Black holes form when a massive star runs out of fuel. Gravity causes the core to collapse down to an object so dense that light itself can not escape. In the Milky Way galaxy, there are expected to be over 100 Million black holes, though of course we can’t see them. The one we can see is the supermassive black hole Sag A*, lying deep within the core of the galaxy. But how did Sag A* form? Was it from the merger of many smaller black holes? Or is there some other process forming the most enigmatic objects in the...
There are eight planets in the Solar System. This statement makes a lot of people angry for several different reasons. The obvious group to respond with anger is the ‘people for Pluto,’ who have an unwavering dedication to the little planet that could. It’s scientifically recognized as a dwarf Planet, and is still one step up from a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), so it’s doing well. Far beyond Pluto, in the outer recesses of our Solar system, you may have heard of a potential Super-Earth-sized Planet recently theorized by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown. This is the other reason people would...
There was a report about a month ago that a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) produced a repeating signal. This is big news because we really don’t know what causes FRBs, and once they have ended it can be difficult to trace their source. But a repeating signal means we can pinpoint their origin and potentially figure out their root cause. It’s no wonder the astronomical community was excited…and skeptical. Most of the FRBs that have been discovered were in archival data – data from past surveys that were given a closer look. Only a few have been seen in real-time, so when...
Have you ever seen the North star, Polaris? It’s decently bright and very close to the North celestial pole. Lining up with the rotation axis of the Earth, the North celestial pole is the point in the sky that never moves, day or night. If you know how to find Polaris, it becomes easy to find the cardinal directions and navigate by the stars. And finding it simply requires finding the big dipper, a bright and easily recognizable object. The same rules apply in the southern hemisphere. But even though there is no southern star, there is another fantastic object in the South that can guide you to the...
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...
Data is fascinating. And what’s even more fascinating is that the laws of nature produce predictable patterns in data. For example, if you toss a coin 100 times and measure how many times heads comes up, you’ll get a number between zero and 100. If you repeat that experiment again and again and again, you’ll get different values each time, but usually the number will be around 50, and 50 will come up more than any other value if you repeat the experiment enough times. If you plot this data, with the # of heads in 100 coin tosses on...
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...
As I’ve said before, the most powerful, most energetic, most intense processes happen in the center. The gravitational center of the Earth, the Sun, and the galaxy are all places where temperature, pressure, and interactions of matter and energy are pushed to their limits. When you look up to the sky it’s easy to see the Milky Way (unless you live in an urban center). Do you ever wonder where the middle of it is? Where that supermassive black hole lies? Astronomers know where it is, but you need infrared cameras to see it past the thick dust that blocks...
One of my first books on Astronomy was about the planets. It had a collection of pictures from the first missions to each of the worlds in our solar system. Seeing those photos, the planets felt so alien, so different, and the perspective was like something out a 1950s science fiction comic. But now, with modern advancements in imaging technology and rocketry, we can send heavier instruments to distant worlds, and see them in high definition. It changes the perspective and makes the world seem more familiar than alien, more livable and real. Take a look at the first picture...
Jupiter has aurora. It’s not surprising since it has a very powerful magnetic field. It’s only natural that the two largest structures in the solar system, the Sun’s solar wind influence (called the heliosphere) and Jupiter’s magnetosphere, should be constantly battling. But don’t expect to see Jupiter’s aurora through a backyard telescope. The result of this battle is far more energetic, producing an aurora invisible to the human eye, one made of X-rays. The Sun constantly blasts charged particles off into space in all directions, assaulting the planets, moons, and other solar system bodies. It is this blast of solar wind that gives...
