Amazing Facts Archives - Page 44 of 79

Talks turn to rescue as climate changed fire threatens flora

19Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

Talks turn to rescue as climate changed fire threatens flora

Banksia cunninghamii. Credit: (c) Kim Tarpey, some rights reserved (CC BY) Australian plants adapted to resist and recover from fire are becoming threatened by it, as climate change worsens fire weather and drives more frequent and severe wildfires. A recent study of the striking hairpin banksia (Banksia cunninghamii), in areas of Victoria affected by the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, found the species is threatened with local extinction if fires return to these areas in less than 12 years. Other, mountainous trees of the region are threatened by fire intervals of less than a human generation. The paper appears in CSIRO Publishing’s Australian Journal of Botany. “I think most foresters and forest scientists in Australia are worried about [the effects of climate change],”...

This Ancient Galaxy Cluster is Still Forming Stars When it Should be ‘Red and Dead’

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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This Ancient Galaxy Cluster is Still Forming Stars When it Should be ‘Red and Dead’

The Phoenix Cluster is one of the most massive galaxy clusters known. Astronomers have identified 42 member galaxies so far, yet there could be as many as 1,000 in the cluster. Because of its size and its age, it should be finished with the vigorous star formation characteristic of young galaxies. But it’s not. Star formation needs cold, dense gas. Hot gas resists collapsing into stellar cores, which become protostars and then main sequence stars. Old galaxies and clusters have either used up their cold gas or had it stripped away. These are called ‘quenched’ galaxies. In terms of star formation, galaxies can be classified as red sequence, meaning old and quenched, or blue cloud, meaning there’s more active star formation. The Phoenix Cluster’s central galaxy is about 5.8 bi...

The Milky Way’s black hole flickers and flares

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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The Milky Way’s black hole flickers and flares

This artist’s concept portrays the Milky Way‘s black hole. This supermassive black hole sits at the core of our galaxy and goes by the name of Sagittarius A* (A-star). It’s surrounded by a swirling accretion disk of hot gas. The black hole’s gravity bends light from the far side of the disk, making it appear to wrap above and below the black hole. We see several flaring hot spots in the disk. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected both bright flares and fainter flickers coming from Sagittarius A*. Image via NASA/ ESA/ CSA/ Ralf Crawford (STScI). The Webb space telescope has spotted flares and flickers coming from the monster black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists compare these flares to solar flares, except it’s more dramatic because the environment around a ...

James Webb Space Telescope finds our Milky Way galaxy’s supermassive black hole blowing bubbles (image, video)

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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James Webb Space Telescope finds our Milky Way galaxy’s supermassive black hole blowing bubbles (image, video)

The black hole at the heart of our galaxy is a real party animal, endlessly blowing cosmic bubbles. The findings aren't frivolous at all and could help us better understand how black holes interact with their environments and help galaxies evolve.Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists discovered that the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is constantly streaming out flares without respite. The activity occurs over a wide range of time, including short interludes and long stretches.While some of the flares are mere faint flickers lasting just seconds, every day, Sgr A* spews out much brighter and more energetic flares. Also, some of the faintest flares can rage for months at a time.A stream of flares emitted by the Milky Way's central blac...

Mercury Completes the Planetary Parade at Dusk

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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Mercury Completes the Planetary Parade at Dusk

One planet was missing from the sunset lineup… until now. Perhaps you’ve seen the news headlines admonishing sky watchers to ‘See All Naked Eye Planets…at Once!’ in January. While this was basically true, it was also missing one key player: Mercury. This week, the swift inner planet joins the scene at dusk. It’s certainly rare to see all the planets in the solar system in one sweep. This sort of lineup depends mainly on slow moving Jupiter and Saturn, which have parted ways since the rare conjunction of the two on December 21st, 2020. The planetary lineup on February 22nd, looking westward, up to the zenith. Credit: Stellarium. A Planetary Dusk Tour Seeing all the naked eye planets at once is set to become a rarity in coming years. In any event, here’s a tour of the p...

How Earth got its ice caps and helped life to prosper

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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How Earth got its ice caps and helped life to prosper

A new 3D computer model of the planet through time has helped answer a contentious question: How did the Earth’s ice caps form? “The study looked at the Earth’s long-term stable climate,” explains the University of Adelaide’s Andrew Merdith, lead author on the new study in Science Advances. “Over tens to hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate swaps between greenhouse climates and icehouse climates. The difference is that in an icehouse climate, you have a permanent ice cap over one of the poles.” Icehouse periods are further divided into much smaller interglacial and glacial periods, which we commonly think of as ice ages. But for the majority of the planet’s 4.6-billion-year history, its climate has been dominated by greenhouse periods. There are only five, significant...

Cosmic voids may explain the universe’s acceleration without dark energy

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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Cosmic voids may explain the universe’s acceleration without dark energy

Dark energy, the mysterious force that's driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, may not actually exist, scientists say. Their research has brought into question one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology.In a new study, published Dec. 19, 2024 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers analyzed data from the Pantheon+ survey — the most comprehensive dataset of type Ia supernovae, whose consistent brightness allows astronomers to measure distances across the universe with incredible precision. Their analysis suggests that what we perceive as acceleration might be an illusion caused by the large-scale structure of the cosmos.Studying the universe with type Ia supernovaeType Ia supernovae, the explosive deaths of white dwarf stars, have lon...

James Webb Space Telescope learns how a cosmic phoenix cools off to birth stars

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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James Webb Space Telescope learns how a cosmic phoenix cools off to birth stars

How do you cool down a phoenix? I don't mean the mythological birds of flame and rebirth, but rather a cosmic namesake with a fittingly fiery nature.Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers may finally have the answer. They used the powerful instrument to investigate the extreme cooling of gas in the Phoenix cluster, a grouping of galaxies bound by gravity located around 5.8 billion light-years from Earth. Stars can only form when gas is cool enough to clump together in overly dense patches, which is why scientists are particularly interested in how the Phoenix cluster forms stars. Indeed, this section of the universe forms stars at an incredible rate.That incredible rate persists despite the fact that at the heart of the Phoenix cluster is a supermassive black hole 10 bill...

Lowell Observatory holds I Heart Pluto Festival

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

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Lowell Observatory holds I Heart Pluto Festival

Adam Nimoy, David Levy, Alan Stern, and Dave Eicher conducted a 90-minute discussion on Pluto, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, various astronomical topics, and Star Trek in the Orpheum Theater on Saturday night. Credit: Dean Regas An annual event over recent years, the I Heart Pluto Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona, celebrates the history, heritage, and cutting-edge astronomy at Lowell Observatory. On Feb. 18, 1930, the young astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, considered for decades a planet and “demoted” to dwarf planet status in 2008. Following the discovery, Tombaugh traveled down Mars Hill, where the observatory stands, to Flagstaff’s Orpheum Theater and watched Gary Cooper in the pre-code western The Virginian. Now, 95 years later, we celebrated Tombaugh’s achiev...

An Unfinished Detector has Already Spotted the Highest-Energy Neutrino Ever Seen

18Feb

By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments

Amazing Facts

An Unfinished Detector has Already Spotted the Highest-Energy Neutrino Ever Seen

When it comes to particles, only photons are more abundant than neutrinos, yet detecting neutrinos is extremely difficult. Scientists have gone to extreme lengths to detect them, including building neutrino observatories in deep, underground mines and in the deep, clear ice of Antarctica. One of their latest efforts to detect neutrinos is KM3NeT, which is still under construction at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Though the neutrino telescope isn’t yet complete, it has already detected the most energetic neutrino ever detected. The Universe is flooded with them, yet they’re extremely difficult to detect. They’re like tiny, abundant ghosts and are sometimes called “ghost particles.” They have no electric charge, which limits the ways they interact with matter. The fact th...