Category: Mysteries of Space

A neutrino is an elementary particle that has neither charge nor mass. The whole space around us is saturated with them, but they hardly interact with other matters. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to establish their source.

Scientists have studied the results of observing neutrinos in the IceCube detector. They came to the conclusion that some of these particles should be formed during the collision of stellar-mass black holes. Since supermassive representatives of this class of objects were previously among their sources, physicists first proposed their fusion as the main explanation for the observed pattern.

Scientists have suggested that the source of these particles may also be the interactions of objects of stellar mass.

Stellar-mass black holes do merge much more often than supermassive ones. Therefore, they can be a source of high-energy neutrinos, and no contradictions arise. But, as usual, only further observations will be able to confirm or refute this assumption.

The nebula contains a scattered star cluster and several star-forming regions. The red glow is caused by glowing hydrogen, while the dark fibers are dense streaks of dust. The distance to the object is 5 thousand light years.

The “lagoon” can be seen with binoculars in the constellation Sagittarius. It occupies an area in the sky the size of 3 disks of the Moon.

The LRO mission support group published a picture of the lunar surface. He demonstrates one of the rays surrounding the crater Bruno.

Anyone who has ever looked at the moon using optics has probably paid attention to the characteristic bright rays that stretch from some of its craters. These structures are of shock origin.

When any large celestial body collides with the Moon, it knocks out a large amount of material from under its surface. It flies in all directions, and then falls out, forming secondary craters. Since the dislodged material is generally lighter than the lunar regolith, this leads to the fact that the crater formed as a result of the collision is surrounded by a bright area from which the characteristic rays stretch.

Over time, the dislodged material darkens due to the bombardment of micrometeorites and the effects of cosmic radiation. Therefore, only the “freshest” craters, whose age is no more than a billion years, have radiation systems on the Moon.

Hygeia is the fourth largest object in the asteroid belt after Ceres, Vesta and Pallas. Recently it was discovered that the asteroid has a spherical shape, which means that there is every chance of getting the status of a dwarf planet of the Solar System.

It orbits the Sun, is not a satellite of the planet, has not cleared the vicinity of its orbit from other objects, and now it has become known that this object has such a mass that its own gravity has changed its shape to spherical.

The diameter of the Gigaea turned out to be slightly more than 430 kilometers. This is more than half the size of Ceres, so Hygeia may also become the smallest dwarf planet.

Probably, the Hygeia appeared as a result of a large frontal collision of celestial bodies with a diameter of 75 to 150 kilometers. After the remaining fragments had undergone many collisions with each other, they gave Gigaea its round shape, and also created thousands of asteroids around it.

Albert Einstein

At the beginning of 1920, Einstein was asked what he thought about the idea of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

Einstein replied as follows: “Earth is not the only place where there is life. Probably, there may be inhabitants on the same Mars or some other objects of the Solar System, but I am not sure that they are intelligent. If we talk about progressive alien beings, then they will not communicate by radio.”

The great physicist of the XX century explained that it is convenient to use radio only at short distances, but if we want to make contact with distant “brothers in mind”, then we must learn to control light streams. So Albert Einstein predicted the creation of a laser.

It is known that our satellite was formed as a result of the collision of the Earth with a huge object the size of Mars. But it is not known exactly how the Moon formed — it was previously thought that in a few months or even years.

https://thespacehistory.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Формирование_Луны_за_несколько_часов.mp4

The new simulation shows a completely different theory — the moon could have formed just a few hours after the collision. This assumption partly explains the inclination of the Moon’s orbit, too thin crust and very similar to the Earth’s isotopic composition.

The massive gravity of the MACS0647 galaxy cluster acts as a cosmic lens, refracting and magnifying light from the more distant MACS0647-JD system. Due to the triple lensing, we see the system simultaneously in three places, which are marked with numbers and placed in separate blocks on the right (OV1, OV2 and OV3). MACS0647-JD has a redshift of about z=11, which means that the galaxy was formed only 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Astronomers have been investigating a nearby lenticular galaxy known as NGC4324. They discovered young star formation complexes in the inner ring of this galaxy.

NGC4324 (also known as UGC 07451), located about 85 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, is an early-type lenticular galaxy about 66,000 light-years in size. Its stellar mass is about 56 billion solar masses, and its total mass is estimated to be at least 10 times larger.

Previous observations of NGC 4324 have shown that it contains a significant amount of gas, and revealed its remarkable structure — a bright blue ring of star formation embedded in a large-scale stellar disk typical of lenticular galaxies.

The results show that the outbreaks of star formation in these clusters began very recently — within 10 million years.

Beyond their beauty, the images provide insight into the inner workings of some of the most complex astrophysical phenomena in the universe.

Scientists have not yet studied the images and have not published their research, but we can already draw some conclusions. X—ray radiation tells us where high-energy processes are taking place, and infrared radiation tells us where warm objects are hidden by dust clouds. For example, the image of Stefan’s Quintet (2 photos) shows five galaxies. Above the two galaxies in the center is a wavy cloud. This is a shockwave detected by Sandra that would not otherwise be visible.

Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) is approaching the perihelion point – the closest approach to the Sun – which will occur on December 20. It sails through the skies of the southern hemisphere of the planet, remaining a good object for observation with a telescope.

In this picture, its greenish coma and whitish dust tail are clearly visible, stretching almost half a degree in the upper left part of the picture. Another comet, 73P/Schwassman–Wachman 3, has also entered the star-rich field of view in the constellation Scorpio, it is visible about one degree below and to the right of comet PanSTARRS.

The Schwassman-Wachman 3 comet is more familiar to us. A periodic comet orbits in an elliptical orbit for 5.4 years, moving away to the orbit of Jupiter and approaching the Sun to a distance approximately equal to the radius of the Earth’s orbit.