Tabla de contenidos para No. 123 en All About Space

WELCOME ©Getty Who’s ready for some travelling? As we head into winter, many of us have set our sights on our next holiday destination for when the days get longer. If you’re undecided on where to head as 2022 rolls around, never fear – we’ve got some inspiration in the form of the world’s best craters. Whether you’re looking to spend a weekend, a day or longer exploring impacts, we’ve selected the very best sites to visit – and recommended other tourist attractions in the area so you can make the most of your travels. Drop us a line to let us know how you get on. In between your getaway planning, we’ve got plenty to keep you entertained this month. From our feature on making the most of observing…

BLUE ORIGIN LAUNCHES WILLIAM SHATNER AND CREW OF THREE TO THE FINAL FRONTIER Words by Hanneke Weitering © Blue Origin William Shatner has boldly gone where no 90-year-old has ever gone before. The famed Star Trek actor and three other private crew members launched into space on 13 October on a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, marking the second time that Blue Origin has successfully launched a crewed suborbital mission on its vehicle for space tourism. Dubbed NS-18, it was the 18th flight of a New Shepard vehicle overall. “That was unlike anything they described,” Shatner was heard saying via a radio link as the capsule parachuted back to Earth. The reusable New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One, just north of the West…

MOON ROCKS BROUGHT TO EARTH BY CHINESE MISSION FILL KEY GAPS IN HISTORY Words by Meghan Bartels China’s new Moon-rock treasure trove may be a billion years younger than the material the Apollo program brought home decades ago. In December, China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft managed to return 1.73 kilograms of Moon rock from a region called Oceanus Procellarum to scientists on Earth. Since then, scientists with access to the precious material have begun a bevy of experiments to understand the rocks and the secrets of the Solar System that they might hold. © CNSA The spacecraft seems to have snagged the perfect sample to fill a critical hole in scientists’ knowledge: two tiny pieces have been dated to about 1.97 billion years old, give or take 50 million years. “It’s…

Future tech SPACECRAFT MAGNETOSPHERES For humans to spread out across the Solar System, we need practical protection from solar and cosmic radiation on long voyages Whenever the USS Enterprise encounters hazards – be they physical or electromagnetic – captains Kirk and Picard call for the shields to go up; these force fields form an elliptical shell around the ship, keeping the crew safe. While we’re a long way off Star Trek levels of protection, we really do need something to minimise crew radiation exposure on flights beyond Earth orbit. Current Mars plans propose creating a small solar storm shelter surrounded by water or layers of hydrogen-rich plastics like polyethylene, and SpaceX’s Elon Musk has spoken about his Interplanetary Transport System coasting along with the propellant tanks pointed towards the Sun.…

ALBERT EINSTEIN THE LIFE OF A BRILLIANT PHYSICIST EINSTEIN’S THEORIES CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT THE UNIVERSE Reported by Adam Mann and David Crookes ©Getty Einstein remains the rock star of science – the go-to icon when people discuss intelligence. You certainly don’t have to be an Einstein to understand the man’s impact or get a handle on how eager people have been to discover what made him tick. And it says it all that a pathologist removed his brain just hours after death, eager to discover if there was something extra special within the genius’ grey matter. Whether Einstein approved of such an act is still up for debate. It’s said that he had wanted his brain to be used for research, but there is no firm evidence.…

FIVE THINGS EINSTEIN’S THEORIES CORRECTLY PREDICTED GRAVITATIONAL WAVES Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicted ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational waves. Set off by violent cosmic cataclysms, they were finally observed in 2016 – a little over 100 years after they were proposed – when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory picked up two neutron stars colliding. Gravitational waves have been notoriously difficult to prove because their distortion of space-time is miniscule by the time they reach us. ©NASA LIGHT’S SPEED LIMIT Einstein predicted that light always travels at the same speed – 299,792 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second – and claimed it didn’t matter how much energy is contained in a particle of light because there will not be any difference in speed. Some scientists predicted this may…

Planet formation Focus on ARE WE CLOSER TO REVEALING THE SECRETS OF PLANET FORMATION? Data gathered by a host of radio dishes perched high in the Chilean desert teases apart the mysteries of how worlds form Reported by Meghan Bartels The Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) specialises in studying protoplanetary discs, the mess of material that surrounds young stars and eventually comes together to build planets. While scientists do plenty of work analysing already-formed exoplanets, studying protoplanetary discs offers an opportunity to see all those ingredients mixed up and spread out. A new set of 20 papers shares results from a research program called Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS), which uses the powerful facility to study protoplanetary discs. One of the new papers maps the presence of…

Ozone hole Focus on 2021’S GIANT OZONE HOLE LIKELY DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE The new Antarctic ozone hole is still growing in size Reported by Tereza Pultrova A giant ozone hole opened up over Antarctica this year. Already larger than the entire ice-covered continent, the ozone hole has surpassed the size of 75 per cent of ozone holes measured since 1979, and is still growing. Scientists believe climate change might be the cause. The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, is frequently described as the world’s greatest success story in battling human-caused destruction of the environment. The agreement banned harmful chlorofluorocarbons and other substances known to destroy the protective ozone layer, which absorbs damaging ultraviolet radiation coming from the Sun. Concentrations of the damaging substances in the atmosphere have levelled off…

Asteroid capture Instant expert WHAT CAN WE DO WITH A CAPTURED ASTEROID? Asteroids could provide us with rare resources Asteroids have more than enough gold, plus other precious metals, to provide a few lifetimes’ worth of fortunes. But there are plenty of other reasons asteroids are valuable. But how do we get these metals from these faraway asteroids? Perhaps the best way is to bring the space rocks to Earth. Most of the metals we use in our everyday lives are buried deep within the Earth. And we mean deep: when our young planet was still molten, almost all of the heavy metals sank to the core, which is pretty hard to get to. The accessible veins of gold, zinc, platinum and other valuable metals instead came from later asteroid…

FAST RESULTS China’s massive telescope took five years to complete, but it’s made a speedy impact ©Getty 1 FEED CABIN A cabin weighing 30 tonnes and containing the feed antenna is suspended on cables 140 metres (459 feet) above the dish. Winches can be used to steer the instrument, allowing signals to be received from many different directions. 2 REFLECTING SURFACE The surface is made up of 4,450 triangular panels made of perforated aluminium, forming a reflecting surface 500 metres (1,640 feet) in diameter that focuses on the antenna. Usable space is about 300 metres (984 feet), and it can observe sources within 40 degrees of the zenith. 3 SUPPORT TOWERS The six support towers are about 100 metres (328 feet) in height; they contain the winch servomechanisms as well…

TOP TIPS FOR BUYING BINOCULARS FOR KIDS Should you buy binoculars for a child looking to get into astronomy? Yes! Most parents go straight for a cheap telescope the moment a child asks about the stars or the Moon, yet almost all of them soon collect dust, not light. Cue a pair of binoculars, which are much simpler to use and perfect for giving children their first close-up views of the lunar surface, planets, star clusters and even galaxies. Binoculars are ideal for beginners and young astronomers because they’re easy to carry and take on trips, but there are a few things to bear in mind when choosing the best binoculars for kids. Don’t just consider small binoculars, which limit the light that gets to their eyes and ultimately reduces…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona 29 SEPTEMBER 2021 Worth the wait Remarkably, it took almost 15 years to acquire this image of Eos Chasma. The image was requested during the first month of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) primary science phase in November 2006, but due to numerous competing targets in the Valles Marineris system, the canyon had to patiently wait its turn. And it didn’t disappoint. This image shows a huge landslide has occurred, transporting rocks from the canyon’s walls down to its floor. The different colours visible to the MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) indicate that many different minerals are present. ©ESA/Hubble 27 SEPTEMBER 2021 All is not quite as it seems NGC 5728, a captivating spiral galaxy, is…

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER SHAPED GROUNDBREAKING EARTH-OBSERVING MISSION Words by Tereza Pultarova This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics laureate Klaus Hasselmann helped to shape a groundbreaking Earth-observation mission that paved the way for the modern study of our planet’s environment. The German oceanographer and climate modeller was awarded the coveted prize for his contribution to the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, which has enabled scientists to quantify the climate’s natural variability and better predict climate change. Hasselmann won half of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics, with the other half shared by scientists Syukuro Manabe and Giorgio Parisi for their own research on disorder and fluctuations in physical systems. Hasselmann, now 89 and still active at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, was also a member of an expert…

THE OLDEST GAMMA-RAY BURST EVER DISCOVERED WAS JUST A PIECE OF SPACE JUNK Words by Tereza Pultarova A signal that scientists first believed was the discovery of a gamma-ray burst from the oldest known galaxy in the universe was in fact a reflection of sunlight from a spent rocket stage. The disappointing conclusion comes from a team of Polish scientists following a discussion involving several teams about the origin of the serendipitous sighting made by one of the twin Keck telescopes in Hawaii in 2017. Whereas previous contributions to the debate focused on the probability of seeing a satellite compared to an extremely rare gamma-ray burst, the Polish team managed to track down the exact object that caused the flash: a spent Briz-M upper stage from a Russian Proton rocket.…

Albert Einstein BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO EINSTEIN’S THEORIES OF GENERAL AND SPECIAL RELATIVITY WHEN DID EINSTEIN MAKE A BREAKTHROUGH? In 1905 Einstein published his theory of special relativity. It explained the relationship between space and time, based on the concept that light travels at a constant speed of 299,792 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second and that the laws of physics are the same for everyone. He figured that it would be possible for two people to witness two events occurring simultaneously yet see them at different times. Motion would affect how each person observed the events. AND WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Einstein gave an example involving two people – one standing on a railway platform and another sitting at the exact midpoint on board a train travelling at a constant speed.…

PHILOSOPHICAL LEANINGS Einstein said he owed an intellectual debt to the philosopher David Hume in a letter which emerged as recently as 2019. Although Hume’s ethics have recently been called into question for writing ‘racist epithets’. Einstein avidly studied A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1739. shortly before he discovered the theory of relativity. “It is very possible that without these philosophical studies, can not say that the solution he wrote. Hume believed that time didn’t exist separately from the movement of objects, scientific concepts should not only be based on reason, but evidence and experience. Einstein said philosophical thinking was the difference “between a mere artisan or specialist and real seeker after truth”. It’s understood that he was introduced to Hume’s work when he was in Switzerland. Source…

Parallel universes DO PARALLEL UNIVERSES EXIST? SCIENCE FICTION LOVES A GOOD MULTIVERSE STORY. BUT COULD WE REALLY BE IN ONE? Reported by Vicky Stein Our universe is unimaginably big. Hundreds of billions – if not trillions – of galaxies spin through space, each containing billions or trillions of stars. Some researchers studying models of the universe speculate that the universe’s diameter could be 7 billion light years across. Others think it could be infinite. But is it all that’s out there? Science fiction loves the idea of parallel universes and the thought that we might be living just one of an infinite number of possible lives. Multiverses aren’t reserved for science fiction, though. Real scientific theory explores – and in some cases supports – the case for universes outside, parallel…

WELCOME TO THE MULTIVERSE 1 BIG CRUNCH Universes that fall back on themselves end in a similar state to the Big Bang. Cosmologists speculate that this kind of ‘Big Crunch’ could give rise to another universe in turn. 2 BIG BANG Universes begin with a Big Bang, which may be triggered by a chance fluctuation in the quantum foam, or a collision between branes. 3 CLOSED UNIVERSE Development of an individual universe is determined by fundamental properties such as the strength of gravity and the amount of matter contained within it. 4 RAW MATERIAL The background fabric of the multiverse would be beyond time and space, perhaps in the form of manydimensional ‘branes’, or as an all-pervading ‘quantum foam’. 5 SHORT LIVED Some universes may be so massive that the…

BRINGING HOME THE GOODS Instead of trying to mine a distant asteroid, how about we bring the asteroid to Earth? NASA’s ill-fated Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) was an attempt to do just that. The goal of the mission was to grab a four-metre (13-foot) boulder from a nearby asteroid and return it to cislunar space – between the orbits of Earth and the Moon – where we could then study it at our leisure. To move the boulder, ARM would use solar electric propulsion, with solar panels absorbing sunlight and converting it into electricity. That electricity would power an ion engine. It wouldn’t be fast, but it would be efficient – and it would eventually get the job done. Unfortunately, in 2017, NASA cancelled ARM. Some of the critical technologies…

Planets STARGAZER THIS MONTH’S PLANETS Mercury takes pride of place in the dawn sky from November, but take care observing it as we head into December PLANET OF THE MONTH This month will be great if you want to see Mercury. A surprising number of amateur astronomers have never seen it, leading to it being called ‘elusive’ and ‘challenging’. Being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury rarely strays far from it in the sky, so is only visible for brief periods before sunrise or after sunset. If you look at the right time, are patient and know what to look for, Mercury is actually an easy naked-eye object – not as bright or obvious as Venus, but still a very attractive ‘star’ in its own right. This month Mercury…

STARGAZER DEEP SKY CHALLENGE TOUR BEYOND THE ORION NEBULA Track down some of winter’s lesser known wonders on the next clear and chilly night Source: Wikipedia Commons © Azhikerdude ©NASA Just as it’s easy for us to return to the same ‘celestial celebrities’ night after night during the summer months – the Ring Nebula, Messier 13 and Messier 51 all repeatedly draw the eye away from other things – the deep-sky observer’s winter comforts are the bright, swirling clouds of the stunning Orion Nebula and the glittering spectacle of the Pleiades. But there are many other objects in the winter sky just as – if not more – deserving of our attention. Given that November nights are often beautifully clear and cold, this is a good time to wrap up…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE PERSEVERANCE CONFIRMS EXISTENCE OF ANCIENT MARS LAKE AND RIVER DELTA Words by Mike Wall © NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA chose the Martian landing site of its life-hunting Perseverance rover wisely. In February 2021, Perseverance touched down on the floor of the 45-kilometre (28-mile) wide Jezero crater, which was picked primarily because previous observations by Mars orbiters suggested that it hosted a large lake and a river delta in the ancient past. Photos snapped by Perseverance early in its mission – before the car-sized robot even started roving – confirm this interpretation. “Without driving anywhere, the rover was able to solve one of the big unknowns, which was that this crater was once a lake,” said Benjamin Weiss, a professor of planetary sciences at the…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE NASA IS READY TO TAKE ON THE WORLD WITH ITS NEW CLIMATE ACTION PLAN Words by Chelsea Gohd ©NASA Climate change and its effects pose such an imminent threat to life as we know it around the world that it is now described as the ‘climate crisis’. “NASA has unique assets it must protect – scientific equipment and capabilities that allow us to understand this climate crisis on Earth, as well as explore the universe,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “Thankfully, we have the ingenuity and engineering capability to ensure our agency’s resources remain resilient from this growing threat. NASA is committed to safeguarding our mission in the decades to come, and through the data we provide to the world, we’ll help…

Mars eruptions Focus on ANCIENT MARS WAS ROCKED BY VIOLENT, CLIMATE-CHANGING VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS Supereruptions regularly tore up the surface of the Red Planet billions of years ago Reported by Tereza Pultarova ©Getty “EACH ONE OF THESE ERUPTIONS WOULD HAVE HAD A SIGNIFICANT CLIMATE IMPACT”PATRICK WHELLEY A team of geologists has found evidence that large craters visible in satellite images of northern Mars’ Arabia Terra region were not created by asteroids, as some had originally believed, but by massive volcanic eruptions that blasted billions of tonnes of gas and molten rock up into the atmosphere. Better known as calderas, these craters are essentially the remnants of once-powerful explosive supervolcanoes, and they have more irregular shapes than their asteroid-created counterparts. But since those powerful eruptions are believed to have taken place some…

Gamma-ray bursts Focus on MYSTERY OF EMPTY-SKY BURSTS CRACKED Scientists finally have an explanation for the most energetic explosions in the universe Reported by Brandon Specktor Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the brightest, most energetic blasts of light in the universe. Released by immense cosmic explosions, a single GRB is capable of shining about a million trillion times brighter than the Sun. And, for the most part, scientists can’t explain why they happen. Part of the problem is that all known GRBs come from very far away – usually billions of light years from Earth. Sometimes a GRB’s home galaxy is so far-flung that the burst’s light appears to come from nowhere at all, briefly blipping out of the black, empty sky and vanishing seconds later. These ‘empty-sky’ gamma-ray bursts have…

UAE asteroid mission Focus on UNITED ARAB EMIRATES TO LAUNCH ASTEROID MISSION IN 2028 After the success of Hope, a new craft will explore targets in the asteroid belt Reported by Mike Wall © Getty The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has set its sights beyond Mars. The nation has announced plans to launch an ambitious mission to the asteroid belt in 2028. This will be the UAE’s second interplanetary effort. The first, the Emirates Mars Mission, launched an orbiter called Hope to the Red Planet in July 2020. Hope is still going strong on Mars, and the planned asteroid mission will build on its successes. “Our goal is clear: to accelerate the development of innovation and knowledge-based enterprises in the Emirates,” said Sarah Al Amiri, chair of the UAE Space…

STARGAZER WHAT’S IN THE SKY? “AN OBJECT’S MAGNITUDE TELLS YOU HOW BRIGHT IT APPEARS FROM EARTH. MAGNITUDES ARE REPRESENTED ON A NUMBERED SCALE” ©ESA ©NASA ©Alamy ©NASA, ESA RED-LIGHT FRIENDLY In order to preserve your night vision, you should read our observing guide under red light JARGON BUSTER Conjunction A conjunction is an alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. Right Ascension (RA) Right Ascension is to the sky what longitude is to the surface of the Earth, corresponding to east and west directions. It is measured in hours, minutes and seconds since, as…