Category: Cosmos

inverse.com

The farthest quasar ever has been observed, it’s 13.03 billion light years away, meaning that it existed when the universe was only 670 million years old.
A quasar emits as much light as a trillion stars, while occupying an area smaller than the Solar System.
Quasars let physicists “look back in time” on the history of the universe, and this one has a supermassive black hole in its center, which is as heavy as 1.6 billion Suns.
The mass of the black hole is troubling, because it should be around 10,000 solar masses, and not 1.6 billion, indicating that it didn’t form like a normal black hole.
This provides new clues for scientists as to how galaxies in the early universe formed, and the effects of black holes on their growth.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on January 15, 2021

pcmag.com

They’ll start in 2025, with a mission to catch a small-satellite-size device remaining from a 2013 mission, and perform controlled atmospheric reentry.
The mission, codename ClearSpace-1, will demonstrate if it’s possible to safely bring back space debris.
This is an important milestone for establishing a new commercial market for cleaning space.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 4, 2020

Glycine, the simplest amino acid and building block of life, can form without energy.
It can happen through “dark chemistry”, which doesn’t need energetic radiation to happen.
Even before stars and planets were formed, glycine could exist in interstellar clouds, forming on icy dust grains.
This finding could suggest that life-creating molecules could be more widespread in the Universe than we previously thought.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 20, 2020

Researchers have evidence of water on the sunlit side of the Moon, although it’s only as much as 1% of all water in the Sahara desert.
There are also a lot of shaded areas and pits on the Moon that could potentially hold ice, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet.
NASA plans to go to the Moon in 2024, with the goal to establish a sustainable human presence by 2030, and water on the Moon would help them a lot.
Besides drinking it, scientists could use it to make fuel, enabling new routes to explore space.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on October 30, 2020

nasa.gov

Massive amounts of water and organic molecules, never before seen, discovered in swirling, disk-shaped clouds surrounding young stars.
Young stars are produce life-inducing molecules, and It probably also happened during the formation of the sun and the inner planets of our solar system.
It was discovered through infrared observations of NASA’s airplane telescope, which demonstrates the power of infrared observatories to find simple organic compounds.
Celestial clouds collapse into a rotating disc of gas and dust to form stars, the chemical soup of organic molecules was found in the inner regions of these discs.
Further studies of massive young stars will help scientists understand the processes creating organic molecules.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on October 16, 2020

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