Category: Astronomy

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String Theory by Jonathan Aylett

string theory lesson
she plucks threads on her sweater
and I unravel

by Jonathan Aylett

This is a love haiku, a narrative poem in which the subject can’t concentrate on school because of their unrequited love for a classmate. It also alludes to string theory and the universal interconnectedness the theory points to.

Further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

Author bio:

Jonathan has been writing and publishing poetry for several years. His work has featured in journals dedicated to haiku, and broader literary journals, and won competitions across both disciplines. His collection ‘Goldfish’ – a mix of haiku and long form poetry, will be published by Stairwell books in spring 2024. You can follow Jonathan on Instagram here: @jonathanaylettpoetry 

Read other sciku by Jonathan here: ‘Light’, ‘Moss’, and ‘Dusty Shoulders’.

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The Leonids by Tom Lagasse

Emanation point
The cosmos hear Leo’s roar
River of rubble

by Tom Lagasse

While reading about Leonid showers, I was struck by the term emanation point and the phrase “river of rubble” that the author used. I have used Joe Rao’s line as inspiration for my poem about the Leonid showers.

Further reading:
‘The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Here’s how to see it’, 2023, Joe Rao, Space.com, accessed 14/02/24: https://www.space.com/leonid-meteor-shower-november-2023

Author bio:

Tom’s writing has appeared in literary journals, both in print and online, and in anthologies. He lives in Bristol, Connecticut, USA.

Check out another of Tom’s sciku ‘Brumation’ here.

You can find more of Tom’s writing and poems here: www.tlagasse.com and can follow him on social media on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/tjlagasse), X/Twitter (@tomlagasse) and Instagram (@tom_lagasse).

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New Beginning by John Hawkhead

protostar flare
a new beginning
in the sonogram

by John Hawkhead

A protostar is a young star still gathering mass from its parent molecular cloud. The protostellar phase is the earliest the process of stellar evolution.

A sonogram is a picture made by ultrasound waves to show the inside of the human body, including in pregnancy assessment.

Further reading:

‘Protostar’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostar

‘Ultrasound’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).

Enjoyed John’s sciku? Check out more of his sciku here: ‘Dark matter’, ‘Chirality’, ‘Spooky Interaction’, ‘Dancing’, ‘Planetarium’, ‘Empty Space’, ‘Averages’, ‘Interactions’, and ‘Surface Tension’.

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Hibernation by Joy Stahl

Survival in space
Cold sleep on long missions
Arctic Ground Squirrel

by Joy Stahl

I’m a huge fan of science fiction novels and shows that use hibernation chambers to allow humans to reach distant planets in their lifetime.

I read an article about scientists who are studying arctic squirrels and how they hibernate, to create hibernation solutions for astronauts. Arctic squirrels are super-hibernators . They hibernate over winter for 7 to 9 months, reducing their core body temperature from 37 °C (99 °F) to as low as −2.9 °C (26.8 °F), and yet they manage to retain muscle and bone mass during this extended hibernation. Understanding this remarkable adaptation may help researchers looking at prolonged space travel and may also lead to improved critical and emergency health care and treatments.

Further reading:

‘Arctic squirrels may hold key to helping astronauts survive on long missions’, AccuWeather.com: https://www.accuweather.com/en/space-news/arctic-squirrels-may-help-astronauts-survive-long-missions/1481578

Author bio:

Joy Stahl is a middle school teacher in southwestern Kansas. Her poetry has appeared in Voices of Kansas. Check out Joy’s other sciku ‘1827-2023’!

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Sun Trails by Joshua St. Claire

magnetic lines of force
radiating from the sun
contrails

by Joshua St. Claire

The movement of the charged particles of the sun’s plasma creates a powerful and complex magnetic field. The origin and evolution of the field is still an active area of research, but it’s proven to have an impact on the Earth. The periodicity of the intensity of the sun’s magnetic field has a demonstrable impact to the climate of Earth and solar flares pose a risk to electronics, as demonstrated by the Carrington Event of 1859.

Recently, stories circulated in the media saying that “a piece of the sun has broken off.” While these headlines were sensational, these observations underscore the fact that much of what happens in the sun and, by extension, other stars remains a mystery.

Further reading:

‘A Piece of the Sun Has Broken off and Formed a Strange Crown-like Vortex over It!’, The Weather Channel: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/space/news/2023-02-10-piece-of-sun-broke-off-and-formed-crown-like-vortex-over-it

‘Understanding the Magnetic Sun’, NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/understanding-the-magnetic-sun

‘The Carrington Event: History’s greatest solar storm’, Space.com: https://www.space.com/the-carrington-event

Author bio:

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant who works as a financial executive for a large non-profit in rural Pennsylvania, USA. His work in haiku and related forms has been published broadly. He was included in the 2022 Dwarf Stars Anthology, and he is the winner of the 2022 Gerald Brady Memorial Senryu Award.

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Planetarium by John Hawkhead

planetarium
she reaches across space
to find my hand

by John Hawkhead

In the 2008 USA presidential election, Senator John McCain criticised the value (and cost) of planetariums, as being little more than “overhead projectors”.

Yet planetariums, as well as being a unique form of entertainment, are valuable science communication tools: interactive and immersive pedagogic instruments for astronomical education.

For example, research by Plummer (2008) suggests that attending a planetarium program increased understanding of celestial motion in students aged 6 to 8 years old. Planetariums are also especially valuable for those living in large towns and cities, where light-pollution prevents most stars from being visible.

To celebrate the value and power of planetariums, the second Sunday of every March is International Day of Planetariums.

Further reading:

‘The Value of Education in the Planetarium’, The International Planetarium Society: https://www.ips-planetarium.org/page/planetariumeducationvalue

‘International Day of Planetariums’, AnydayGuide: https://anydayguide.com/calendar/3858

‘Early elementary students’ development of astronomy concepts in the planetarium’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching: https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20280

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).

Enjoyed John’s sciku? Check out more of his sciku here: ‘Dark matter’, ‘Chirality’, ‘Spooky Interaction’, ‘Dancing’, ‘Empty Space’, ‘Averages’, ‘New Beginning’, ‘Interactions’, and ‘Surface Tension’.

‘Planetarium’ was previously published in Poetry Pea – podcast (June 2022); Journal 2:22 (Sept 2022).

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Suspended by Michele Rule

Metal formation
Buried deep inside the moon
Suspended mass

by Michele Rule

When I read about the discovery of a huge metal mass buried deep underground below the surface of the moon, I immediately jumped to the idea of a spaceship crash site. But reading more I learned about several possible causes, one being an asteroid crash and the other related to the magma solidification of the Moon’s surface. Both involved the suspension of a metal “structure” in a large mass, five times the size of the big island of Hawai’i.

Further reading:

‘Astronomers Discover ‘Deep Structure’ Under Moon’s Largest Crater’, Futurism: https://futurism.com/the-byte/deep-structure-mass-moon-crater

‘Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin’, Geophysical Research Letters: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082252

Author bio:

Michele Rule lives in Kelowna BC where she writes poems and stories with two dogs, two cats and a supportive partner. Her first book is “Around the World in 15 Haiku”. You can find more of her writing via Linktree and on Twitter @michelerule.

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Young Star by petro c. k.

young star
accretion of dust
on a photo

By petro c. k.

When a star is just beginning to form, it collects a cloud of dust and particles that exist around it called a protoplanetary disk. It is thought the protoplanetary disk is connected to the star by a magnetic field, and the particles follow the field until they crash onto the surface of the growing star.

Studying and observing the phenomena of such dust in other stars gives new insights into how our own star, the sun – and our subsequent solar system – formed.

Further reading:

‘What Can a Young Star Teach Us about the Birth of Our Planet, Sun and Solar System?’, The Brink, Boston University: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/young-stars/

Author bio:

petro c. k. is a temporal being on a habitable rock spinning in space that tries to compress observations of an infinitesimally small section of the universe into haiku. You can catch up with petro on Twitter here: @petro_ck

Check out other sciku by petro c. k. here: ‘Saturn’s Moons’ & ‘Marble’.

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Saturn’s Moons by petro c. k.

Saturn’s moons
enough thumbnails
to fill a jar

By petro c. k.

Saturn has the most moons of any planet in the solar system. As of now there are 83 confirmed moons that aren’t part of Saturn’s ring structure, of which 20 are still unnamed.

Saturn’s rings are made up of orbiting objects ranging in size from microscopic to moonlets hundreds of meters across. So far over 150 moonlets have been detected within the rings but the precise number of Saturnian moons cannot be determined since there is no objective boundary between the countless small anonymous objects that form Saturn’s rings and the larger objects that have been named as moons, but the moonlets that have been detected within the ring system are considered a small amount of the total amount actually there.

Current advances in the technology of telescopes as well as observations by unmanned spacecraft have lead to recent discoveries, with 20 new satellites discovered in 2019 alone, allowing Saturn to overtake Jupiter as the planet with the most known moons.

Postscript: In the interval between the writing of this verse and background information, more moons have been found around Jupiter, overtaking Saturn for the most moons:

Further reading:

‘Saturn’s moons: Facts about the weird and wonderful satellites of the ringed planet’, Space.com: https://www.space.com/20812-saturn-moons.html

‘Saturn Moons’, NASA: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/overview/

‘Astronomers discover 12 new moons around Jupiter, putting count at record-breaking 92’, CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/astronomers-12-new-moons-record/

Author bio:

petro c. k. is a temporal being on a habitable rock spinning in space that tries to compress observations of an infinitesimally small section of the universe into haiku. You can catch up with them on Twitter here: @petro_ck

Check out other sciku by petro c. k. here: ‘Young Star’ & ‘Marble’.

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Diamond Rain

Does Neptune ever
feel lonely, with a wall of
diamonds round it’s heart?

Diamonds might be precious but they’re composed of carbon, an element that’s common here on Earth and throughout the universe.

Under the right conditions (pressure and heat) carbon turns into diamonds. Marvin Ross predicted in 1981 that such conditions might be found in the mantels of the Solar System’s ice giants, Neptune and Uranus.

Recent research has supported this, with laser shock experiments on polystyrene performed by Kraus et al. (2017) replicating the conditions approximately 10,000km below the surfaces of Neptune and Uranus. Their experiments created nanodiamonds, supporting evidence that diamond precipitation occurs in the mantels of these planets.

Now further research has strengthened this evidence. The earlier studies used pure hyrdrocarbon systems (polystyrene is C8H8) but the interiors of Neptune and Uranus are more complex than that, consisting mainly of a dense fluid mixture of water (H2O), methane (CH4), and ammonia (NH3).

To understand diamond formation under more complex conditions similar to those found on Neptune and Uranus, Zhiyu et al. (2022) investigated diamond formation using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics (C10H8O4). The researchers found that diamond formation is likely to be enhanced by the presence of oxygen, which in their research accelerated the splitting of the carbon and hydrogen.

Under the conditions found on Neptune and Uranus it’s likely that much larger diamonds would be formed, potentially millions of carats in weight. Over millennia these vast diamonds are predicted to sink slowly through the icy layers of the mantel before melting near the cores, creating an ever changing layer of diamonds around the cores of the planets.

The latest research may also explain another peculiarity about Neptune and Uranus: their unusual magnetic fields. Under the conditions that form diamonds in the mantel, the researchers also found evidence that superionic water might be created. Superionic water conducts electric current and is likely to impact the planets’ magnetic fields.

In addition to learning more about the Universe, there are practical implications for us on Earth resulting from the research too. Nanodiamonds have a range of important uses, including in medical sensors, non-invasive surgery, sustainable manufacturing, and quantum electronics. This latest research points the way towards a new way of fabricating nanodiamonds for such uses.

Further reading:

Ross, M. (1981) The ice layer in Uranus and Neptune—diamonds in the sky? https://doi.org/10.1038%2F292435a0

Kraus, D. et al. (2017) Formation of diamonds in laser-compressed hydrocarbons at planetary interior conditions https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-0219-9

Zhiyu, H.E. et al. (2022) Diamond formation kinetics in shock-compressed C─H─O samples recorded by small-angle x-ray scattering and x-ray diffraction https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo0617

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Leto’s Children

Does Demeter know
of your lunar harvest plans?
Rooted regoliths.

Humanity has long looked at the moon and wondered if and how we could colonise it. How would we survive? What would we eat? Could we ever plant crops on the moon?

Yet for over 50 years the possibility of answering this third question has been within our reach. The Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions all brought back samples of lunar regolith – a fine grey soil found on the moon’s surface. If earth plants can grow in lunar soil then the idea of growing crops on the moon isn’t entirely in the realm of science fiction.

With the start of NASA’s Artemis program in 2017 (which aims to get humans back to the moon by 2025) interest in the potential for lunar soil has increased. Paul et al. (2022) were given permission to test whether mouse-ear cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) would grow in lunar regolith.

They found that the plants sprouted from seeds and grew, although they were slow to develop, showed signs of stress and differentially expressed genes indicating ionic stresses. Whilst plenty of small steps are needed to understand how to mitigate these issues, the fact that the plants grew at all is a huge leap for humanity’s dreams of colonising the moon.

This poem plays with ancient Geek mythology. Leto is the goddess of motherhood and fertility and the mother of Artemis and Apollo (who the NASA space programs are named after). Demeter is the goddess of the harvest. Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, nature and the moon. Apollo is the god of the sun, music and, fittingly, poetry.

Further reading: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03334-8

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The Dimming Forebear

Gaia. Rooting out
planetary impostures.
K’s false positives.

The Kepler Space Telescope was designed to discover earth-sized planets orbiting around other stars within our region of the Milky Way. Named after German astronomer and mathematician, Johannes Kepler, it was launched in 2009 and retired on the 15th November 2018, the 388th anniversary of the death of its namesake in 1630.

During its lifetime the Kepler Space Telescope discovered 2,662 planets, something it achieved by observing 530,506 stars and looking for drops in their intensity that could indicate a planet passing in front of them. Among these planets were some that were the correct distance from their star and had the right size and atmospheric pressure to support liquid water at the planet’s surface. Other planets discovered orbited two stars instead of one, and ‘hot Jupiters’ – gas giants similar to Jupiter but orbiting in close proximity to their star.

Yet telescopes continue to advance technologically. The Kepler Space Telescope used a photometer to observe the stars in its field of view. The Gaia Space Observatory, launched in 2013, uses a photometer along with an astrometry instrument and a radial-vector spectrometer.

Now research by Niraula et al. (2022) suggests that three or even four of the planets identified by the Kepler Space Telescope aren’t planets at all but are in fact stars. The team was reviewing the planetary data produced by the Kepler Space Telescope and realised that with updated measurements from the Gaia Space Observatory the ‘planets’ Kepler-854b, Kepler-840b, and Kepler-699b were far too large to be planets – each of them two to four times the size of Jupiter. The fourth ‘planet’, Kepler-747b, is 1.8 times the size of Jupiter, at the very top end of observed planets, but its far distance from its star suggests that its more likely to be a star itself than a planet.

Four out of over two and a half thousand discovered planets isn’t a large amount and certainly doesn’t take anything away from the incredible job that the Kepler Space Telescope did during its lifetime. Yet the new findings are hugely important for our knowledge and understanding of planets – by correcting this error the planet dataset is more accurate for those who are studying the population of planets as a whole.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ac4f64

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2M0437b

An ancient baby
in a stellar nursery.
Hot off the star press.

One of the youngest planets ever discovered has been recorded by a team of researchers working with the Subaru and Keck-2 telescopes on the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the island of Hawai’i. The planet, 2M0437b, was first spotted in 2018 and has taken 3 years of observations to confirm.

Planet 2M0437b. The image was taken with the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea. Credit: Subaru Telescope and Gaidos, et al. (2021)

2M0437b is found, along with its parent star (2M0437), in a stellar ‘nursery’ called the Taurus Cloud and was formed several million years ago, around the same time as when the island it was observed from emerged above the ocean. In fact, the planet is so young it’s still hot from its formation, approximately the temperature of lava: 1400-1500K. The planet is a few times larger than Jupiter and has an orbit around its star that’s around 100 times as far as the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Subaru Telescope and Keck Observatory on Maunakea. Credit: University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy

The young planet can help further build our understanding of how planets form, and challenges some current explanations. As Gaidos et al. (2021) say “the discovery of a super-Jupiter around a very young, very low mass star challenges models of planet formation by either core accretion (which requires time) or disc instability (which requires mass).” Future observations with space telescopes such as the Hubble will help to provide more information about the infant planet and further build our knowledge of the universe.

Original research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08655

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Dark Matter by John Hawkhead

dark matter theory
how strange particles appear
as they disappear

By John Hawkhead

Dark matter is a term used to describe the effect on the movement of stars by what scientists hypothesise to be matter. However, dark matter does not emit light or energy, and so is ‘invisible’. To hold the elements of the universe together, dark matter must make up approximately 80-85% percent of the universe.

Many scientists think dark matter is made up of particles known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) or another type of particle the neutrino. The quantum world allows for the existence of virtual particles that can appear and disappear in zero point energy conditions.

Further reading: An Introduction to Dark Matter

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).

Enjoyed John’s sciku? Check out more of his sciku here: ‘Chirality’, ‘Spooky Interaction’, ‘Planetarium’, ‘Dancing’, ‘Empty Space’, ‘Averages’, ‘New Beginning’, ‘Interactions’, and ‘Surface Tension’.

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Antimatter by Alicia Sometimes

Big Bang’s first fierce fight
             — particle antithesis —
                       wrestling imbalance
By Alicia Sometimes

The early universe didn’t create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. The reason for the matter-antimatter asymmetry is still not entirely known. Abbaslu et al. (2019) look at the properties and questions surrounding the hypermagnetic field. I wanted to capture the ‘battle’ between matter and antimatter and the chirality between the two.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.100.116022

Alicia Sometimes is an Australian poet, writer and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. Her poems have been in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems and more. She is director and co-writer of the art/science planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. She is currently a Science Gallery Melbourne ‘Leonardo’ (creative advisor). Her TedxUQ talk in 2019 was about the passion of combining art with science. You can catch up with her on Twitter @aliciasometimes and at her website www.aliciasometimes.com

Enjoyed Alicia’s sciku? Check out her other poems ‘The Born Rule’ and ‘Axiogenesis‘.

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Iron rain

Ferrous droplets fall
on the nightside of poor locked
WASP. A fishy place.

In the constellation Pisces, 640 light years away from Earth, there is a planet that orbits so closely to its star that it rains iron.

A team of around 100 researchers (Ehrenreich et al, 2020) used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe the vast exoplanet WASP-76b and found that temperatures reach above 2400 degrees Celsius, hot enough for iron to vaporise.

WASP-76b is tidally locked, meaning that its spin and rotation around its star coincide, with one side of the planet always in darkness and one side always facing the star – in the same way that our moon always presents the same side to the Earth. Strong winds are created as a result of a temperature difference of around 900 degrees Celsius between the sun-facing dayside and the perpetually dark nightside. Iron is vapourised on the dayside and these winds carry the iron vapour to the cooler side of the planet where it condenses and rains down.

A note about “A fishy place” – this is a reference to WASP-76b’s location in the constellation of Pisces, which in astrology is the sign of the fish.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2107-1

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Milky hourglass

Radio bubbles.
Milky hourglass light-years tall,
black hole at its neck.

Scientists observing the centre of our galaxy have discovered a pair of radio-emitting bubbles stretching hundreds of light-years above and below the central region of the Milky Way.

To find this vast hourglass structure, Heywood et al (2019) conducted observations at wavelengths near 23 cm – dense clouds of dust block visible light from the centre of the galaxy but this form of radio emission allows scientists to see past the clouds.

At the centre of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole. Most of the time it’s relatively calm but it can flare up when especially large amounts of dust and gas fall into it, a possible explanation for the radio bubble formation. An alternative suggestion for how the bubbles were created is a “massive burst of star formation”, according to researcher William Cotton at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia and one of the co-authors of the paper. Regardless of how they were formed, the bubbles were created a few million years ago.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1532-5

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Dust

Iron-60 falls,
sprinkling stardust on pure snow.
Is this Philip’s Dust?

Particles of extraterrestrial dust enter the Earth’s atmosphere all the time, coming from asteroids or comets. Yet some is thought to come from supernova explosions and could help us understand the history of our solar neighbourhood. How can researchers detect these particles?

The key lies in a rare isotope, iron-60, that has no natural sources on Earth. But measuring abundance of iron-60 is easier said than done. One previous study has found iron-60 in deep sea sediment deposits but new research by Koll et al (2019) suggests that pure, untouched Antarctic snow is another viable source.

The team collected pure snow that was less than 20 years old, melted it, filtered out the solids and incinerated the residues. They then used mass spectrometry to measure the presence of iron-60 and manganese-53. By comparing the relative abundances of these two isotopes the researchers were able to demonstrate that the source of the iron-60 was interstellar dust, ruling out other potential sources such as cosmic radiation, nuclear weapons tests or reactor accidents.

The process opens the way for researchers to measure iron-60 abundance in older snow samples to get an idea of where and when the supernova occurred and when our Solar System entered the local interstellar cloud.

The final line of this sciku is a reference to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, in a scene near the very start of the trilogy where Lord Asriel shows images of Dust taken in the Arctic:

“And the streams of Dust…”
” – Come from the sky, and bathe him in what looks like light.”

Chapter 2, The Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.072701

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Universal truth by John Norwood

Photograph stitches
Global perspective binding
Universal truth

By John Norwood

This sciku was inspired by the first images of a black hole captured by astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope. The black hole is found at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87, 55 million light years from earth and the image required collaboration between over 200 astronomers.

The poem is a reflection on how an image created by collating observations from various locations all over the earth gives us insight on the physical nature of the universe. 

Image of black hole Messier 87 captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. Credit: EHT Collaboration.

You can read more about the image and find references to the 6 papers here: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

John Norwood is a Mechanical Engineer working with Carbon, Inc. to revolutionize how things are made. His interests include old houses, yoga, baking, cryptography, and bluegrass music. You can follow him on Twitter under the handle @pryoga

Enjoyed this sciku? Check out some of John’s other work: The answer is none, God may be defined, With enough data, Rivers cut corners, and Squeamish ossifrage.

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Star evolution

Increased shutter speed
proves stellar structure theory.
Star evolution.

The stellar structure model describes the internal structure of a star. Now researchers have validated this model by taking photos of a cool subdwarf star using a high-speed camera, allowing them to predict the star’s future evolution.

Rebessa-Mansergas et al (2019) used HiPERCAM, a camera mounted on the Gran Telescopio Canarias on the island of La Palma. The camera is able to take a photo in five different colours simultaneously every millisecond (compared to every few minutes), allowing the researchers to get precise measurements of the star’s mass and radius – both validating the stellar structure model for the first time and allowing the researchers to forecast the star’s evolution.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0746-7

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Mars

If you say water

then we say volcanism,

else Mars is too cold.

Recent observations of Mars have suggested the presence of liquid water beneath the ice at the South Pole, prompting researchers to ask how water could exist in liquid state under Mars’ environmental conditions.

Research by Soria and Bramson (2019) suggests that the most likely theory to explain the presence of water would be an underground source of heat such as the formation of a magma chamber in the area within the past few hundred thousand years. The researchers also suggest the reverse is true – if there isn’t such a heat source then it’s unlikely that the earlier suggestions of liquid water are correct.

Original reseach: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080985

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Patches on Venus

Patches on Venus:

Atmosphere harbouring the

conditions for life?

 

In the hunt for extra-terrestrial life, Venus is rarely considered due to the high surface temperatures (~465 °C) and the intense atmospheric pressure (92 times that on Earth). Yet a new study by Limaye et al (2018) suggests that life off the surface of the planet may be possible since the lower cloud layer harbours conditions suitable for microbial life: water, solutes, ~60 °C and an atmospheric pressure roughly equivalent to Earth.

What’s more, observations of Venus have revealed dark patches in the atmosphere that change shape, size and position over time. These are made up of particles roughly the same size as common Earth bacteria and also absorb light of at a similar spectrum. The changes in patch patterns could therefore be the equivalent of algae blooms.

Venus is thought to have once had water on its surface, potentially for as long as 2 billion years providing enough time for life to evolve. As the surface water evaporated the microorganisms could have been transported to the clouds, in similar ways to how bacteria have been found in the atmosphere of Earth (although on Earth aerial microbes do not appear to remain aloft indefinitely). Life on the second planet from the sun therefore remains a possibility and only further observations and potentially even atmospheric sampling will reveal whether the changing dark patches are indeed patterns of microbial life.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2017.1783

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Foibles of research

Manipulation?

Coercion? Unwanted guests?

Foibles of research.

 

Academia prides itself on being fair, rational-minded and logical. Yet the practice behind these noble aims is sometimes far from that. A study by Fong & Wilhite (2017) reveals the various manipulations that can take place: from scholars gaining guest authorships on research papers despite contributing nothing to unnecessary reference list padding in an effort to boost citation rate. These instances of misconduct are likely a response to the pressures of an academic career – the demand for high numbers of publications and citation rates.

The survey of approximately 12,000 scholars across 18 disciplines revealed that over 35% of scholars have added an author to a manuscript despite little contribution (with female researchers more likely to add honorary authors than male researchers). 20% of scholars felt someone had been added to one of their grant proposal for no reason. 14% of academics reported being coerced into adding citations to their papers by journals, whilst 40% said they’d padded their reference list to pre-empt any coercion. Whilst changes to aspects of the academic system might help alleviate these issues, it’s likely to be a slow process.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187394

 

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Found: Beagle lander

Found: Beagle lander.

Solar panel malfunction

prevents contact home.

 

In 2003 the Beagle 2 Mars lander arrived at Mars and was expected to make its first communication from the surface on Christmas day. The lander remained silent. None of the 24 attempts to make contact with the lander were successful, and without a sighting of the lander it was difficult to know what had gone wrong.

Now, Bridges et al (2017) have identified the lander using a recalculation of the predicted landing area and Mars Orbiter imagery of the target area. The lander was found within 20 kilometres of the original landing target and the images suggest that not all of the solar panels deployed successfully. Without the panels properly deploying communication would have been impossible. These findings suggest that everything appeared to be going well with entry, descent and landing sequence until a final fault during solar panel deployment.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170785

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Petite galaxy

Petite galaxy,

so young and oxygen-poor.

What can you tell us?

 

As the first galaxies formed they were chemically simple, composed of elements (hydrogen and helium) made during the first 3 minutes of the universe’s existence following the big bang. Oxygen and other complex elements formed later leading to the creation of oxygen-rich galaxies throughout the universe (like the Milky Way). In order to understand primordial galaxies astronomers need to observe oxygen-poor galaxies but finding such galaxies close enough for observation is extremely difficult.

Now a study by Izotov et al (2017) has found the most metal-poor dwarf star-forming galaxy known to date (J0811+4730), which has 9% less oxygen than any galaxy discovered so far. Observations of the young galaxy J0811+4730 could provide information about those galaxies formed during the early period of the universe as well as insights into how the early universe became re-ionized.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2478