Photons of light being created by the energy of gravity alone, dark matter distorting the light left over from the Big Bang, China’s mission to deflect an asteroid. These are just some of the issues that have stirred up the astronomy universe this week.
Check below the summaries of the main astronomical news.
The fossil light from the Big Bang distorted by dark matter
A new map of dark matter has revealed that the cosmic microwave background radiation, light left over from the Big Bang, has been distorted by dark matter as it travels through the universe to reach us.
The discovery obeys the rules of Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which predicts that light (and other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation) will be distorted by very massive objects that are in the way. This includes dark matter, the strange, invisible substance.
The asteroid China plans to deflect
After the success of NASA’s DART mission, China also wants to deflect an asteroid and show that it is capable of adding forces to planetary defense. The target is object 2019 VL5, a space rock 30 m in diameter.
If everything goes as planned, the two ships (one for observation and one for collision) should be launched in 2025. The first will arrive at the asteroid to analyze the object and the second will collide with the asteroid at about 6.4 km/h. s to try to change its speed to 5 cm/s.
The light created only by the energy of gravity
At the end of the period before the Big Bang, known as cosmic inflation, the universe had such extreme conditions that it could have generated gravitational waves with enough energy to produce light “out of thin air”. This means that no interaction with electrons or any other type of mechanism involving matter was required.
Of course, today those conditions of the early universe no longer exist and there is no other process that can produce light by gravity. However, the discovery could help scientists better understand what the universe was like at that time.
The commemorative photos of Juno’s 50th orbit around Jupiter
NASA commemorated the Juno spacecraft’s 50th orbit around Jupiter by sharing a mosaic of 50 photos of the giant planet and its moons. All images, of course, were captured by Juno itself during its more than 10 years of mission.
In addition, Google collaborated with the campaign and made a sequence of photos available on the Google Arts & Culture website, where the public can recapitulate the steps of the mission since the launch of Juno in 2011.
Photo of Earth taken by Indian satellite
The Indian satellite Earth Observation Satellite-06 (EOS-06) took a series of photos of the continents and oceans of our planet. This is the result of combining 2,939 individual photos of our planet taken between the 1st and 15th of February. Together they represent 300GB of data.
Furthermore, the images have a spatial resolution of 1 km and the equipment can photograph at 13 different wavelengths. This makes it possible to capture information on vegetation cover, oceans and other elements.
The fast radio bursts that pierce a galaxy
After an upgrade to the scientific instruments at the Westerbork radio telescope, scientists detected five new fast radio bursts (FRBs), three of which pierced the Triangle galaxy, one of the Milky Way’s neighbors. Also coming into play was the power of the new ARTS supercomputer, also implemented in the telescope upgrade.
In addition to the rare possibility of tracking this type of event, the bursts could also be used to determine the maximum number of invisible atoms in this galaxy, for the first time. With this information, researchers gain new horizons to study the universe’s dark matter in greater depth.
The launch and landing of China’s prototype rocket
China has taken another step in its plan to build reusable rockets by launching and landing a prototype on a maritime platform. The test was carried out in Shandong province, China, with the rocket reaching 1 km altitude and descending smoothly. The rocket measured 2.1 m high and 0.5 m in diameter and had three engines, one of them to imitate a variable liquid propulsion engine.
Landing technology is different from that used by SpaceX: Chinese use domestic technology because of technological limits, such as variable propulsion management, positioning accuracy and stabilizing technology, said an engineer from CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences).
The new theory about the origin of water on Earth
Some hypotheses have already been proposed to explain the origin of water on Earth, such as the impact of giant comets. Now, a new study brings a different idea: the Earth’s primitive hydrogen-rich atmosphere would have interacted with the magma ocean to give rise to the water we have today. More specifically, a total of 25 chemical compounds interacting to generate 18 reactions.
This explanation relied on simulations showing that these processes would be sufficient to generate all this substance around here, even if the material used in the formation of the Earth had been completely devoid of water.
