Science and technology benefit one another. New scientific theories afford new opportunities to create technology that can harness the laws of nature. Conversely, new technologies allow for better instrumentation and unprecedented efficiency in scientific progress. It’s a continual feedback loop, and some of the greatest challenges in science are solved simply by throwing more resources at them, or in other words, gathering more data. A good example of this is a relatively old problem for astronomers – determining how the spin of a galaxy affects it’s shape. We certainly don’t want for analogies on Earth, spinning pizza, driving on a...
A supernova is the death blast of a giant star, far larger than our Sun. Massive stars go out with a bang, outshining entire galaxies, allowing us to see them across the universe. A supernova observed in 2013 occurred in a distant galaxy and took over 30 Million years to reach Earth, where the timing was perfect for us to observe and study it. And now that it’s been studied, the explosion was truly the death of a giant. The supernova, named 2013 ej, was discovered in June 2013 in the galaxy M74 in the constellation Pisces. It was the closest supernova...
Remember last week when I was talking about the evidence for some ancient-but-astronomically-recent supernovae? It turns out there is other evidence! Evidence that has helped scientists narrow down the potential source locations. Data from the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS), an instrument aboard NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, has helped us figure out where the recent supernovae might have come from. CRIS measures what we call cosmic rays, atomic nuclei that have been accelerated across the galaxy at close to the speed of light. CRIS has been around for a while, and through 17 years of cosmic ray observations,...
A direct consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and an observational way to prove it, is gravitational lensing. It requires a powerful gravitational source to work, such as a galaxy or cluster of galaxies. It works in a similar way to a lens of glass, where rays of light are bent toward a single source, increasing the brightness. In this case, instead of glass, the bending of the rays is due to the curvature of space. Light rays coming from the source would otherwise miss Earth, but instead are bent toward us when there is a massive object in front of it. It’s...
I feel like I’ve been covering a lot of stories on magnetic fields over the past few months. Fields around the Earth, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter’s Moons, and exoplanets are just some of the places in the universe where we are looking at magnetic field behaviour. The intention is to use our understanding of magnetism to figure out what is inside these worlds, and how they interact with their space environment. You would expect us to understand the Earth’s magnetic field and interior very well, after all, we are stuck here. But it turns out it’s very difficult to study the interior of...
Gold doesn’t come from your local jewelry store, and the Gold rush that occurred in the Yukon territory at the turn of the 20th century is not the source I’m talking about either. I want to take it further back, to the origins of gold the element. Similar to the origins of most other elements on the periodic table, it requires an immense amount of energy, such as the nuclear fusion that goes on within a star. But Gold can not be made by a star’s thermonuclear engine. Gold requires more energy, as does every other element heavier than Iron. So...
The gravitational center of most objects and clusters in the universe are the place where the most massive and high energy interactions take place. For the solar system, the Sun’s core is hot and energetic. For star clusters, central regions host the most massive and brightest stars. For galaxy clusters, the most massive galaxies in the universe are seen in the center. And for individual galaxies, the Milky Way included, the core is where the fun happens. In the core of our galaxy, there are many massive and powerful objects, not limited to a supermassive star cluster, pulsars, supernova remnants,...
It takes a long time for things to change in the Universe. Time takes on an entirely different role when it comes to the lives of planets, stars, and galaxies. A million years in the life of a star or planet is the equivalent of a single day in the life of a human being. Human lifetimes come and go while stars and planets stay pretty much the same. However, just like human lives, where many days can build up to an important event, millions of years of lead-up can produce some incredible changes to a planet or star. New...
If you listen to an astronomer talk about a supernova, you’ll probably hear something along the lines of ‘A massive explosion of a massive star that is bright enough to outshine an entire galaxy.’ You can imagine how bright it might be, but it doesn’t really give you enough context to get the wow factor from it. Carl Sagan always said ‘When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.’ Now you, dear reader, have the chance to make the discovery yourself. A series of images of galaxy...
