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Hubble Confirms U.S.-sized Dark Vortex on Neptune’s Surface

June 26, 2016 By John Cooper Leave a Comment

NASA/ESA’s Hubble space telescope has confirmed the existence of a “dark vortex” the size of the United States on planet Neptune’s surface. The strange feature was first observed last summer, but it was officially confirmed by the Hubble team last month.

Scientists explained that the vortex is so immense that it could engulf the entire United States if it happened on our planet.

Mike Wong, one of the researchers who analyzed Hubble imagery and astronomer at Berkeley, likened the natural phenomena to a “huge, lens-shaped gaseous mountain” that travels at monster speeds through the atmosphere.

Wong added that the bright clouds around the vortex are very similar to the orographic clouds over some of the Earth’s mountains. On our planet, the pancake-shaped clouds form over mountains as a response to the lifting of air caused by high elevations with high pressures.

Vortices on Neptune are also high-pressure features that trigger the high-altitude clouds, NASA researchers explained. The team added that within the clouds, gases reach the freezing point and morph into methane ice crystals.

The vortex was first detected by the bright clouds around it last summer. The existence of a dark vortex on Neptune took so long to confirm because it can be most visible in blue wavelengths. So scientists had to use Hubble to take a clearer glimpse at the feature.

The space telescope got a clear image of the vortex in May. Another dark vortex had been detected by Voyager 2 about three decades ago. But the latest is the first to be observed during this century.

Researchers noted that Neptune’s vortices are very different from one another. They tend to have different sizes, shapes, and appear at different latitudes. Some of them are slower than others, while some are quicker in vanishing.

Neptune’s vortices however evolve much faster than the anticyclones observed on Jupiter, where similar storms need decades to complete their life cycle.

NASA also announced this week that it will keep Hubble operational five more years through 2021. The space agency said that the space observatory was “better than never” even though the latest shuttle servicing operation was seven years ago.

NASA is confident that the “outstanding general purpose observatory” will continue to provide humanity with valuable data on our solar system and the known universe into the 2020s as well.

Image Source: Wikimedia

Little Is Known About Coral Reefs

June 12, 2016 By Sam Doliente Leave a Comment

Coral reefs will be protected.

Everyone heard about coral reefs before, but scientists still do not know many things about them and how the oceans benefit from these reefs.

NASA researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory decided to develop a program that will observe the coral reefs from a distance of 23,000 feet. The study will last three years, and it aims to gather as much information as possible about the coral reefs.

Scientists will be able to analyze the oceans thanks to a set of instruments attached to an aircraft that will regularly fly. Besides learning more about the reefs, researchers will be able to establish the consequences of pollution, acidification, and human ignorance.

Coral reefs are in fact vital and delicate ecosystem as they are the ideal habitat for most of the fish that humans consume. Furthermore, these reefs act as a barrier, protecting the shorelines from rising ocean levels and dangerous storm surges.

According to Eric Hochberg, lead researcher of the project, known as the Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL), coral reefs also play a significant role in the world economy as many tourists are attracted to these areas to practice snorkeling and diving.

However, thanks to the latest development in the medical field, coral reefs proved to be a vital source for pharmaceutical applications, such as painkillers that do not lead to addiction.

Unfortunately, the statistics from the International Society for Reef Studies Consensus Statement showed that 50 percent of the world’s coral reefs have already been destroyed or critically degraded by local factors and human excess during the last few decades.

According to Julia Baum, assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, the data that will be gathered thanks to this extensive research on coral reefs will prove to be very useful in understanding how important are coral reefs for the balance of the ecosystem.

Furthermore, scientists will be able to come up with new strategies to tackle all the factors that brought the degradation of coral reefs. The lack of data was another reason why coral reefs became so critically affected, as we were more preoccupied about space instead of taking care of our planet.

CORAL scientists announced that all data will be available to the public at the end of the study. Hopefully, the results will raise awareness regarding the situation of coral reefs.

Image Source:Earth Times

NASA’s Kepler Telescope Adds 1,284 New Exoplanets to the List

May 11, 2016 By Amanda Lane Leave a Comment

Artist‘s impression of a habitable exoplanet.

On Tuesday, NASA scientists confirmed that 1,284 newfound space objects in our galaxy are indeed exoplanets. The fresh crop of new worlds was harvested by NASA’s veteran space telescope Kepler, which has spotted to date 2,325 alien worlds.

Scientists believe that nine of the newly found exoplanets may be habitable since they orbit their host stars at a distance that allows them to hold liquid water on their surface.

A team of researchers has also published a research paper on the findings in the Astrophysical Journal, detailing a quicker method to validate candidate exoplanets.

The initial method required Kepler to scour the sky and look for dips in the light of the 150,000 visible stars. Changes in starlight indicate that a planet may be passing across its host star’s disc.

Between 2009 and 2013, the Kepler observatory detected over 4,500 possible exoplanets. Yet, the old method is not reliable since many celestial events can mimic a planet’s transition. For instance, if two stars are locked in a binary system, one star transiting the other one may trick the space telescope into believing that it has just found an exoplanet.

As a result, astronomers had to confirm each exoplanet by looking at additional data gathered by space and ground telescopes. Timothy Morton, the lead author of the latest study and researcher at Princeton University, noted that the old method was both time and resource consuming.

Morton’s team came up with a method that uses probability calculations to simplify the process. Researchers claim that their new technique can tell a genuine exoplanet from a fake candidate with 99 percent accuracy.

Scientists now need only two bits of information: what is the chance of an observed signal to be a real planet and what is the probability of having an impostor. The team successfully tested the probabilistic method on 984 exoplanets that had been previously confirmed using traditional methods.

NASA researchers know that detecting a genuine alien planet is not easy since 60% to 70% are false-positives. But when the new method was applied on 4,302 potential exoplanets, including 984 that were confirmed, Morton’s team discovered 1,284 new exoplanets that scientists had missed. About 1,327 more candidate planets now need to be validated using other methods, while 707 were confirmed as likely fakes.

Additionally, NASA scientists are convinced that the number of actual exoplanets in our galaxy is far larger since Kepler can only see the worlds that happen to align with its line of sight.

Image Source: Pixabay

Pluto’s Spider-Shaped Terrain Features Puzzle Scientists

April 8, 2016 By Amanda Lane Leave a Comment

Artist’s depiction of Pluto’s surface.

NASA recently said that a weird-looking geological feature on dwarf planet Pluto resembles a huge spider. The feature consists in six-mile-long fractures that form a pattern unique in our solar system.

NASA scientists discovered the bizarre structure while they were sifting through the images took by the agency’s New Horizons probe during its historic flyby of the alien planet on July 14, 2015.

Researchers said that all fractures converge into one point. The longest stretches over 360 miles, while the shortest is less than 60-mile-long.

The new find puzzled scientists because similar fractures on the tiny planet never intersect with one another. Researchers believe that such patterns are formed when Pluto’s ice crust expands.

But this latest spidery feature may have a different origin. The research team speculates that it may originate in a ‘source of stress’ located just below the planet’s surface where the ‘spider legs’ converge.

Similar patterns were observed on Venus and Mercury, but none of those resembles a spider. On Venus, the radiating structures are called novae.

On the other hand, this is not the first oddity New Horizons detects on Pluto. The dwarf planet is notorious for its bladed ‘snakeskin’ crust in the Tombaugh Regio, also known as Pluto’s ‘Heart’ due to its unusual shape.

You can see hundreds of feet high blades on Tartarus Dorsa, too, in the north-east. The blades are separated by narrow valleys. Scientists are still trying to figure out what caused the snakeskin terrain in the region.

Some theories claim that erosion caused by methane ice may be to blame while others suggest that tectonic forces may be involved. Researchers have likened the strange terrain in Tartarus Dorsa region to dragon scales or tree bark.

But Pluto has more surprises in store. In March, NASA scientists discovered an exotic mountain range blanketed with snow-like material which may be methane ice in the planet’s Cthulhu region.

The 1,850 mile-long mountain range stretches nearly halfway the planet’s equator, scientists said. Cthulhu which is slightly larger than Alaska appears darkened in New Horizons’ imagery. The mission team believes that the region may be covered in dark-colored tholins, which are microscopic methane byproducts that emerge when the element is exposed to sunlight.

Image Source: Wikimedia

NASA Launched New Satellite at Third Attempt

February 13, 2015 By Amilia Allport

Just last Saturday, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched another satellite into the space. The satellite will provide NASA brand new tools that will help them predict weather, trace drought and study and monitor climate changes.

The recent satellite liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base located in Southern California was already the third try of NASA to launch the new satellite. The first try to launch the satellite was delayed due to the upper-level wind shear found above the base near Lomboc. The second try was cancelled due to the booster insulation-related problems revealed after an investigation.

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