Ever since SpaceX launched its first batch of internet-beaming satellites last year, astronomers have watched with dread as the company continued to blast more spacecraft into orbit. Could this ballooning constellation of bright satellites fill the night sky with artificial light and muck up observations of the Universe for years to come? Now, new data is partially validating what many astronomers have feared since that first launch.

Up until now, people have been somewhat in the dark about the true impact of SpaceXs internet-from-space project called Starlink, which envisions nearly 12,000 of these satellites orbiting Earth. SpaceXs satellites are super bright compared to others, and astronomers have been worried that with so many luminous satellites in the sky, the odds of one passing in front of a telescope and obscuring an image will increase.

It turns out, some astronomers have reason to be concerned. Certain types of astronomy may be more negatively affected than others, one peer-reviewed study shows, particularly those kinds that scour large swaths of the sky over long periods of time looking for faint, faraway objects. That means scientists looking for distant objects beyond Neptune including the hunt for the mysterious Planet Nine might have trouble when Starlink is complete. Additionally, Starlink may be much more visible during twilight hours, or the first few hours of the night, which could be a major problem in the hunt for massive asteroids headed toward Earth. It depends on what science youre doing, and thats really what it comes down to, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard and spaceflight expert who wrote the study accepted by Astrophysical Journal Letters, tells The Verge.

Meanwhile, scientists are also learning if SpaceXs effort to mitigate the brightness of its satellites is actually going to work. The company coated one of its satellites in an attempt to make it appear less visible in the sky. Now, the first observations of that satellite are being published, and the coating is working but it might not be enough to make everyone happy. It doesnt solve the issue, Jeremy Tregloan-Reed, a researcher at the University of Antofagasta and lead author on the study, which is undergoing peer review at Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, tells The Verge. But it shows that SpaceX has taken on board astronomers concerns, and it does appear to be trying to solve the situation.

For astronomers, light is everything. Observing celestial objects in different wavelengths of light is the best method we have for exploring the Universe. Thats why adding artificial light to the sky freaks out so many scientists. Some astronomers take long-exposure images of the sky, gathering as much light as possible from distant objects and when a bright satellite reflecting light from the Sun passes overhead, it can leave a long white streak that ruins the picture.

Of course, the sky is a big canvas, and one tiny satellite isnt going to be a major headache. A host of factors dictate exactly how and when satellites will be a problem. A satellites size, shape, height, and path around Earth all affect exactly how much light it reflects from the Sun and where people will see it the most. Meanwhile, the time of year and the time of night determine how much sunlight is shining on a satellite at any given moment.

To figure out Starlinks exact impression on the night, McDowell made a comprehensive simulation based on what we know about where all of the Starlink satellites are going. Ahead of launching its constellation, SpaceX had to file multiple requests with the Federal Communications Commission, detailing where the company planned to send all of its spacecraft. Using that information, McDowell came up with a snapshot of which areas will see the most satellites overhead and what times of night will be the worst for observations.

In the more northern and southern latitudes, Starlink satellites will dominate the horizon during the first and last few hours of the night. In the summertime, itll be much worse, with hundreds of satellites visible for those in rural areas away from city light pollution. Where I live in [Boston], I can see the planes hovering over Logan [Airport] on the horizon, says McDowell. Thats what it will look like, but itll be satellites and itll be a lot of them. SpaceX declined to comment for this story.

While people living in cities and towns wont really notice, this spells bad news for those hunting really distant faint objects using long exposures. The longer that you have the shutter open for, the more that youre likely to have an observation impeded by one of these streaks that are quite bright, Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who helped McDowell with his research, tells The Verge. That means those hunting Planet Nine and objects at the edge of the Solar System have some cause for alarm.

Additionally, asteroid hunters are going to be extra affected by this constellation, says McDowell. Theyre really hosed, because they need to look at twilight, he says. Scientists looking for asteroids orbiting near Earth often look for these objects near the Sun; they observe just after sunset when they can see the part of the sky near the Sun thats too bright to see during the day. Thats where the problem with illuminated Starlink satellites is the worst, he says. Even from regular 30-degree latitude observatories, theyre going to have serious problems.

As for what that means for these astronomy fields, one obvious concern is that a potentially hazardous asteroid could go unnoticed until its too late to act appropriately. Its also possible observers will have to take expensive countermeasures to get the kinds of images they want. It may mean you have to observe twice as long, if you have to throw away half your data, says McDowell. So thats expensive. Or you may need to make changes to your telescope design, to stop reflections from a satellite.

The silver lining here, at least, is that McDowells study found that Starlink may not really have a big effect on a lot of other astronomers work, especially those who only look at small slices of the night sky for certain periods of time. But his work does fly in the face of what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said about Starlink and its astronomy repercussions. I am confident that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries. Zero, Musk said during a space conference at the beginning of March. Thats my prediction. And well take corrective action if its above zero.

Despite Musks brazen proclamation, the truth is SpaceX has already taken some corrective action, but new research shows it may not be enough to silence all of the companys critics.

On its third Starlink launch in January, SpaceX included a satellite that had been painted with an experimental coating, meant to darken the spacecrafts reflectivity. Nicknamed DarkSat, the spacecraft has been of particular interest to amateur satellite trackers. Various observatories have taken images of DarkSat as its passed overhead to gauge just how much fainter it appears compared to its cohort.

The answer, it seems, is that DarkSat is indeed darker but only slightly. Once it reached its final orbit, the satellite appeared 55 percent fainter compared to another bright Starlink satellite, according to Tregloan-Reeds study. Thats based on the initial observations he made using a telescope at the Ckoirama Observatory in Chile. The DarkSat coating does push the satellite beyond being able to be seen with the naked eye, says Tregloan-Reed.

Thats a big reduction, but 55 percent may not be enough for some observatories. The Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile is still under construction, but it has the massive task of surveying the entire night sky. Its going to be able to give us the history of the Solar system in absolutely intricate and amazing detail, says Bannister of the survey. And I think thats definitely something that is under threat. People at the observatory have estimated that the Starlink satellites would need to be even fainter than DarkSat in order to truly stay out of the way and not saturate the images gathered.

The good news is that SpaceX has hinted that more extreme countermeasures may be on their way. During its latest launch, a SpaceX employee noted that while the coated satellite showed a notable reduction in brightness, a future Starlink satellite may be equipped with a sunshade to further reduce reflectivity. We have a couple other ideas that we think could reduce the reflectivity even further, the most promising being a sunshade that would operate in the same way as a patio umbrella, or a sun visor but for the satellite, Jessica Anderson, a lead manufacturing engineer at SpaceX, said during the live stream.

Tregloan-Reed says hes hopeful about some kind of shade. If that was to work then in theory it would block out the sunlight completely, he says.

Still, that doesnt solve every single astronomy problem because even a darkened satellite can still be a nuisance. Astronomers searching for planets beyond our Solar System, for instance, often take very sensitive measurements of distant stars, looking for dips in their brightness that might indicate a foreign planet passing by. If a satellite, even a dark one, were to pass in front of a star someone was observing, it could throw off the search for these alien worlds.

No matter what, it seems that a giant constellation is going to have some kind of negative impact on someone it cant be helped. And looking at the big picture, SpaceX isnt alone in its attempt to create a mega-constellation of satellites. The company just gets the most attention because its proposing the largest number of spacecraft, and its vehicles are big, bright, and lower in the sky compared to other proposed constellations. Others like OneWeb and Amazon want to also fill the sky with internet-beaming vehicles.

Such a large influx of artificial bright spots is really the heart of the issue. I understand the importance of Starlink; I can see the benefits of worldwide internet, says Tregloan-Reed. Its just the sheer numbers that are worrying me.

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The true impact of SpaceXs Starlink constellation on astronomy is coming into focus - The Verge

From time to time at star parties, I encountered someone who isn't very impressed with the dim, fuzzy object I'm showing them through my telescope. But once I explain what the object is, how far away it is, and how it connects to our place in the galaxy and the wider universe beyond, it sparks their imagination and they look at it again with renewed interest and appreciation. A new fun and educational app called Our Galaxy will let anyone learn about our place in the cosmos, and feel that sense of wonder.

In addition to the obvious bright planets and stars, the night sky is sprinkled with star clusters, nebulas, and distant galaxies, many of which are revealed by looking through binoculars and backyard telescopes. Astronomers refer to those exotic objects as deep-sky objects. Their positions in the sky aren't completely random. Star clusters and nebulas populate the spiral arms of our home galaxy, the Milky Way with more of them occurring closer to the center of the galaxy and fewer of them appearing along its outer rim. Their locations in the sky allow astronomers to trace out the structure and dimensions of our galaxy, and to determine where new stars are being formed within it.

Related: Stunning photos of our Milky Way Galaxy (gallery)

Planetary nebulas are the corpses of stars not unlike our sun that reached the end of their lives. Those objects can appear anywhere in our sky because our sun sits within a 3-dimensional volume of space; surrounded by stars of all ages. Globular clusters are spherical, densely-packed collections of old stars that orbit our galaxy like bees around a hive so they tend to be found near the band of the Milky Way, but not inside it. Distant galaxies are sprinkled throughout the sky, but they can only be mapped and observed where our own galaxy's gas and dust don't block their distant light.

Bill Tschumy, one of the creators of the popular SkySafari app, has created the perfect tool to understand our place in the Universe. The Our Galaxy app for iOS and MacOS lets users visualize the locations and physical properties of deep-sky objects within and around our galaxy. The app is a relatively small download at less than 60 Mb. Once loaded on your iPhone, it puts a deep sky expert in your pocket and the larger display on an iPad really shows off its wealth of detailed imagery.

The Our Galaxy app can be operated in two modes that are enabled by tapping Galaxy or Sky on the app's toolbar. The toolbar also features icons to open the search menu and Views library, read a page of information about the selected object, toggle red-light night mode, open the app's settings menu and help. Two whimsical spaceship-shaped icons in the toolbar serve as zoom controls one flies you closer, the other flies you out.

Galaxy View presents a 3-dimensional model of our Milky Way's barred spiral form that you can tilt and rotate, and zoom in and out of. A single tap in the Settings Orientation menu lets you select preset orientations, such as an edge-on view and a face-on view. In the Center menu, you can choose to keep our sun in the center, or rotate around the galactic core or around a selected star or deep-sky object. Across the top of the screen are shown your distance from the selected object, and the field of view (FOV) being displayed in light-years.

Sky View draws a rectangular (orthographic) map of the entire sky as viewed from Earth. Sky coordinates in degrees are labelled around the perimeter of the map. The major stars and lines that form the constellations are plotted in white on a black background. The deep-sky objects are overlain using colored symbols. The map can be enlarged and panned around. Tapping a symbol shows its object's name. Plotting one or more categories of deep-sky objects on the map view illustrate how they can be used to define our galaxy's structure, or be completely independent of it all useful information for understanding how galaxies like ours are structured. A single tap switches between sky and galaxy view.

The app is highly configurable. You can decide whether to display labelled names next to the symbols, identify the various spiral arms of the galaxy, and show the Constellation Sectors the portions of the Milky Way that lie in the direction of certain constellations, such as Orion, Gemini or Cygnus.

To clean up the view, simply enter the settings menu and tap the remove options.

The app contains an extensive library of stars and objects. An object can be selected by typing its name or its designation into the search menu or by tapping its symbol on the screen. Multiple deep-sky objects can be displayed at the same time, as I describe below.

The app's powerful search menu allows you to type all or a portion of an object's name or designation, include or exclude object types, and limit the search to specific ranges of magnitude (brightness), distance, age, size and more. You can even search all constellations, or select a single constellation.

The list of results can then be displayed on the map or 3D model. It's especially interesting to see how the stars and deep-sky objects of a single constellation fall at vastly different distances from our sun.

The more you work with the app, the more you will learn about astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology all presented using clear, understandable text and graphics.

The Views library is especially educational for understanding how various classes of objects populate the galaxy. Nine categories are offered: individual stars and OB Associations (hot, bright stars), open and globular clusters, various types of nebulas, galaxies, and our galaxy's structural components. There is also an entry for the list of well-known Messier objects. Each entry has an information icon to summon a description of that object class.

Tapping any category opens a sublist that allows you to select all members of the class, or sub-groups. For example, in the Diffuse Nebulae view, you can treat emission and reflection nebulas as separate groups, or combined, each type color-coded appropriately (with red for light emitted from hydrogen, blue for starlight scattered off dust, and green for both phenomena).

The Visibility menu contains sliders to plot galactic axes and to add wire mesh representations of the galaxy's central bulge, dark matter halo sphere, and more.

For cosmology buffs, the app contains 3D locations for hundreds of galaxies. Selecting the galaxy category and using "Galaxy view" puts you 92 billion light-years away from home. Manipulating the model shows how some galaxies concentrate in groups while others leave empty voids in the visible universe.

The Our Galaxy app will give you a true perspective on our place in space. Bill Tschumy has posted a YouTube video demonstration of the app here. Enjoy exploring the galaxy and, as always, keep looking up!

Chris Vaughan is an astronomy public outreach and education specialist at AstroGeo, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and an operator of the historic 74-inch (1.88-meter) David Dunlap Observatory telescope. You can reach him via email, and follow him on Twitter @astrogeoguy, as well as on Facebook and Tumblr. Follow SkySafari on Twitter @SkySafariAstro. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Mobile astronomy: Put the Milky Way in your pocket with 'Our Galaxy' smartphone app - Space.com

The crossover effort between Dungeons & Dragons and Critical Role is here,

Matthew Mercer and his show Critical Role has a profound impact on Dungeons & Dragons. Millions of new players have tried D&D after watching Mercer and his crew of nerdy voice actors play through an epic story. The Critical Role crew have played live shows across the world and Mercer has been Dungeon Master for notable people from Vin Diesel to Stephen Colbert. They have also expanded beyond livestreaming content into shows for Amazon Prime. This month, Matt Mercer gets to cross another item off his bucket list; author of an official D&D book from Wizards of the Coast called Explorers Guide to Wildemount.

I was caught off guard because Wizards contacted us, said Mercer, I had been brought in to contribute on a couple books which was a really, really cool experience, but I never expected it at this level. I had done one book with Green Ronin, the TalDorei guide which was an awesome learning experience, a time consuming experience where I learned a lot through that process with them. If it wasnt with Wizards in an opportunity like this I probably would have held off because of how crazy life has been.

The book details the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria where the campaigns of Critical Role are set. Wildemount is the setting of the current episodes on the show. The book includes details on the setting, spells, character options and plenty of information fans of the show are looking to devour.

Ever since I finished [the TalDorei guide] my world building and note taking had taken more of a formal approach, said Mercer, so, thankfully when this came around, I had more thorough notes and ideas that didnt completely need an overhaul. Of course, I only developed enough to touch on the campaign that I was running. The process from that point became How do I take the things that I already have established or partially fleshed out into an entirely suitable form? and What ideas do I have beyond those and how do I flesh them out in an equally exciting way?

Even D&D fans who are not deep into the show will find some interesting ideas contained within. The Heroic Chronicle charts offer players a way to pull together a character with backstories that link their characters together and to the setting without wandering through a few awkward sessions of getting to know characters. Mercers world also offers some unusual magic schools that draw their power from scientific sources such as gravity, time and probability.

A lot of that stems from a love of quantum physics and astrophysics growing up, said Mercer, Ive always had a love of those weird esoteric elements of theoretical science. I came up with the Kyrn Dynasty before we started the second campaign as a way to renovate the class and present these ideas in an innovative way in a classic D&D setting. As part of that religious scenario, I thought about what kind of magic in the world hadnt really been touched on and what magic intrigued me. I wanted to look at how gravity and probably affects you from a theoretically standpoint. How could I adapt that under an umbrella of magic that was unique to this world?

Mercer took a hand in every element of the book from story elements to mechanical write ups. He was joined by veteran D&D authors James J. Haeck, James Introcaso and Chris Lockey with development handled by Jeremy Crawford, Dan Dillon, Ben Petrisor and Kate Welch.

I began doing some home brewed class mechanic stuff on DMs Guild years ago and found that I really enjoyed it, said Mercer. Getting better at it as time goes on has been a real thrill for me. Being able to write narrative world building elements is a safer space because nobody can argue with it. With player facing mechanics theres a much more intense level of scrutiny, so its a bigger challenge to create. I really enjoy monster design because I make a lot of monsters for Critical Role because we have such a large party of powerful players. Its become a secondary hobby of mine to create weird, interesting, dynamic battles for my players.

Explorers Guide to Wildemount is available on Amazon or from Friendly Local Game Stores around the world.

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An Interview With Matthew Mercer About The Explorers Guide To Wildemount - Forbes

Scientists from Portugal conducted a study on the problem of not returning to the same starting point in running n-body simulations backwards. The researchers found that in the n-body simulation with three objects, the time symmetry was disrupted.

Most laws of physics do not care about moving time backwards or forwards in theoretical studies. The laws of physics work the same way, whether time is moved forward or backward. This is called time symmetry. However, when we come to the real universe, things are different.

A team of scientists, led by Tjarda Boekholt from the University of Aveiro in Portugal, observed that three objects acting with each others gravity distorted the symmetry of time, albeit for a very short moment.

In the article in which the study is explained, The quantitative relationship between the chaos in star dynamics systems and the irreversibility of time has been uncertain until now. In this study, we examine chaotic three-body systems in free fall, using the correct and precise n-body code Brutus, which goes beyond the standard double precision arithmetic.

The N-body problem is one of the famous problems of astrophysics. N-body problem occurs when more objects are added to a system that interacts with the gravitational effect. To explain the N-body problem, we can look at a simple example of Newtonian physics.

According to Newtons laws of motion and Newtons law of gravitation, the movements of two bodies moving in orbit around a central point can be mathematically estimated. However, when another object is added to the system, things become difficult. Objects begin to distort each others trajectories under the influence of gravity and add an element of chaos to the system. This interaction with Newtonian physics or general relativity theory cannot be fully explained under a single formula.

We can only estimate the movement of the Solar System, which we understand many features very well, for only a few million years. Chaos does not allow to guess more. Therefore, scientists think that chaos in the universe is not a mistake, but a feature.

Scientists can also run the simulation backwards when they create n-body simulations. However, the backwards-operated simulation never returns to its original starting point. The uncertainty that the simulation does not return to its original starting point is due to a problem in simulation or chaos, so far it has not been known.

Tjarda Boekholt and his team from Aveiro University prepared a new test to eliminate this uncertainty. Simon Portegies Zwart from Boekholt and Leiden University had written an n-body simulation code called Brutus to prevent numerical computational errors in such operations. Scientists used Brutus to test the time symmetry of a system with three objects.

The three objects in the simulation that scientists test are black holes. These black holes were tested in two separate simulation scenarios. In the first scenario, before one of the three black holes was expelled from the system, all black holes moved in each others complex trajectories. In the second scenario, the simulation was run backwards by moving from the end point of the first scenario.

When both tests were done, scientists found that simulation could not be undone in 5 percent of the trials. The researchers determined that this was due to a difference in value as small as the Plack constant.

Tjarda Boekholt said, The movement of the three black holes has shown that even something as small as the Plancks constant can cause a chaotic result to affect the movements. The size of the Planck constant has an exponential effect and breaks the time symmetry.

5 percent may not seem like a very large proportion. However, since it would not be known which of the simulations would be within five percent, the researchers concluded that n-body simulations were basically unpredictable.

In this way, they made sure that the problem was not caused by a problem in the simulations that the n-object simulations did not return to the original starting point when the run was run backwards.

Being unable to turn back time is not just a mathematical argument anymore, it is something hidden in the basic laws of nature, said researcher Simon Portegies Zwart. Three-body systems made up of planets or black holes can never escape the advancement of time.

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Scientists Made an Explanation of Why Time Cannot Be Reversed - Somag News

A University of Birmingham physicist has been awarded a prestigious prize for his contributions to gravitational wave research.

Dr Davide Gerosa, an early career researcher in the Universitys School of Physics and Astronomy, was recognised by the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation in their 2020 awards.

He receives the Societys flagship Young Scientist Prize, awarded only to researchers with fewer than 8 years experience working in their field. Nominees for the prize are expected to have displayed significant achievement and exceptional promise for future achievements in relativity and gravitation.

Dr Gerosa was commended for his outstanding contributions to gravitational-wave astrophysics, including new tests of general relativity.

A member of the University of Birminghams Gravitational Waves Institute, Dr Gerosa studies the impact of Einsteins general relativity on the astrophysical world. His particular research interests include astrophysical inference with gravitational-wave sources, black-hole binary spin dynamics, black-hole recoils, accretion disks and tests of general relativity.

This is a truly exciting time for gravitational-wave astronomy, a golden age of discoveries, says Dr Gerosa. Its a huge privilege to be working in this field. I would like to thank all my supervisors and mentors for their invaluable support in these past years - this is their prize as well."

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the worlds top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries.

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Birmingham scientist recognised with international physics prize - University of Birmingham

The list of Pluto's neighbors just got considerably longer, potentially boosting scientists' odds of finding the putative Planet Nine.

Astronomers have discovered 139 more "minor planets" small bodies circling the sun that are neither official planets nor comets in the dark, frigid depths beyond Neptune's orbit, a new study reports. The new additions represent nearly 5% of the current trans-Neptunian object (TNO) tally, which stands at about 3,000, the researchers said.

The scientists pored over data gathered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) during its first four years of operation, from 2013 to 2017. The DES studies the heavens using the 520-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, which is mounted on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Related: Trans-Neptunian objects in the outer solar system (infographic)

As the project's name implies, the main goal of the DES involves shedding light on dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be behind the universe's accelerating expansion. But the high-resolution DES imagery has a number of other applications, including the discovery of small objects in our own solar system, as the new study shows.

The researchers started out with 7 billion DES-detected dots, which they whittled down to 22 million "transients" after ruling out objects such as galaxies that appeared in roughly the same spot on multiple nights. Those 22 million were further culled to 400 TNO candidates, whose movements the team was able to track over at least six different nights.

After months of vetting by analysis and observation, the team verified 316 of the small bodies as bona fide TNOs. These cataloged objects lie between 30 and 90 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, and 139 of them are new to science, the researchers said. (1 AU is the Earth-sun distance, which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

The techniques the researchers developed could aid future TNO searches, including those potentially conducted by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is scheduled to come online in the early 2020s, study team members said.

"Many of the programs we've developed can be easily applied to any other large datasets, such as what the Rubin Observatory will produce," lead author Pedro Bernardinelli, a physics and astronomy graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

The team members are also now running their analyses on the DES' entire six-year data set, an effort that could yield an additional 500 or so newfound TNOs. (The DES' initial run wrapped up in 2019.) Such new additions could end up being bread crumbs that lead to Planet Nine, the hypothesized world that some scientists think lurks undiscovered in the far outer solar system, hundreds of AU from the sun.

Planet Nine's existence, after all, is inferred from weird clustering in the orbits of certain TNOs.

"There are lots of ideas about giant planets that used to be in the solar system and aren't there anymore, or planets that are far away and massive but too faint for us to have noticed yet," study co-author Gary Bernstein, an astronomy and astrophysics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said in the same statement.

"Making the catalog is the fun discovery part," Bernstein added. "Then, when you create this resource, you can compare what you did find to what somebody's theory said you should find."

The new study was published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. You can read a preprint of it for free at arXiv.org.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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'Minor planet' bonanza: 139 new objects discovered beyond Neptune - Space.com

It's an image of the sun like nothing anyone has ever seen: glowing, golden kernels divided by dark latticework, like a stained-glass window forged by astrophysics.

But that image, the "first light" data taken by a massive new solar telescope, is only a preview of how the observatory will change the way we see the star that shapes every day of our lives. That "caramel corn" image was stunning to many people, even solar scientists.

The new image was "crystal clear, sharp," said Valentin Martnez Pillet, director of the National Solar Observatory. That institution operates the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and which captured the new data. Martnez Pillet said that, in decades of viewing solar images, he's never seen anything like the new one. "That's as good as it gets," he told Space.com.

Related: Our sun will never look the same again thanks to two solar probes and one giant telescope

"It was always the case where you would look at the solar image and you knew, yeah, we need to do better," Martnez Pillet said. Not anymore.

But although he was awed just like everyone else, he saw the image a little differently than others may have. Many people fixated on the large, pale "kernels," each about the size of Texas. But for Martnez Pillet, the most compelling features in the first-light image were the crackles of granulated brightness nestled between the kernels.

Scientists have never been able to see those granules clearly before, yet they believe the bright dots are key to understanding solar phenomena and how we experience those events way out here in Earth's neighborhood. "As scientists, our eyes went to the brightest tiny, little features," Martnez Pillet said. "The reason for that is we know these are the roots of the solar magnetic field."

The sun's magnetic field dictates precisely how the plasma, or soup of charged particles that make up our star, roils in the sun and blasts out across the solar system. The blasts take different forms, from the slow, steady flow called the solar wind to the massive outbursts called coronal mass ejections. But around Earth, the plasma can cause a host of phenomena called space weather, which can harm astronauts, damage communications and navigation satellites, and cause other disruptions. Scientists want to make better predictions of these events, and to do so, they need to understand how the sun and its magnetic field really work.

Of course, the crackly "first light" image is only one step toward reaching that goal. And the instrument that produced the image is just one of three instruments the solar telescope will use once the facility, located on the Hawaiian island of Maui, is fully operational.

The other two instruments, which should be installed by this summer, will tell scientists much more about the dynamics of the magnetic field than any image could, thanks to two other key techniques. "Everything we do in astronomy is either imaging, spectroscopy or polarimetry," Martnez Pillet said. "We solar astronomers need to do all of them."

Spectroscopy is a standard astronomical technique that analyzes the specific wavelengths of light that a source emits a technique that can reveal the locations of different elements. Spectroscopy can also tell scientists where plasma is moving higher or lower in the sun by using Doppler shifts, the phenomenon that tweaks all light depending on whether its source is moving toward or away from the instrument.

Polarimetry is a less common astronomical technique, because for polarimetry to be successful, scientists need to be able to capture a lot of photons, or light, which is tricky for more distant stars. But the sun is, of course, much closer than any other star, and the Inouye Solar Telescope's polarimeter will be the largest such instrument ever built, making polarimetry a powerful approach for studying the sun's magnetic field, Martnez Pillet said.

In general, Earth's magnetic field is reasonably steady over time and space. North is north is north. The sun's magnetic field, by contrast, is dynamic. "The sun has billions of compasses and magnets moving around, and we need to know the directions of these compasses," Martnez Pillet said. That's what the tiny, bright spots in the new image represent: individual, dynamic magnetic fields.

And although most sunlight doesn't have any sense of direction, the light from these spots does because the magnetic field gives that light direction. Polarimetry measures that direction, and those measurements can give scientists a better understanding of activity in the magnetic field.

With that knowledge, scientists hope to begin tracing space weather phenomena back to their very beginnings on the sun. "We are magnetically connected to the sun," Martnez Pillet said. "There are so many physical processes that we don't know what their origins really are on the sun."

Scientists hope the new solar telescope will give them enough detailed data to begin evaluating the potential origins of different phenomena. "We have theories," Martnez Pillet said. "We need to start saying, 'OK, these are the good theories; these are the ones that are not working.'"

The Inouye Solar Telescope won't be alone in that effort. In particular, it has two crucial partners that are taking instruments directly to the sun: NASA's Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Orbiter, which NASA and the European Space Agency jointly operate. The Parker Solar Probe is flying closer to the surface of the sun than any spacecraft has before, and the Solar Orbiter, which launched last month, will give scientists their first look at the sun's poles.

The Inouye Solar Telescope has company here on Earth as well, Martnez Pillet said. In particular, he pointed to the National Solar Observatory's network of six smaller solar telescopes stationed around the world. Those telescopes, working two at a time as Earth's spin carries each in view of our star, offer a constant look at the whole Earth-facing side of the sun.

With these four projects, scientists hope to understand space weather well enough to predict it reliably. "We're going to need a decade; it's going to be a long process," Martnez Pillet said. "It's exciting times to be a solar astronomer."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Here's how a massive new telescope will revolutionize our view of the sun - Space.com

Nine hundred million years after the Big Bang, in the epoch of our universe's earliest galaxies, there was already a black hole 1 billion times the size of our sun. That black hole sucked in huge quantities of ionized gas, forming a galactic engine known as a blazar that blasted a superhot jet of bright matter into space. On Earth, we can still detect the light from that explosion more than 12 billion years later.

Astronomers had previously discovered evidence of primeval supermassive black holes in slightly younger "radio-loud active galactic nuclei," or RL AGNs. RL AGNs are galaxies with cores that look extra-bright to radio telescopes, which is considered evidence that they contain supermassive black holes. Blazars are a unique type of RL AGN that spit out two narrow jets of "relativistic" (near-light-speed) matter in opposite directions. Those jets emit narrow beams of light at many different wavelengths and have to be pointed right at Earth for us to detect them across such vast distances. This new blazar discovery moves the date of the oldest confirmed supermassive black hole to within the first billion years of the universe's history and suggests there were other, similar black holes in that era that we haven't detected.

"Thanks to our discovery, we are able to say that in the first billion years of life of the universe, there existed a large number of very massive black holes emitting powerful relativistic jets," Silvia Belladitta, a doctoral student at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan and co-author of a new paper on the blazar, said in a statement.

Related: Twisted physics: 7 mind-blowing findings

The discovery by Belladitta and her co-authors confirms that blazars existed during an epoch of our universe's history known as "reionization" a period after a long, post-Big Bang dark age when the first stars and galaxies began to form.

And discovering one blazar strongly suggests there were many others, the authors wrote. If only one blazar existed in this early phase of the universe, it would be an extraordinarily lucky break for it to have pointed its narrow, visible beam at Earth. It's much more likely that there were many such blazars pointing in all sorts of directions, and that one of them happened to throw its light our way.

These blazars, the authors wrote, were the seeds of the supermassive black holes that dominate the cores of large galaxies across our universe today including Sagittarius A*, the relatively quiet supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way.

"Observing a blazar is extremely important. For every discovered source of this type, we know that there must be 100 similar, but most are oriented differently, and are therefore too weak to be seen directly," Belladitta said.

That information helps astrophysicists reconstruct the story of how and when these monster black holes formed.

Originally published on Live Science.

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The universe may have been filled with supermassive black holes at the dawn of time - Livescience.com

Amita Kuttner could be the first non-binary person to lead a major political party in Canada. (Amita Kuttner)

A non-binary astrophysicist named Amita Kuttner has announced theyre running to be the next leader of Canadas Green Party.

Kuttner, whos from North Vancouver, is the latest candidate to jump into the race to replace the partys longtime leader, Elizabeth May.

Speaking to Burnaby Now, the 29-year-old, who has a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, said that they are running to be Green Party leader because a large number of people encouraged them to do so.

I fully believe you cannot achieve full equity before you break down the (gender) binary, because along with it goes so many ideas of what gender means, and I think if we just get to a point where people are just people, that is useful, they said.

Kuttner outlined three pillars that their campaign will be based on.

I think the first step is to create safe and inclusive spaces, and politics is tough for that. All the parties have got problems in terms of that, they said, adding the solution goes beyond diversifying the partys candidate list.

You cant just add people and have quotas and then get where you need to go. The work that Ive done on diversity, Ive learned that it really is about the space you create.

The second pillar would be genuinely evidence-based policy, which Kuttner may have an upper edge in with a background as an astrophysicist.

The third (pillar) is making sure that were ready for the future, everything that that brings, in terms of crises and breakthroughs, whether it be technology or a catastrophe, they said, adding they would be applying their scientific lens to developing policies.

We need to make sure that all our policy is driven by really clear values and principles, they said.

Kuttner, who ran as the Green Party for Burnaby North-Seymour in 2019, is one of few non-white candidates in the race to replace May.

It was interesting being in a party that was very white, Kuttner said when they announced their leadership bid, emphasising that the party must do more than increase diversity among its candidates.

Much like with my gender, I get annoyed with labels because I feel like it alienates people. If you say youre a socialist or if you say youre capitalist, people attach assumptions with those words. So I do have an issue with that, they added.

Kuttner also says they want to bring a more evidence-based approach to policy into the Green Party.

We need to make sure we dont have any room for criticism when it comes to credibility on evidence, Kuttner said.

Our official platform has always been science-based. But if we read the policy book, theres stuff that needs ironing out.

If they win the Green Party leadership, Amita Kuttner said they are prepared to move anywhere in Canada in order to get a seat in parliament.

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This astrophysicist could become the first non-binary person to lead a major political party in Canada - PinkNews

Kirk Borne a top speaker anddigital influencerin the areas of Big Data, Data Science, and AIworks in data science and AI at Booz Allen, where he serves as an Executive Advisor, the firms first and only Principal Data Scientist, and in 2019 was named the firms first and only Data Science Fellow. His work is rooted in another aspect of his professional identity: astrophysicist.

Before Borne joined the firm in 2015, he supported NASA projects including the Hubble Space Telescope and NSF projects including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (recently renamed the Vera Rubin Observatory), applying his expertise in large scientific databases and information systems, scientific data mining and management, and informatics to our understanding of space. He also taught the next generation as a professor of astrophysics and computational science at George Mason University.

The American Astronomical Society (AAS)recognizedBorne for his achievements in astrophysics with a new accolade, AAS Fellow. AAS Fellows are recognized for original research and publication, innovative contributions to astronomical techniques or instrumentation, significant contributions to education and public outreach, and noteworthy service to astronomy and society. In addition to this new honor, in 2016, Borne was electedFellow of the International Astrostatistics Associationfor his contributions to the advancement of astroinformatics throughout the world.

A passion for data and discovery

Bornes work in machine learning and data mining started with astronomy and space science data, then branched out into researching and applying those techniques and algorithms to many other data types and domains: earth science and climate data, digital marketing, healthcare, finance, smart energy, transportation, and more.

I have always loved scientific discovery, and this world [of data analytics and data science] allows me to do discovery bigger and better all the time, Borne wrote inHumans of Analytics, an online publication celebrating analytics professionals. I enjoy the challenge of modeling a system in a way that explains the data and that enables prediction and deeper understanding from the data.

Exploration and education in intersecting worlds

Today at Booz Allen, Bornes worlds of astronomy and data science are overlapping more and more. Increasingly, Booz Allen has been working at the intersection of space, data science, and AI, with projects including:

Data science and visualization to optimize trajectories that return spacecraft safely to earth

Adigital modelfor NASAs planetary exploration systems that captures every element from requirements to the physical structure and shows how changes to one affects the other

Algorithms, AI and machine learning models to increase domain awareness in space

Learn more aboutdata scienceandAIat Booz Allen. And, follow Kirk Borne on Twitter@kirkdborne.

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Data Science, AI, and Space Are All Connected for New AAS Fellow Kirk Borne - CSRwire.com

Astronomers have discovered 139 minor planets lurking at the edge of the Solar System after examining a dataset collected to study dark energy in the universe.

Small worlds that circle our Sun in orbits further out than Neptune are labelled trans-Neptunian objects (TNO), with one being the relegated-planet Pluto. Eggheads, led by those at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the US, identified 316 TNOs in the dark-energy dataset, of which 139 bodies were previously unknown. That's according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal this week.

Specifically, the dataset features images snapped by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), a project that used the Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to study the role of dark energy in the universes rate of expansion. The pictures were taken of the southern hemisphere for six years, from 2013 to 2019.

The number of TNOs you can find depends on how much of the sky you look at and whats the faintest thing you can find, said Gary Bernstein, co-author of the study and a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UPenn.

Unlike stars or supernovas, TNOs dont emit a lot of light. The trick to spotting TNOs among all the other stuff in the images is to look for things that move. TNOs orbit the Sun whereas stars and distant galaxies appear more fixed. Dedicated TNO surveys have a way of seeing the object move, and its easy to track them down, said Pedro Bernardinelli, first author of the paper and a graduate student at UPenn. One of the key things we did in this paper was figure out a way to recover those movements.

The academics began with seven billion objects in the DES dataset. After they removed static objects things that appeared in the same spot on multiple nights they were left with a list of 22 million transient objects.

Each one looks like a dot, and the goal was to track each dot as it traveled across the sky to see if it really was an individual object. That narrowed the list down to 400 candidates that warranted further study and verification.

We have this list of candidates, and then we have to make sure that our candidates are actually real things, Bernardinelli said. They then realized 316 of the 400 candidates were TNOs and 139 of that 316 were previously undetected minor worlds.

The boffins only rifled through four years worth of data, and they believe that, by using their method, many more TNOs can be uncovered in the future.

There are lots of ideas about giant planets that used to be in the solar system and arent there anymore, or planets that are far away and massive but too faint for us to have noticed yet, said Bernstein. Making the catalog is the fun discovery part. Then when you create this resource; you can compare what you did find to what somebodys theory said you should find.

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We're not saying flee this doomed Earth... but 139 minor planets were spotted at the outer reaches of our Solar System. Just an FYI, that's all - The...

(Krystal Quiles)

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About a year ago we began a project designed to tell migrant stories, focusing on stories that are commonly undertold and underrepresented. We intended to do something beyond the typical chopped-up news reportpitting some personal tragedy against the latest anti-immigrant Twitter screed or border policy air-horned out of Washington. We wanted to skip the experts, skim over the explanations, and simply listen. We decided the best way to do that was to let migrants tell their own stories, in their own words. The oral history format, we believed, would offer more room for migrants to speak for themselves, to tell their stories how they wanted to tell them. Thats how Migrant Voices was born.Ad Policy

No matter what side of the debate youre on, in discussions of immigration these dayswhether decrying draconian polices or decrying migration itselfthe increasingly common reaction is outrage. Outrage, however, has the unfortunate side effect of eclipsing both nuance and humanityand thats what we are seeking to rectify with this series. We are seeking to tell complex, human stories that are not constrained by the news cycle but transcend news cycles.

We called upon our existing contacts and networks, and we reached out to organizations doing work and representing migrants on the ground, with the goal of gaining the trust of migrants who were not only willing but eager to speak out, wanting more Americans to hear about both their stories of migration and their day-to-day reality of living in the United States. But despite the desire to come forward, all the migrants I spoke to were still hesitant.

We were expecting nervesespecially in this climate, under this administrationbut were still moved by how intensely cautious and worried some of the people were, even those with protections against deportation or some form of legal status. In most cases, we were asked to pull back on personal and possibly identifying details. And there have been plenty of people we reached out to who simply decided, in the endeven if they felt compelled to speak outthat it wasnt worth putting themselves, their liberty, or their families, in danger.

Weve spoken to nine people so far: from Nigeria, India, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nepal, Syria, Ukraine, and China. Upcoming stories will touch on Jamaica and the Garifuna region of Honduras, and then well have more to follow. They range in age from 17 to 61. They are refugees, temporary guest workers, asylees. They are fighting for special immigrant juvenile status, holding Temporary Protected Status, holding an H-4 visa. They are legal permanent residents who are in the country via family reunification, and one is even stateless but with DACA protection. But despite these statusesthough superficial, they can weigh inordinately heavily on their livesthey do not, by themselves, define their lives. Their legal status and immigration stories make up a part of their identities, but so do their families, their jobs, their hobbies, their childhood experiences, their quirks, hopes, preferences, politics, and passionsall the aspects of a person that dont normally make it into a news story, and which we try to have tried to open room for with Migrant Voices.

Despite the anxiety or even fear, they all expressed gratitude, sometimes even wonder, over residing or toiling in the United States, even if they were living in the shadows. Omar, the HB-2 temporary guest worker from Michoacn, Mexico, who works sometimes as many as 90 hours in the fields of the Hudson Valley and seasonally lives in cramped quarters with two dozen other men, described his complicated relationship with the United States: It gives him a chance to send money home to his family, but, personally, it practically reduces him to a farm tool. I met him last spring, in the trailer he was currently sharing with two dozen other men, while he was cooking a huge pan of summer squash and had a large pot of chicken boiling on the stove next to him. He told me, Im one of those people, you know, Im never happier than when Im in the fields. Its the best place for me. And yet the conditions in those fields were grueling, the living conditions spartan, and the specter of not only being only let go from his job but the inevitable next stepa swift deportationwas always looming. If he even complained, he feared, if he stood up for too longto give his back a break, for example, when he should be kneeling picking strawberrieshe was scared a recrimination might lead to deportation and his familys going hungry. Consequences for immigrants in the United States todayfor minor slip-ups, for merely beingcan be severe. With asylum seekers, they can be deadly.

Another poignant moment in the series came from Ananya, an 18-year-old woman studying astrophysics at a university in Chicago who has the shadow of deportation hanging over her head. (As an H4 visa holder, she has no clear path to legalization or a work permit). Ananya described feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty, frustration, and fear, and, after a moment of thought, saida phrase we ended up using as the headline of the interviewI dont want to stay in a country that doesnt want me as badly as I want it. And yet here is her family, friends, school, life, andjust tantalizingly out of reachher career.

Below are excerpts from a few of our conversations, we hope youll read the latest installment here, and check out the full series here.

John Washington

(Krystal Quiles)

The move to the US changed my dad a lot. He used to be an architect. And its been really hard for him here. He now works in a window factory six days a week, long hours. He started drinking. My mom had to go back to China for a little bit, so now its just me and my dad. I have classes, and I work, so I barely see my dad. When I get home, sometimes hes already asleep.

(Krystal Quiles)

The first time I came as a guest worker, in 2005, it was really hard. I was thinking, I want to go back. But back to what? I had rent, had to pay for electricity, gas. I would have had to find work again. I thought, OK. Im already here, I gotta keep going. If the other workers can do it, I can do it, because I have two hands like they have. I can use them, just like they can.

(Krystal Quiles)

The last attack was in 2016. They dragged me out of my apartment. They beat me on the street. They had found out that I was gay, and they were going to kill me. I blacked out. You see this scar on my head, this scar on my hand. When I woke up in the clinic, I found these scars, because they were beating me with sticks, and they were clapping and singing that Im gay.

(Krystal Quiles)

I feel sometimes that I inherited a problem, like a Greek tragedy. And learning how to live with it and learning how to accept it and being angry about it and being empowered by ityou know, being humbled by it but also being hurt by it. Sometimes I think about how I dont know what its like not to have this problem. I dont know what it would be like, one day, to be like, Oh, my God, Im not stateless anymore.

Read more in the Migrant Voices series here.

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Hear From Immigrants and Refugees in Their Own Words - The Nation

The Gemini North telescope in Hawaii is one of the worlds largest. Now, it is also very fast.

By Daniel CleryFeb. 12, 2020 , 2:15 PM

Last month, gravitational wave detectors picked up ripples in spacetime from a cosmic cataclysm: the possible merger of a black hole with a neutron star, an event never seen before. Responding to an alert, telescopes around the world swiveled toward the apparent source to watch for the collisions afterglow and confirm that it was a first. The array of telescopes joining the hunt was unprecedented, too: It included the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope on Hawaiis Mauna Kea, one of the biggest in the world.

On this occasion, Gemini and the other telescopes saw nothing unexpected. Yet it was an important test of a new telescope network and software developed to automate observations of fast-moving events. Rejigging Geminis nightly schedule normally takes hours, but this time it was accomplished in minutes with a few clicks of a mouse. Were on the verge of a new era, says Andy Howell of Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), an existing rapid response network, who helped develop the software. Its a whole new way to observe the universe.

Telescopes and other detectors that scan the sky for events that change daily, hourly, or even by the minute are creating a need for fast follow-up observations. Setting the pace now is the Zwicky Transient Facility, a 1.2-meter survey telescope in California that produces up to 1 million transient alerts per night, flagging objects that include supernovae, flaring galactic nuclei, and passing asteroids. The telescope has even alerted astronomers to black holes in the act of swallowing stars. But in 3 years time, its output will be dwarfed by that of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) in Chile. With an 8.4-meter mirror, the VRO will look much deeper into the universe and generate roughly 10 million transient alerts per night.

Chasing those alerts will be a daunting task. LCO, a privately funded network of 23 small telescopes, has set an example for how to do it. The heart of the network is a dynamic scheduler that juggles urgent follow-up requests and the more routine observations planned for the telescopes, which can offer almost 24/7 access to the entire sky because they are scattered around the globe. LCO is unique at the moment, changing schedule every 5 to 10 minutes, says Director Lisa Storrie-Lombardi. Such is its success that European astronomers are adapting LCOs scheduler for an expansion of their OPTICON network of about 60 telescopes. Their software was so much better than ours for the control system, says principal investigator Gerry Gilmore of the University of Cambridge.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns a handful of large telescopes, also wants in on the action. About 18 months ago, it teamed up with LCO to create what it calls the Astronomical Event Observatory Network (AEON). Because many of the objects that trigger VRO alerts will be faint, NSF will add some of its large telescopes to the network. The difficulty is that LCOs telescopes are entirely robotic and NSFs arent, so the AEON team is designing software interfaces to bridge these two systems. The testbed has been the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) in Chile. For 20 nights last year, SOAR ran in AEON mode, with an operator responding to a quickly changing list of targets provided by the LCO scheduler. Another 20 AEON nights on SOAR begins this month, and Gemini North is now accessible on a limited basis. NSF also hopes to include the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile in AEON.

Automating follow-up observations is just one part of coping with the coming deluge from the VRO. Astronomers also need software to sift through transient alerts and take a first stab at deciding what an event is. Such programs, called event brokers, will divide alerts into categories: supernovae, flaring stars, or comets, for example. Researchers can pluck interesting events from these bins, or they can automate the task with a target and observation manager (TOM), which can automatically request follow-up observations and set up a web page for each event so astronomers can see and discuss data. Its like Facebook for transients, says Eric Bellm, who leads the development of the VRO alert pipeline at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Sherry Suyu of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics is leading the development of a TOM for gravitational lensing events. Sometimes, the light of distant supernovae is bent, or lensed, by an intervening galaxy, creating multiple images of the same supernova. Because the light for the images follows different paths to Earth, they may flare up days or weeks apart. Its like a time machine, Suyu says. We see the first one and wait for the second to appear, which makes it possible to study a supernova from its very first moments.

Only two such lensed supernovae have been discovered. But Suyu expects the VRO will find hundreds, enabling astronomers to study supernovae in detail and use them to calculate the Hubble constant, the expansion rate of the universe. Suyus TOM would take events categorized as supernovae by event brokers, automatically trigger observations to assess whether a new supernova is lensed, and, if so, schedule daily observations.

Some astronomers are concerned that enlisting more telescopes to respond to transient alerts could disrupt everyday research. Gemini, for example, is partly funded by international partners, and not all partners are turned on by time-domain, says Geminis Andy Adamson. In this fast-moving new world, time-domain astronomers may end up alienating others who have long-planned observations. Were working out the politics, Howell says.

And despite all these efforts, theres still widespread concern among astronomers that the sheer volume of VRO alerts will swamp them. LCOs Rachel Street led the development of a toolkit for designing TOMs, but she says, Were already saturated with more targets than we can possibly observe and its going to get worse.

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Big telescopes join hunt for things that go flash in the night - Science Magazine

Nothing not even light can escape a black hole, right?Black holes might not be the fathomless cosmic graves we think they are. Most scientists believe that once matter falls past the event horizon (basically the point of no return), intense gravity means that matter is a goner. Emphasis on most. Now physicist Niayesh Ashfordi of the University of Waterloo is challenging that belief based on the theory of gravitational wave echoes in spacetime that could mean not everything that dares to pass the event horizon will vanish forever.

Enter quantum black holes.

If matter echoing from an interaction with a black hole can be proven, it will shake physics like nothing else. Such echoes disrupt the curvature of spacetime that has been created over innumerable years by everything from astral explosions to planets smashing into each other. Ashfordi recently published a study in The Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics that suggests these gravitational wave echoes might have already been detected in a particular black hole, caused by an epic neutron star crash spinning at breakneck speed.

If confirmed, this finding will have significant consequences for both physics of quantum black holes and astrophysics of binary neutron star mergers, he and co-author Jahed Abadi said of the merger, GW170817, adding that it is the first tentative detection of post-merger gravitational wave "echoes" from a highly spinning "black hole" remnant.

But first, understanding gravitational wave echoes means you have to understand Hawking radiation.

Stephen Hawkings black hole information paradox makes a shocking suggestion. Quantum black holes, or black holes that account for the extreme weirdness of quantum mechanics, might actually vomit matter it swallowed back out into the cosmos. The thing is, whatever escapes would have no information left about anything that happened before it fell victim to the gaping maw of that black hole. No matter. Quantum particles sneaking out of black holes still defy what we think we know about these star corpses. This theoretical phenomenon, in which particles radiate from a black hole until nothing remains, is Hawking radiation.

It sounds like it makes total sense until you realize it breaks the laws of the universe. Nothing, not even a black hole, is supposed to permanently delete information. So how could gravitational wave echoes even get out? Back to that neutron star merger. Gravitational waves are already known to come out of collisions that violent, and not only do they ripple out into space, but also bounce back. Never mind that physics would normally say this bouncing back of something that already overstepped the event horizon is impossible.

Ashfordi and Abedi saidtentative evidence for [gravitational wave echoes] has been found in binary black hole merger events and that they discovered a tentative detection of echoes.

The scientists believe that a gravitational wave can get head-butted by quantum particles flying out of there, which makes that wave bounce back as an echo of the ripple that started all this chaos. Bouncing outward, this wave bumps into that luminous halo you probably saw in the first black hole image ever, alsoknown as the photon ring. Echoes end up trapped between the quantum black hole and the photon ring. Some of them are believed to eventually break free, which is why traces of them may have already been observed. Upcoming telescopes like the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) may be able to pick up these runaway echoes in the future.

While much still needs to be demystified, one thing that can be said for sure is that its definitely not aliens.

(via Motherboard/Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics)

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Black holes echoing through spacetime could be telling us they arent what we think they are - SYFY WIRE

When it comes to choosing a career path, students are often told to reach for the stars. Katie Harris is taking this advice literally.

Harris has her sights set on becoming a flight surgeon, a doctor who provides medical care for astronauts before, during and after their missions.

What led Harris to become interested in such a specialized field? Shes fascinated with how the human body performs in hostile conditions.

I just love human performance in space, says the University of Toronto alumna.

Were not really designed for space, Harris says. It flips medicine on its headbecause typical medicine is an unhealthy population in a normal environment. Space medicine is an extremely healthy population in an extremely abnormal environment. I think that's really interesting.

A member ofTrinity College, Harris graduated from the Faculty of Arts & Science in 2018 with an honours bachelor of science, majoring in astronomy and astrophysics, and physics, with a minor in anthropology. Immediately after graduating, she attended the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, where she completed a master of science in space studies. Her courses included space humanities, space management and business, space policy and law, and space engineering. Essentially, the school enables graduates to become well-rounded space professionals.

With the ever-evolving field of space travel, including commercial space flight programs on the horizon, theres a good chance Harris may one day administer health care in zero gravity.

We need people in space with diverse training in addition to advanced military training, says Harris, who has since returned to Canada to attend medical school at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Theres now a need for people with diverse, interdisciplinary backgrounds.

While enjoying her third university, she looks back at U of T fondly and says her time as an undergraduate set her up for success.

I had the perfect undergrad experience, she says. I had a community within my degree, a community where I lived and then all this opportunity because U of T was so big.

In her second year, she connected withProfessor Suresh Sivanandamat theDunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics another highlight.

Professor Sivanandam took a chance on me, says Harris, recalling when she approached him to become involved in his research projects despite having very little lab or research experience.

He helped me become a really good researcher, she says. He taught me a lot of research skills, how to work in a lab, how to give a strong presentation, how to write good abstracts. He gave me all these opportunities and taught me things that I still apply day-to-day.

[Harris] had a lot of great initiative and resourcefulness, says Sivanandam. If theres one phrase that I would use to describe her, its can-do. She also has this side to her where she really wants to give back to the community and make positive social change, so looking at her path to space medicinethis makes sense.

Another of Harrissmentors is no stranger to space travel. Harris says she has benefitted from advice given by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has been both supportive and candid about the incredible demands of space travel and exploration.

One of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me was, Make sure you're doing something that you love, because space can be a bit of a long shot. You have to love every step.

Harriss next step will be finishing medical school in 2023 and serving the people in her home province of Newfoundland as a doctor allwhile keeping an eye on the cosmos.

When the day comes to care for astronauts, she hopes she can apply what she learns in orbit to benefit those back home.

You can gain a lot of insight through space medicine for medicine on the ground, she says, adding that space-medicine models can be applied to telemedicine to better serve Canadas rural populations.

While the future of space travel and space medicine is difficult to predict, Harris is confident shell get there. Recently connecting with Canadas lone flight surgeon, Raffi Kuyumjian, who works with the Canadian Space Agency has definitely helped.

But this is a pathway that Im still figuring out day-by-day, says Harris, predicting that she will likely have to put in a decade of being a doctor here on Earth before she can focus on keeping astronauts healthy in space.

That was something I also learned in undergrad: Dont plan for right now because right now is not going to stay this way for long. Use your broadest imagination and plan for that.

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As era of commercial spaceflight dawns, U of T alumna seeks to deliver health care among the stars - News@UofT

For astronomers, the next decade could reveal a wealth of scientific understanding about our nearest star, thanks to a trio of new instruments.

Launched on Sunday,Solar Orbiter spacecraft a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA aims to study the suns mysterious magnetic poles, which appear to flip every 11 years. NASAs Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018 and recently made its closest pass to the suns surface, seeks to explain the mysteries of the suns atmosphere. And theNational Solar ObservatorysDaniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, which released dazzling test images last month, brings its keen eye to the suns fainter parts.

The three observatorieswere designed and planned separately, and it was a coincidence that theyre set to operate around the same time. Scientists say that learning about our sun can yield information about other stars and perhaps even life outside our solar system.

These three together, they basically will define the future of the field, says Nour Raouafi, project scientist of NASAs Parker Solar Probe mission. The next decade, I believe, will be the golden age of solar and heliophysics research.

Our sun is such an enduring presence in our sky that it can feel like an old friend. But, with a blinding light that confounds traditional telescopes and scorches most space probes, much about it remains a mystery.

That could soon change, with a trio of new solar observatories poised to revolutionize our view of our solar companion, its relationship to our world, and perhaps even other star systems.

On Sunday evening, the newest solar observer rocketed into space by the light of a nearly full moon. The Solar Orbiter spacecraft a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA is designed to examine the sun from new angles, including taking the first ever look at its poles.

It joins NASAs Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018 and has recently taken its deepest dive into the suns atmosphere to sample the solar wind directly. Also coming online later this year is a 4-meter ground-based observatory, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii, which will be able to study the fainter parts of the sun. Late last month, DKIST released its first test images of the suns surface, depicting turbulent cell-like structures the size of Texas and dazzling the public.

These three together, they basically will define the future of the field, says Nour Raouafi, project scientist of NASAs Parker Solar Probe mission. The next decade, I believe, will be the golden age of solar and heliophysics research.

The sun is continually producing space weather coronal mass ejections, geomagnetic storms, and solar flares that can disrupt satellites and the power grid on Earth.

Researchers have long observed that these solar storms seem to wax and wane regularly, a phenomenon thought to be linked to the suns magnetic poles flipping every 11 years. But scientists havent been able to take a good look at the poles. All images of the sun have largely been from the same angle, roughly in line with the solar equator.

Its like trying to study a three-dimensional ball with only looking at part of it, says Holly Gilbert, NASA deputy project scientist for Solar Orbiter and director of the Heliophysics Science Division at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. But Solar Orbiters path will take it over the suns top and bottom. This allows us to look at the entire sun itself.

We know from observing other stars that our sun is fairly tame at least at the moment. Astronomers have spotted stars exploding violently, likely dousing planets in their orbit with radiation. Could our star be capable of that, too?

Were so desperate to know if other stars are like our sun, if our sun is normal, or what our sun might have looked like in its past or in its future, says James Davenport, a stellar astronomer at the University of Washington.

If researchers can figure out what mechanisms drive the suns activity, it could help put it in a cosmological context among other stars. And that knowledge, in turn, could help scientists piece together a more precise picture of how solar systems form as well as what might make a planet habitable.

All of life on the Earth comes from the energy that the sun produces, says Jeff Kuhn, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and a co-investigator on the DKIST Science Working Group. And without a complete understanding of how that energy fluctuates, we dont really understand our future.

Earths atmosphere allows just enough of the suns light through while keeping the most harmful rays out. But scientists say the solar wind, the stream of plasma rushing away from our star, can rip atmospheres from planets. Earths magnetic field deflects much of the solar wind, protecting our atmosphere, but the same might not be the case for similar planets orbiting other stars.

The new observatories are built to glean more information about the solar wind and the mechanisms that drive it. As such winds are difficult to study directly around other stars, scientists hope these missions will reveal indirect ways to infer the flow of stellar winds in other star systems. That knowledge, in turn, could help improve models to identify potentially habitable distant worlds.

The sun is basically the star in our backyard, says David Alexander, a solar physicist at Rice University. So it becomes a laboratory for astrophysics, he says. Were taking that knowledge of the sun and then applying it to other stars.

Parker, Orbiter, and DKIST werent planned to be a team. All three observatories were designed separately, and it was a coincidence that they will all begin to operate around the same time.

But thats a coincidence scientists are eager to harness. The three observatories will work together in many ways, using their unique sets of instruments and paths to study regions of the sun from different angles, both literally and figuratively.

Its a really good synergy with these different observatories, Dr. Gilbert says. Heliophysics is pretty difficult because its really a system science, and we have to understand how these different parts of the system are coupled, from the solar atmosphere to the magnetic field, and how that interacts with the Earths atmosphere and magnetic field.

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Together, astrophysicists expect this trio to revolutionize our view of the sun, resolving long-standing questions about stars and planets, and revealing surprises about our constant companion.

The sun is right there in front of us, Dr. Kuhn says. Its been there in front of us forever, since civilization started. And yet now, only now in our lifetime are we looking at it and seeing as much detail thats there.

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Why the suns mysteries could soon be revealed - Christian Science Monitor

Looking to the future. Polish women are strongly represented in the world of science. Kalbar/TFN

As the world marks International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Poland can boast one of the most balanced female-to-male ratios in science, with 49.5 percent being comprised of females. In real terms that means 611,700 of Polands 1,252,900 scientist and engineers are female.

To celebrate the day TFNs has come up with a selection of some the countrys brightest and best female scientists and engineers.

Malinkiewicz is carrying out pioneering work on solar energy.Marcin Obara/PAP

Olga Malinkiewicz founded Saule Technologies in 2014, and since then the company has gone from strength to strength developing perovskites based solar cells for commercial use. Solar energy has been around a long time but Malinkiewiczs innovation will allow it to be harnessed more efficiently and on more surfaces. Her work could help many nations hit clean energy goals without the culture shift required by most alternative energies.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/here-comes-the-sun-the-future-looks-bright-for-solar-energy-in-poland-5069

Mocibrodzka helped capture the first image of a black hole.STEPHANIE LECOCQ/PAP/EPA

Doctor Monika Mocibrodzka was part of the international team who captured the first image of a black hole. The astrophysicist who works at the Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, was analysing polarimetry, the measurement and interpretation of the polarization of transverse waves, most notably electromagnetic waves, such as radio or light waves for the project.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/first-ever-direct-image-of-a-black-hole-captured-by-global-virtual-telescope-revealed-by-scientists-5525

Adamkiewicz has risen to the top of one of the countrys leading pharmaceutical companies.ADAMED

Doctor Magorzata Adamkiewicz is vice-president of the board at Adamed, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Poland. She started her professional career at the Endocrinology Clinic at the Medical Centre of Post-graduate Education in Warsaw before joining Adamed. Since 2001 Adamed has allocated PLN1.2 billion to research and development activities and runs a SmartUp programme to develop Polands talented young scientists.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/geniuses-of-the-future-get-helping-hand-from-pharm-companys-smartup-camps-6920

An expert in maths, Karczewicz has scores of patents to her name.EPO

Marta Karczewicz has been named as an inventor on about 130 European patents. She studied at Tampere University in Finland, worked for Nokia and now works for Qualcomm. The mathematical genius was nominated for the 2019 European Inventor Award for her work on video compression. I like problems which require analysing large amounts of data and looking for patterns, Karczewicz said.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/maths-genius-gets-lifetime-achievement-nomination-for-her-work-on-video-compression-5832

Rutkowska has been praised for her work in developing biodegradable packaging.Kalbar/TFN

Roza Rutkowska has created an alternative packing from natural waste that is biodegradable. The natural solution in the form of a material known as SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast), is farmed vertically by feeding food waste to bacteria and this creates a usable membrane. The substance has won many admirers and prizes, and in April it will compete for $1 million in the international Chivas Venture prize.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/not-a-bad-start-for-a-start-up-pulway-eco-firm-wins-chivas-venture-2020-9842

Przewocka: helping to take the pain out of the surgery.if-pan.krakow.pl

Barbara Przewocka, a professor of pharmacology, has co-authored 70 scientific papers and in 2019 was part of the team that created a chemical compound demonstrating painkilling properties 5,000 times more effective as the strongest analgesics currently available. She has received multiple honours for her contribution to science in Poland and continues her work at the Institute of Pharmacology - Polish Academy of Sciences.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/scientists-create-power-drug-5000-times-stronger-than-standard-painkillers-6671

An expert in diet health Tkaczewska has developed an energy bar made from carp.Press materials

Doctor Joanna Tkaczewska is a dietician by trade but also the creator of an energy bar made from parts of carp. The energy-boosting snack, which she created with the Agricultural University in Krakw, includes carp as well as other more typical energy bars ingredients such as dates, nuts and seeds. Initial testing has shown that the energy bar has positive effects on the oxidative status of athletes blood.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/smells-fishy-scientist-invents-energy-bar-made-from-carp-9100

Marta Klak: working on a 3D-printed pancreas.Foundation of Research and Science

Doctor Marta Klak is a specialist in medical biology and biotechnology. Currently she is the laboratory manager for the Research and Development Foundation based in Warsaw. The project she is currently working on is creating the worlds first 3D printed bionic pancreas. Klak is the co-creator of the protocol for the isolation of porcine pancreas islands for the needs of the 3D bio-printing project for bionic pancreas.https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/researchers-create-worlds-first-3d-bionic-pancreas-5156

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Breaking the glass ceiling: When it comes to science, Polish women are on the up - The First News

ELON A pair of new engineering buildings, a new nursing program, more than 1,000 new dorm beds and much more could come to Elon University over the next decade.

Elon on Tuesday rolled out an ambitious 10-year plan that will take the private university to 2030. Also included in the "Boldly Elon" plan: a lot more money for financial aid, renovations to several major campus buildings and a higher graduation rate.

"We have set a bold course for the next decade," Elon President Connie Ledoux Book told an audience of Elon students and employees inside the Alumni Gym. "It will be an exciting 10 years and a busy 10 years."

Among the highlights of Elon's new plan:

The Innovation Quad: Elon will create what it's calling an Innovation Quad, a new STEM-focused part of campus that will include as many as 10 academic and residential buildings. Elon expects to start construction on two adjoining buildings 60,000 square feet of space estimated to cost $50 million in the fall. The larger of the two buildings will have classrooms, labs and faculty offices for Elon's engineering and physics departments. The smaller building will have a virtual reality classroom, an astrophysics lab and labs that will let students design, make and test their creations.

These two connected buildings will go up north of the McMichael Science Center, which opened in 1998 and is Elon's newest science facility. The rest of the Innovation Quad will be built to the east on the former site of Elon Elementary. The university didn't disclose timelines or costs for these future buildings.

Engineering: Elon for years offered engineering classes, then established a four-year engineering-degree program in 2018. In addition to providing itsengineering program a new home, Elon will seek accreditation for engineering in 2021 and then create a standalone School of Engineering. (Engineering is currently part of the university's arts and sciences college.) The university said it's promoting engineering and other STEM disciplines because K-12 schools are emphasizing math and science and STEM college graduates are in high demand in the workforce.

Nursing:Nursing is another high-growth career field, and Book said nursing is among the majors requested most often by prospective Elon students. Elon is planning four tracks that will lead to work as a registered nurse: a traditional four-year undergraduate program; a pair of two-year programs for current registered nurses and associate's degree holders who want a bachelor's degree in nursing; and an accelerated 16-month program for people with a bachelor's degree in another field. Elon expects to enroll its first nursing students in 2021.

Bricks and mortar: Elon's 10-year plan calls for adding 1,200 more residence hall beds, which will let the university house 80% of its undergraduates on campus. Book said new dorms likely will be built as part of the Innovation Quad and on the south side of campus. Elon's plan includes new spaces for theater, music and other performing arts programs and new practice, competition and academic spaces for Elon's athletic teams. Several key campus buildings could be renovated. That number includes Elon's student center, the student recreation center, the McMichael Science Center and older residence halls. The strategic plan didn't list cost or timetables for these projects.

Scholarships: Over the next decade Elon wants to double its financial aid budget to be able to recruit students from a wider range of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds from across the United States and around the world. To do that, Elon aims to more than double its endowment to $625 million and commit 80% of that fund to scholarships. First, though, Elon must complete its current fundraising campaign. The university so far has raised $181 million toward its $250 million goal.

Graduation rates: Most universities would be thrilled with Elon's graduation rates: 80% of Elon students get their degrees in four years, and roughly 85% graduate in six years. But Elon thinks it can do better and will push for a four-year rate of 85% and a six-year rate of 90% by decade's end.

The law school: The university wants to "achieve national recognition" for Elon University School of Law in downtown Greensboro but wasn't specific on how it plans to gain that acclaim.

A greener campus:Elon pledged to be carbon-neutral by 2037, meaning that it wants its campus to have net carbon emissions of zero. The university plans to reduce energy usage, erect environmentally friendly buildings and invest in renewable energy.

Enrollment: Book said Elon will continue its slow-growth approach and increase overall enrollment by about 100 students per year. At that rate, Elon's enrollment will reach about 8,000 students by 2030.

Elon announced its new path forward after it wrapped up its last 10-year planthat, according to a final report on the plan, ushered in "the most transformative decade in the universitys history."

The short list of Elon's milestones over the past decade includes the opening of a health sciences school, construction of a 5,100-seat basketball arena, creation of 20 new undergraduate majors, growth in campus square footage of 60% and enrollment of 25% and addition of financial aid and study abroad opportunities for its students.

The overarching goal of Elon's last strategic plan was to be recognized among the nation's top universities. Elon started the 2000s in the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings as the second-ranked university in the South, then claimed the magazine's top spot among Southern regional universities for six straight years.

In September, Elon was ranked for the first time among the magazine's national universities, a list that includes all eight Ivy League institutions and well-known North Carolina schools such as Duke, Wake Forest, UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University. Elon made its debut in the national university rankings at No. 84.

Contact John Newsom at (336) 373-7312 and follow @JohnNewsomNR on Twitter.

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Elon University's new 10-year plan includes an innovation quad, new nursing programs and lots more dorm rooms - Greensboro News & Record

The majority of stars in the universe will become luminous enough to blast surrounding asteroids into successively smaller fragments using their light alone, according to a University of Warwick astronomer.

The majority of stars in the universe will become luminous enough to blast surrounding asteroids into successively smaller fragments using their light alone, according to a University of Warwick astronomer.

Electromagnetic radiation from stars at the end of their giant branch phase lasting just a few million years before they collapse into white dwarfs would be strong enough to spin even distant asteroids at high speed until they tear themselves apart again and again. As a result, even our own asteroid belt will be easily pulverized by our Sun billions of years from now.

The new study from the University of Warwicks Department of Physics, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, analyses the number of successive break-up events and how quickly this cascade occurs.

The authors have concluded that all but the most distant or smallest asteroids in a system would be disintegrated in a relatively short one million years, leaving behind debris that scientists can find and analyze around dead white dwarf stars. Some of this debris may be in the form of double asteroids which revolve around each other while they orbit the Sun.

After main sequence stars like our Sun have burnt all their hydrogen fuel, they then become hundreds of times larger during a giant branch phase and increase their luminosity ten-thousand-fold, giving out intense electromagnetic radiation. When that expansion stops, a star sheds its outer layers, leaving behind a dense core known as a white dwarf.

The radiation from the star will be absorbed by orbiting asteroids, redistributed internally and then emitted from a different location, creating an imbalance. This imbalance creates a torque effect that very gradually spins up the asteroid, eventually to break-up speed at one full rotation every 2 hours (the Earth takes almost 24 hours to complete a full rotation). This effect is known as the YORP effect, named after four scientists (Yarkovsky, OKeefe, Radzievskii, Paddack) who contributed ideas to the concept.

Eventually, this torque will pull the asteroid apart into smaller pieces. The process will then repeat itself in several stages, much like how in the classic arcade game Asteroids they break down into smaller and smaller asteroids after each destruction event. The scientists have calculated that in most cases there will be more than ten fission events or break-ups before the pieces become too small to be affected.

Lead author Dr. Dimitri Veras, from the University of Warwicks Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, said: When a typical star reaches the giant branch stage, its luminosity reaches a maximum of between 1,000 and 10,000 times the luminosity of our Sun. Then the star contracts down into an Earth-sized white dwarf very quickly, where its luminosity drops to levels below our Suns. Hence, the YORP effect is very important during the giant branch phase, but almost non-existent after the star has become a white dwarf.

For one solar-mass giant branch stars like what our Sun will become even exo-asteroid belt analogs will be effectively destroyed. The YORP effect in these systems is very violent and acts quickly, on the order of a million years. Not only will our own asteroid belt be destroyed, but it will be done quickly and violently. And due solely to the light from our Sun.

The remains of these asteroids will eventually form a debris disc around the white dwarf, and the disc will be drawn into the star, polluting it. This pollution can be detected from Earth by astronomers and analyzed to determine its composition.

Dr. Veras adds: These results help locate debris fields in giant branch and white dwarf planetary systems, which is crucial to determining how white dwarfs are polluted. We need to know where the debris is by the time the star becomes a white dwarf to understand how discs are formed. So the YORP effect provides important context for determining where that debris would originate.

When our Sun dies and runs out of fuel in about 6 billion years it too will shed its outer layers and collapse into a white dwarf. As its luminosity grows it will bombard our asteroid belt with increasingly intense radiation, subjecting the asteroids to the YORP effect and breaking them into smaller and smaller pieces, just like in a game of Asteroids.

Most asteroids are what are known as rubble piles a collection of rocks loosely held together which means they have little internal strength. However, smaller asteroids have greater internal strength, and while this effect will break down larger objects quite quickly, the debris will plateau at objects around 1-100 meters in diameter. Once the giant branch phase starts the process will continue unabated until reaching this plateau.

The effect lessens with increasing distance from the star and with increasing internal strength of the asteroid. The YORP effect can break up asteroids at hundreds of AU (Astronomical Units), much further away than where Neptune or Pluto resides.

However, the YORP effect will only influence asteroids. Objects larger than Pluto will likely escape this fate due to their size and internal strength unless they are broken up by another process, such as a collision with another planet.

Reference: Post-main-sequence debris from rotation-induced YORP break-up of small bodies II. Multiple fissions, internal strengths, and binary production by Dimitri Veras and Daniel J Scheeres, 20 December 2019, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz3565

The research received support from the UKs Science and Technology Facilities Council.

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Supercharged Light Pulverizes Asteroids Cascade of Destruction - SciTechDaily

Ben Chasny has been picking up where he left off

My interest in stargazing started pretty early, back when I was a kid. I lived in a very rural area where there was no light pollution at all. There was only a couple of channels on the TV and there wasnt a whole lot to do except look at the stars. I had a backyard telescope, it was really cheap and I couldnt see a lot of stuff, but I could spot the moons of Jupiter, or at least I thought they were the moons of Jupiter... I could always find Orions nebula too, it looked like a kind of smudgy star. I also had a subscription to an astronomy magazine that would let you know whats going on in the night sky, I wish I could remember the name of it. Every month it would say heres whats going on with the stars, and heres what to do. Its an interesting thing, stargazing, because any time they talk about something thats going on in the sky theres always a relational aspect, something thats moving with something else thats moving, or not moving. We imagine these celestial bodies meeting in the sky

I hadn't really been into stargazing for the last 20 years or so because I kept living in various cities where I couldn't really see the stars, but recently I moved back to my old home of Humboldt County, North California, where I grew up. I never thought Id go back, but families get older, so I thought Id come back and hang out a bit. I have a deeper appreciation for my home now, especially as I can just walk out of my door and see the stars again. Its one of my favourite things about moving here. I certainly dont think of stargazing as some sort of pastoral rejection of the modern or something though. That can get into some pretty shady areas.

If an article comes my way about astrophysics, Ill definitely read it, and theres a couple of people on YouTube I watch to see whats going on. Recently one of the Voyager satellites discovered that theres an awesome ring of plasma surrounding the solar system, a ring of fire where the temperature jumps up really high. Thats really cool!

One of the rarest and most spectacular celestial events might happen in our lifetimes, but that doesnt mean he wants to see it

Apparently, Betelgeuse could explode into a supernova at any moment, which would be a fantastic show in the night sky. A lot of scientists are so excited about it, saying I hope the star explodes in my lifetime! But I think its a little sad because if it does explode then we lose the shoulder of Orion! Orion has been a really strong constellation for like, thousands and thousands of years, and if it explodes youll just get these really weak Instagram posts for a couple of weeks then itll go into the data banks and were left with a lacking constellation. So, Im on the side where I hope it doesnt explode. Who knows how long humanity even has left on earth? Itd be nice for future generations to have a full Orion. Let another star explode!

Orion being one of the brightest constellations makes it a lot of peoples favourites, and he was my favourite as a kid. I used to dream of taking photos of the stars but it was impossible, but now with technology, its become possible for me, so one of the first things I started doing when I moved back to Humbolt and once I got a camera was to start taking pictures of Orion. I dont want to sound like a cosmic hippy, but Im reconnecting with Orion; hes kind of a buddy when youre a kid and have no friends in the country!

Celestial bodies are all over Six Organs new album, Companion Rises

A picture I took of Orion is on the cover of Companion Rises, and the title Companion Rises is a reference to the star Sirius being a companion star of Orion. I did a record in 2012 called Ascent, which was about a specific story but similar themes. I had this dream of a spacecraft that was being constructed outside of Jupiter. I dont know where I was, maybe on another spacecraft or one of the moons, but the spacecraft looked like a huge lobster. I never really went back to that space theme except for now, with me being concerned with the stars again, with more appreciation of the constellations and Orion. Sound-wise its very different this time, I was trying to do acoustic music and its a lot folkier, but lyric-wise it has a lot to do with the stars again.

One song on Companion Rises, The Scout Is Here, is influenced by the darker side of the new age, and the darker side of the New Age. Do you remember that elongated asteroid Oumuamua? It was the first interstellar object we detected in our Solar System; the name translates from Hawaiian as Scout. When it flew through there was a scientist in Boston who said it was probably an alien spacecraft, which caused a lot of controversy. I thought that was fascinating, so I decided to write a song from the perspective of a UFO cult, welcoming the asteroid in. And I also thought, just in case it is an alien spacecraft, maybe they wont want to kill me because I wrote a song for them

Theres always something more to see

Ive never seen a full solar eclipse but Ive seen full lunar eclipses when it gets kind of dark, then kind of pink. Nick Drake style. But to see everything go completely black would be amazing. Sometimes you read about these really magnificent meteor showers, that really do look like a shower, I think itd be great to witness something like that in my lifetime. Ive seen where meteors come in every minute or two at best, those are really exciting, but you read these reports, maybe theyre exaggerating, but they say that the whole sky was just falling. That would be cool.

Something I hadnt thought about until recently is the idea of modern constellations that are just the brightest stars you can still see in the city. A lot of constellations have lots of small stars, but now because theres so much light pollution its like modernity has had to create new geometric shapes, stuff like the Summer Triangle which was always a favourite of mine Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra. Ive just recently found out about the Winter Hexagon too.

There is more than one way to look at the stars

From the simple act of going out and looking at the stars, you can go a couple of ways. One way is to be interested in astronomy and astrophysics and outer space, or you could go the other way and just look at it in a more inspired, poetic way. It seems very entertaining to me to just watch the stars. One of the dangers of stargazing is the over-pedantic stargazer who feels like he has to describe everything, telling you this star is that, and this star is that. Maybe you just want to enjoy the movement of the stars, but unfortunately I think it lends itself to mansplaining. Thats the danger of stargazing!

Theres a guy called Gaston Bachelard that I talked about a lot when it came to my last record because it was really influenced by him. He has a funny thing about the constellations. Hes really against them as a concept, because he says theres these imposed forms. He says the night sky should be a Rorschach Test for humanity go out there and make your own constellations, which is also really cool. We do the same thing with clouds, because theyre always different and changing. I mention that because theres this thing about stargazing, youve got to know the constellations, do you know them?! and that goes back to that pedantic thing I talked about before. I think the best thing is to just go out there. If you can see some stars, just to go out to look at them.

Six Organs Of Admittance's new album Companion Rises is out via Drag City on February 21

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Features | Things I Have Learned | Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny On Stargazing - The Quietus