Table of contents for No. 117 in All About Space

WELCOME Issue 117 Did you know that there are some stars in the universe that are missing? In this issue of All About Space, we discover that an international team of astronomers is currently searching for them, but are they gone for good? It turns out that we might have chanced upon a cosmic object that has been unknown up until now – and with quite mindboggling implications: could this be the smoking gun for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)? Turn to page 14 to find out. Also this month, we uncover the scrapped plans that would have seen humanity reaching for the Moon much sooner than the Apollo astronauts; give you tips and tricks on how to spot fake astrophotography images – for those who have ever been…

TINY NEWFOUND ‘UNICORN’ IS CLOSEST KNOWN BLACK HOLE TO EARTH Words by Mike Wall ©Ohio State illustration by Lauren Fanfer Astronomers have apparently found the closest known black hole to Earth, a weirdly tiny object dubbed ‘the Unicorn’ that lurks just 1,500 light years from us. The nickname has a double meaning: not only does the black hole candidate reside in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn), its incredibly low mass – about three times that of the Sun – makes it nearly one of a kind. The Unicorn has a companion – a bloated red giant star that’s nearing the end of its life. That companion has been observed by a variety of instruments over the years, including the All Sky Automated Survey and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Scientists…

CLIMATE CHANGE HAS ALTERED THE EARTH’S TILT Words by Meghan Bartels Earth’s poles are moving – that’s normal – but new research suggests that within just decades, climate change and human water use have given them an additional nudge. Any object’s spin is affected by how its weight is distributed. Earth’s weight distribution is always changing as the planet’s molten innards roil and its surface morphs. Water is a key influencer, since it’s so heavy. In the past two decades, two super-sensitive NASA satellite missions – the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its successor GRACE-FO – have analysed this shifting weight, but those observations only began in 2002. In the new research, scientists focused on shifts in Earth’s tilt in the 1990s, before that satellite data existed. Instead…

WHAT COULD THE ‘MISSING STARS’ BE? Here are some of the potential explanations © Tobias Roetsch Failed supernovae A failed supernova is a star – one far more massive than our Sun – which dies by collapsing into a black hole after a brilliant but short-lived explosion that could easily be missed. However, they’re so rare that the VASCO hunt is unlikely to have detected even one in our galaxy. © NASA Flaring dwarfs Low-mass dwarf stars shine dimmer than our Sun, but have strong magnetic fields that can produce huge stellar flares. If the earlier survey caught stars in the act of flaring, it might explain some apparent ‘disappearance’, but it seems unlikely to account for them all. © Getty New astrophysics Perhaps we don’t understand the universe as…

Future tech ROTATING SPACE STATION They’re a staple of science fiction, but a Californian company is planning to finally make them a reality As we edge closer to sending humans to Mars, one of the great uncertainties is how our biology will cope with long exposure to little or no gravity. Crews will spend months in microgravity getting to the Red Planet, then potentially spend years in one-third Earth gravity on the surface. Microgravity causes all manner of physical problems, from muscle and bone weakening to changes in blood flow. While microgravity is hugely useful for science in space, the ideal situation for humans working in space would be to create a significant gravity field to live in. We can’t yet build gravity generators, but there is a technique we…

THE SCRAPPED PROJECTS The US Air Force, Army and private contractors produced these major studies before NASA took charge PROJECT LUMAN • Overseen by Colonel Harry Lee Evans • Report delivered on 25 April 1958 • Proposed a series of robotic and animal flights of a simple MISS capsule • Testing of larger MISSOPH capsule • MISSOPH III, a lifting-body craft for lunar and Earth orbital missions • Lunar Reconnaissance (LUREC) robotic craft would prepare the way for LUMAN missions • Human circumlunar flights • Human trip to the Moon PROJECT MALLAR • Pioneered the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) concept • Proposed using different mission modules • Would require a space station, entry vehicle and assembly vehicle to prepare the mission for the lunar astronauts. • Would take three to…

STARGAZER Planets THIS MONTH’S PLANETS Catch Mars in the evening sky alongside Mercury and Venus, which put on a dazzling display PLANET OF THE MONTH Mars will be visible in the evening sky this month as an orange-hued star, shining halfway up from the western horizon as the sky begins to darken. With a magnitude of +1.7 it will be bright enough to be seen with just the naked eye, but not particularly striking, nowhere near bright enough to catch the eye if you’re not looking for it and a lot fainter than much brighter Venus, which will be visible over to its lower right in the northwest. At the start of our observing period Mars will lie below the ‘twin stars’ Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and will be setting…

STARGAZER DEEP SKY CHALLENGE A GAGGLE OF GLITTERING GLOBULAR CLUSTERS Messier 13 isn’t the only stellar gathering to see in the early summer sky © NASA As spring slides into summer, the brightness of the night sky makes observing deep-sky objects quite a challenge. The misty nebulae and smoky galaxies that fill our eyepieces on the long, frosty nights of darker seasons become washed out by the lingering twilight. Fortunately, there are plenty of other deep-sky objects to track down and observe, like globular clusters. Globular clusters are enormous, spherical groups of tens or even hundreds of thousands of stars, but because they are so far away they only appear as small, round smudges in our telescopes. The most famous globular in theglobular in the northern sky is Messier 13, the…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE © NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech 21 APRIL 2021 The Milky Way’s halo A radiant blue-green halo encompasses the Milky Way in this map that spans about 200,000 to 325,000 light years from the heart of our galaxy. The darker indigo glow depicts a low concentration of stars, whereas lighter blues represent increasing stellar density. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) orbits the Milky Way and will eventually merge with our galactic home. It is pictured in the lower right-hand side of the image. A flurry of stellar activity can be seen as a sweeping vivid glow in the lower half of the image, caused by the LMC cruising through the galactic halo. 31 MARCH 2021 X-rays burst from Uranus The hazy blue of Uranus is besmirched…

SPACEX COULD LAND ASTRONAUTS ON THE MOON IN 2024, SAYS ELON MUSK Words by Mike Wall © SpaceX Elon Musk doesn’t think NASA’s 2024 Moon landing goal is out of reach. The space agency is working to get people back to the Moon via its Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbour by the end of the 2020s. In 2019, the Trump administration directed NASA to make the first crewed Artemis landing by 2024. Experts have generally viewed that target as overly ambitious, and it’s unclear whether the timeline will hold under President Joe Biden. But Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, thinks it is indeed achievable with the company’s Starship deep-space transportation system, which NASA recently selected as Artemis’ crewed…

NEWFOUND SUPER-EARTH HAS A SPEEDY ORBIT AROUND A RED DWARF Words by Daisy Dobrijevic An exoplanet has been discovered 36 light years from Earth. GJ 740 b is three times the mass of Earth and orbits a red dwarf star called GJ 740. Each orbit takes just 2.4 days, making it the second-shortest orbit of any planet around a red dwarf star discovered so far. Compared to our Sun, GJ 740 is tiny, between 0.08 and 0.45 solar masses. It’s also far cooler, with estimated surface temperatures between 2,127 and 3,427 degrees Celsius (3,860 and 6,200 degrees Fahrenheit). This duo is of particular importance due to its relative proximity to Earth. As such, the pair could find themselves the object of future observations using large telescopes such as the European…

Vera C. Rubin Observatory RISE OF VERA RUBIN’S SUPER OBSERVATORY Astronomy’s new era will be defined by a wider and deeper view of the universe Reported by Robert Lea The history of astronomy has been defined by advancements in telescope technology catching up with current theories and leapfrogging them, in the process providing new, exciting and challenging aspects of the universe to study. Telescopes have now reached the point where a single astronomer with a single telescope can make very little new headway. True astronomical innovation in the 21st century requires massive collaborations. The next leap in our observations of the cosmos is upon us, and will be delivered courtesy of a sizable undertaking: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón…

Amazing volcanoes 10 AMAZING VOLCANOES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM Explore these violent openings into the inner workings and origins of the planets and their moons Reported by James Romero ©NASA/JPL: Getty Every time we have visited a new world in our Solar System we have been surprised. While century-old predictions of Venusian rainforests or canal-building Martian civilisations proved off the mark, the age of space exploration has revealed life, in a geological sense, is ubiquitous. Volcanism, the upwelling and outpouring of inner planetary material, whether water, rock or mud, appears to be a fundamental process shaping every solid body we have visited. For this volcanic tour, we not only travel from the inner to the outer Solar System, but also dive into the interior of planets and moons. Volcanoes are…

ASK Space Our experts answer your questions © Tobias Roetsch SOLAR SYSTEM What would we do if a massive asteroid was on a collision course with Earth? What we would do depends on how much time we have before impact. The NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona, where I work, discovers a number of new near-Earth asteroids every clear night. Some of these are very small and can only be spotted when they are close to Earth. These pose no threat to Earth even if they hit. Our task is to find the massive asteroids many years, decades or, better still, centuries before they may impact. The further into the future the impact will occur, the easier the task of avoiding the collision in the first place. With a…

The Northern Hemisphere STARGAZER THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE Late-night astronomers are treated to a stunning selection of deep-sky objects The short summer nights are warm, but don’t leave much time for observing - still, there’s plenty around to see. The constellation of Boötes rides high with Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, and is high to the south after sunset. Look out for the brilliant star Vega in the constellation of Lyra, not far from the celebrated Ring Nebula (Messier 57), a planetary nebula that looks like a smoke ring through a small telescope. Towards the southern horizon are the constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpius, where the centre of our galaxy is located. Here the Milky Way is at its densest, with plenty of stars and star clusters…

Astroshots STARGAZER ASTROSHOTS OF THE MONTH Get featured in All About Space by sending your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com Jeff Johnson Location:Las Cruces, New Mexico Telescope:Takahashi FS-60C refractor “I have a long love of astronomy, which began when I was ten years old, and I have observed the night sky for many years with binoculars and a telescope. I did my first ‘real’ astrophotography in 1996 when I used a 35mm SLR camera to take photographs of Comet Hyakutake. I took a tripod out into the desert here in Las Cruces and experimented with different exposures. “Later I bought a 10” Dobsonian telescope for observing the night sky, and within a week I was taking pictures through the eyepiece for fun. Within a few more weeks, I knew I wanted…

LAUNCH PAD PROXIMA CENTAURI SHOOTS OUT HUMONGOUS FLARE, WITH BIG IMPLICATIONS FOR ALIEN LIFE Words by Harry Baker YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE ©NRAO Scientists have spotted one of the largest stellar flares ever recorded in our galaxy. The jets of plasma shot outward from the Sun’s nearest neighbour, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The flare, which was around 100 times more powerful than any experienced in our Solar System, could change the way scientists think about stellar radiation and alien life. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star located approximately 4.25 light years from Earth. Its mass is one-eighth of the Sun’s, and it is orbited by two known exoplanets. One of these planets, Proxima Centauri b, is considered to be Earth-like and lies within the star’s…

Missing stars HUNT FOR THE UNIVERSE’SMISSING STARS An international team of astronomers is on the hunt for objects that should be impossible Reported by Giles Sparrow © Tobias Roetsch Stars don’t just vanish – or do they? For thousands of years astronomers accepted the idea that the lights in the sky were fixed and unchanging. Even when it became clear that these lights were actually physical objects like the Sun, one of the key assumptions for astrophysicists has been that they go through major changes very slowly, on timescales of millions or billions of years. And when the most massive stars of all – which are many times heavier than the Sun – do go through sudden and cataclysmic changes as they reach the ends of their lives, their passing…

Focus on HELP FEED FUTURE ASTRONAUTS Space agencies need your assistance to keep spacefarers healthy on long-duration missions Reported by Elizabeth Howell NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have paired up for a challenge to build food systems for Mars missions and other deep-space destinations. The Deep Space Food Challenge aims to generate new food production technologies or systems which would have little waste produced or resources required. The reasoning behind this is that astronauts should be able to focus on their missions, having food production as only a secondary requirement so that they can focus on science – the main purpose of their work in space. The ideal result will be food that is safe for long-term spaceflight and nutritious for astronauts – as well as tasty, which…

WHAT WILL THE RUBIN OBSERVATORY DO? INVESTIGATING THE DARK UNIVERSE: DARK MATTER One of the most exciting prospects offered by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is the investigation of one of the universe’s most mysterious aspects: dark matter. Vera Rubin offered the first evidence that as much as 85 per cent of galaxies’ matter is tied up in a substance that doesn’t behave like ordinary matter. Solving the mysteries surrounding its nature could help us to understand how galaxies are shaped. ©NASA/ESA INVESTIGATING THE DARK UNIVERSE: DARK ENERGY While dark matter’s gravitational influence holds galaxies together, the influence of dark energy drives them apart at an accelerating rate, expanding the very fabric of space between them. Project director Steven Kahn says: “We believe that Rubin will deliver very tight constraints…

Sun IS OUR SUN GOING INTO HIBERNATION? Each sunspot cycle has been getting less intense. Is our star falling asleep? Reported by Kulvinder Singh Chadha © Nicholas Forder Solar activity refers to the state of the Sun’s magnetic field and associated phenomena: sunspots, flares, solar wind and coronal ejections. During periods of minimal solar activity, such events are often uncommon and weak. During solar maximum, they’re at their strongest and most frequent. Magnetic field fluctuations on the Sun can happen on drastically different timescales, ranging from seconds all the way to billions of years. When astronomers speak of a ‘slow down’ or a period of quiescence in the Sun’s activity, it doesn’t mean the Sun will stop shining, but that there’s a slow down in activity. The Sun has one…

Milky Way Focus on FOUND! SAFEST PLACE TO LIVE IN THE MILKY WAY Astronomers have searched our galaxy to identify the safest places to live. As it turns out, we’re in a pretty good spot Reported by Mara Johnson-Groh ©ESO “FOR PLANETS CLOSE TO THE STELLAR EXPLOSION, IT’S PLAUSIBLE THAT THERE IS A COMPLETE STERILISATION”RICCARDO SPINELLI If the past year has made you feel ready to relocate to another planet, you might want to look towards the centre of the galaxy. The new findings were made by a group of Italian astronomers, who studied locations where powerful cosmic explosions may have killed off life. These explosions, such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts, spew high-energy particles and radiation that can shred DNA and kill life. By this logic, regions that are…

MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE Conscious universe IS THE UNIVERSE CONSCIOUS? PERHAPS THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE NOT ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN REALITY Reported by David Crookes ©Getty Leading scientists have long pondered how matter gives rise to our subjective experience of reality, believing consciousness could even permeate the cosmos Consciousness has long proven to be a mystery. We know we are conscious because we experience and feel things. Yet scientists and great thinkers are unable to explain exactly what consciousness is. “Consciousness - or conscious experience - is obviously a part of reality,” affirms mathematician and theoretical physicist Johannes Kleiner. “We’re all having it. It’s very likely that many animals have it too. But without understanding how it relates to known physics, our understanding of the universe is incomplete.” It’s a bold…

PUTTING CONSCIOUSNESS BACK INTO THE COSMOS Dr Philip Goff, a philosopher and consciousness researcher at Durham University, thinks everything in the physical world has a degree of consciousness. He’s the author of Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness Panpsychism says that all things have a mind-like quality, thereby pointing to the possibility of the universe being conscious, but how does it explain this? The current resurgence of interest in panpsychism is rooted in important work from the 1920s by the philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell and the scientist Arthur Eddington, who was, incidentally, the first scientist to experimentally confirm Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The starting point for Russell and Eddington is that physical science tells us what matter does, but it doesn’t tell us what…

STARGAZER What’s in the sky? WHAT’S IN THE SKY? JARGON BUSTER Conjunction This 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 the Earth rotates on its axis, we see different parts of the sky throughout the night. Greatest elongation This is when the inner planets, Mercury and Venus, are at their maximum distance from the Sun. During greatest elongation, the…