Space @ interstellar news

Dancing gargantuan black holes perform on cue Astronomers have been able to test key consequences of Einstein's theories by studying the way a couple of black holes move around each other. One of these objects is a true colossus - a hole weighing 18 billion times the mass of our Sun; the other not quite so big at "only" 150 million Sun masses. Scientists managed to predict their interactions very precisely. They did so by including their warping effects on space-time and by assuming the larger hole had a smooth "surface". The black hole pairing, known as OJ 287, exists about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth. Hubble delivers stunning 30th birthday picture Twisting jet observed at supermassive black hole Gravitational waves: So many new toys to unwrap Scientists have long recognised a sudden brightening from this system that occurs twice every 12 years. The outburst of energy is equivalent to a trillion suns turning on at once in the hole...

Meet The New Members Of Our Solar System Remember the days when we thought our solar system had nine planets and a smattering of asteroids? Pluto may no longer be considered a planet, but our cosmic family has grown significantly this month – from alien asteroids to hundreds of more Pluto-like minor planets to, maybe, evidence for a Planet Number 9 that would be unlike any other known planet in our solar system. Each of these discoveries makes a more detailed family tree, and help us understand where we, as a solar system, came from. A Host of Interstellar Visitors That Decided To Stay In 2017, a strange, elongated object sailed through our solar system. Unlike any object that we saw before,  some hypothesized it was a piece of an alien spaceship . While it may not be piloted by little green men, the asteroid  Oumuamua  was a visitor from outside our solar system, with a hyperbolic orbit that took it on a tour of the inner solar system and back out again. Ast...

A big asteroid will fly by Earth Wednesday, but don't panic. It won't hit us. 1998 OR2 will stay 3.9 million miles away from our planet. Don't be fooled by any hyped-up headlines you may have read: This week's  asteroid  flyby poses no threat to Earth or anything on it. The big  asteroid 1998 OR2  will zoom within 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometers) of our planet early Wednesday morning (April 29). While that's a close shave in the context of the visible universe, which is more than 90 billion light-years wide, there's zero chance that the space rock will hit Earth on this pass, scientists stress. Indeed,  at its closest approach , the roughly 1.5-mile-wide (2.4 km) 1998 OR2 will still be about 16 times farther from us than the moon is from the Earth. (The moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 239,000 miles, or 385,000 km.) And you can let relief keep washing over you, for we know of no big asteroids that could harm us in the foreseeabl...

Rare Phenomenon of Two Black Holes Merging Just Made Astronomy More Interesting An astronaut always craves to witness a rare phenomenon in the universe which can open new gates for further research. Black holes have been one such mysterious phenomenon. Be it the time when it was mentioned by Albert Einstein, explained by Stephen Hawking or its first observation in 2019, black holes never cease to amaze. One of the latest yet rare observation is a merger of two black holes, captured by the scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo interferometer in Pisa, Italy. The news about the black hole merger was first shared on April 18 at the online meeting of the American Physical Society. LIGO is a pair of twin detectors, which are based in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. The event, identified as GW190412, has also been explained in a video.  The findings were published in arvix journal According to the informatio...

19 हजार किलोमीटर की रफ्तार से 29 अप्रैल को धरती के पास से गुजरेगा ‘मास्क’ लगा उल्कापिंड उल्कापिंड आजकल वैज्ञानिकों के आकर्षक का केंद्र बना हुआ है। अगले सप्ताह लगभग 1.2 मील चौड़ा उल्कापिंड पृथ्वी के पास से होकर गुजरेगा। इसकी जो तस्वीरों ली गई हैं, उसमें यह उल्कापिंड मास्क लगाया नजर आ रहा है।19000 किलोमीटर प्रति घंटा है इसकी रफ्तारइस उल्कापिंड को 52768 (1998 डफ2) का नाम दिया गया है। इसे पहली बार 1998 में देखा गया था। 29 अप्रैल को यह पृथ्वी के करीब से गुजरेगा। उस वक्त उसकी रफ्तार 19 हजार किलोमीटर प्रति घंटे होगी। धरती से दूरी लगभग 39 लाख किलोमीटर होगी। नासा के अनुसार यह पृथ्वी पर वैश्विक प्रभाव पैदा करने के लिए पर्याप्त बड़ा है। वैज्ञानिकों के अनुसार इसके एक छोर पर पहाड़ियों और लकीरें जैसे विशेषताएं दिखती हैं, इसलिए यह ऐसा नजर आता है, जैसे इसे मास्क लगा हो। पृथ्वी से टकराने की संभावना नहीं नासा के सेंटर फॉर नियर-अर्थ स्टडीज के अनुसार, बुधवार 29 अप्रैल को सुबह 5:56 बजे ईस्टर्न टाइम में उल्कापिंड के पृथ्वी के पास से होकर गुजरेगा। वैज्ञानिकों के अनुसार इसके धरती से...

Scientists detect rare crash of two mismatched black holes for the first time ever "This is roughly equal to the ratio of filling in a regular Oreo to [that] in a Mega Stuf Oreo. Investigations of connections between Oreos and black hole formation are ongoing." Colliding  black holes  aren't always as evenly matched as scientists expected, according to a cosmic chirp astronomers have puzzled over for a year. On April 12, 2019, gravitational wave detectors picked up a signal of space-time ripples caused by colliding black holes — which in and of itself has gone from  groundbreaking to nearly mundane  over the past five years. But as scientists studied the detection more closely, they realized that it didn't match the signals they have seen so far. Instead of two evenly matched black holes, the new detection seemed to be triggered by a lopsided merger in which one black hole was three or four times more massive than the other. Scientists affiliated with th...

Here's How You Can Catch The Peak of The Lyrids Meteor Shower This Week Stuck at  home with clear skies ? We're all in a similar situation, as the ongoing pandemic sees most of the worldwide amateur astronomy community observing from home or from their backyard. One astronomical sure-fire event coming up this week requires no special equipment, just a set of working 'Mk-1 eyeballs' and a clear sky: the  April Lyrids . These springtime meteors get their name from the constellation Lyra, which also hosts the bright star Vega. The parallelogram shape of Lyra marks out the Lyre of Orpheus from Greek mythology, the musical instrument that the virtuoso played at the gates of Hades in an ill-fated attempt to win back Eurydice from the Underworld. Perhaps, we can imagine the Lyrids as the 'Tears of Orpheus,' sliding silently through the April sky. The curious history of the Lyrids The April Lyrids are one of the oldest meteor showers recorded. Chi...

An Asteroid the Size of a House Will Fly by Earth Today A newly-discovered asteroid is projected to fly safely by Earth on Wednesday. Discovered April 11, Asteroid 2020 GH2 is anywhere from 43 to 70 feet wide or about the size of a single-family house, The asteroid is projected to pass by Earth at a distance of 220,000 miles, which puts it about 16,000 miles closer than the moon. It poses no threat of danger to the Earth. To understand the scale of those distances, a member of NASA’s Planetary Defense Group  using a basketball to represent the Earth and a tennis ball to represent the moon. At that scale, the two bodies would be located 25 feet apart. And an object like an asteroid would be less than the size of a grain of salt (which is even too large a scale model). An asteroid flyby would only be worrying at a distance where it could hit weather satellites, which are located about 22,000 miles away from Earth. The asteroid was discovered by the Mount Lemm...

Black hole bends light back on itself You may have heard that nothing escapes the gravitational grasp of a black hole, not even light. This is true in the immediate vicinity of a black hole, but a bit farther out—in disks of material that swirl around some black holes—light can escape. In fact, this is the reason actively growing black holes shine with brilliant X-rays. Now, a new study accepted for publication in  The Astrophysical Journal  offers evidence that, in fact, not all of the light streaming from a black hole's surrounding disk easily escapes. Some of it gives in to the monstrous pull of the black hole, turns back, and then ultimately bounces off the disk and escapes. "We observed light coming from very close to the black hole that is trying to escape, but instead is pulled right back by the black hole like a boomerang," says Riley Connors, lead author of the new study and a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. "This is something that was predicte...