is expected to explode as a Type II supernova within the next million years, although it could explode at any minute. The star is a red supergiant and…

Coming soon to a galaxy near you...

Behemoth galaxy

It seems appropriate that one of the most massive known objects in the universe, the Perseus galactic cluster, should also be home to a particularly huge galaxy at its centre. The giant elliptical NGC 1275 is 230 million light years away in the constellation of Perseus and actually consists of two galaxies – one a huge elliptical and the other a small spiral – in what’s known as a high-velocity system. These galaxies seem set to collide and are moving towards each other at 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) per second. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows filaments of cool, mainly hydrogen gas surrounded by gas measuring up to 55 million degrees Celsius (100 million degrees Fahrenheit) in the cluster, which emits strong X-rays. The Perseus cluster has recently come under…

Behemoth galaxy

What does a star sound like? It might seem like a strange question, but every star in the sky is generating sound waves, even if we can’t hear them across light years of vacuum. What’s more, these stellar waves have frequencies much too low for human hearing – periods of minutes to hours, compared to the 20 to 20,000 cycles per second our ears can pick up. In effect, these sound waves are the same as the seismic waves that are known to cause earthquakes on our own planet. Most earthquakes are triggered in Earth’s relatively thin outer crust. In a similar fashion, stellar seismic waves are generated by the churning of huge masses of gas in the upper layers, close to a star’s visible surface. Both types of wave…

Deepest ever view of the universe

You are looking at one of the most extraordinary views of the universe ever created. It’s called the eXtreme Deep Field or XDF and was assembled by combining ten years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the centre of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. This was an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. The new fullcolour XDF image shown here uses the infra-red spectrum to reach much fainter galaxies, enabling new studies of the earliest galaxies in the universe. This has been achieved by incorporating well over 2,000 separate exposures from Hubble’s two main cameras – the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which has been operational since 2002,…

Deepest ever view of the universe

11,000 light years away in the Cassiopeia constellation can be found this fascinating nebula that at first glance bears resemblance to a bubble. Also known as NGC 7635, the ten-light-year-wide Bubble Nebula is an emission nebula that was formed from a young and hot star at its centre. It was first discovered in 1787 by William Herschel, and since then it has been the subject of detailed observations. Near the centre of the bubble can be seen the bright star BD+60°2522, several hundred thousand times more luminous and nearly 50 times more massive than the Sun. This star blasted out intense radiation and a fierce stellar wind, which in turn interacted with denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud and formed the Bubble Nebula. The nebula itself is one of…

HIDDEN UNIVERSES

INTERVIEW Charles Blue National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) “Radio astronomy is utterly essential for understanding the universe, since optical telescopes only see bright stars and objects illuminated by them. Radio telescopes, on the other hand, see the cold, dark and distant universe. This includes nurseries that form stars, clouds of hydrogen gas, molecules in galaxies, energetic particles accelerated by super dense black holes and galaxies near cosmic dawn. These objects and in fact all objects in space, shine at radio wavelengths. When combined with other telescopes operating at different wavelengths, radio astronomy unlocks even more amazing information, supplying us with a more complete picture of the cosmos.” If we just relied on our eyes, we’d find that we would be blind to most of what the universe has to offer.…

HIDDEN UNIVERSES

When galaxies collide

This stunning image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the individual galaxies UGC 1810 (top) and UGC 1813 (bottom) in the process of colliding. Together, this pair of interacting galaxies is known as Arp 273. The interaction of galaxies is thought to be relatively common in the universe, particularly within galactic clusters, however, the opportunity to directly observe one such as this is incredibly rare. The two galaxies are located around 300 million light years from Earth in the Andromeda constellation. A collision is actually thought to have already occurred, with UGC 1813 passing through the five times more massive UGC 1810. As a result, the smaller galaxy is now showing signs of intense star formation at its nucleus. It is possible, though, that they will collide again in…

When galaxies collide

The Sombrero Galaxy

Located approximately 28 million light years from Earth, this odd-shaped galaxy has been the focus of much attention from scientists around the world. The Sombrero Galaxy, or Messier 104, gets its name from its somewhat hat-like appearance. The bright galaxy is found towards the southern edge of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. The Sombrero Galaxy contains about 2,000 globular clusters, collections of up to a million old stars held together by gravity that are often found in the halo of galaxies. By comparison, our Milky Way only has about 200. The Sombrero also contains several hundred billion stars and is approximately 50,000 light years across, around half the diameter of the Milky Way. Around the brim of the galaxy are thick dust lanes that block the light at the centre,…

The Sombrero Galaxy

Galactic ghosts

Each of these wispy celestial objects is a galaxy photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Most of the filaments that surround them, which show up mainly in green, were practically invisible until the energetic quasar that surrounds the supermassive black hole in their host galaxy lit them up with an extremely powerful blast of radiation. This caused elements in the filaments, including oxygen, helium and sulphur, to absorb the energy and release it gradually as light. Each element glows in a different colour and green, the most abundant colour in these images, is ionised oxygen. The process is called photoionisation and the filaments will glow for many thousands of years after having been ionised – although this period is just a blink of an eye on a cosmological scale. The…

Galactic ghosts

FAILED STARS & SUPER JUPITERS

The brown dwarf is seen as a stellar failure, a dropout from the school of star formation. These gigantic objects with their puffy gaseous outer layers, are the universe’s students that didn’t quite make the grade. You see, in brown dwarfs, nuclear fusion – the process that gives stars their power – has given up the ghost, leaving them relatively cold and some no hotter than the human body. Neither planet nor star, brown dwarfs fall into the grey area between the most massive gas giant planets like Jupiter (which is why they're known as 'super Jupiters' because of their massive, gaseous nature) and the smallest stars. Their existence blurs the lines between what is a planet and what is a star and forces us to question the differences between…

FAILED STARS & SUPER JUPITERS

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