A Scientific Research Vault
What if we are able to produce fuel directly on Mars? Explorers would then be able to stay on the red planet a li’l longer and return journey will then be easier relatively. Shipping the propellant and oxygen for a return journey from Mars would cost billions of dollars. To make things easier, researchers have developed a concept for local rocket fuel production with algae and E.coli.
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Moon exhibits tenuous atmosphere. Its low gravity enables gases to escape into the outer space effortlessly. Heavier atoms, however, are ionised by sun’s ultraviolet radiation, which are then drifted away from the Moon by the solar flares.
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Radio astronomy is very fascinating since it shows the “other side” of reality which we do not witness in our everyday life. Of course, due to our own limitations. Dr. Jennifer West, an astrophysicist at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics suggests that a gigantic magnetic tunnel surrounds our solar system. This magnetic flux can be observed in radio waves.
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Dr Benjamin Pope is a physicist and data scientist at The University of Queensland, Brisbane. He is working to find planets around other stars using NASA space telescopes. With the help of leading-edge machine-learning algorithms, he is trying to dig up tiny signals out of the noise to expand our knowledge of the universe.
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In a collaborative effort, an international team of astronomers at The University of Queensland and the Dutch national observatory ASTRON have been looking for planets with the help of the most powerful radio telescope – Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) – located in the Netherlands. Recently, they were able to figure out stars spewing off radio waves. This hints at the presence of some hidden planets.
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Dr. Kamber Schwarz is a postdoc at MPIA in Heidelberg. She has been a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. She received her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of Michigan in 2018. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Ralph B. Baldwin Prize in Astronomy, 2020.
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Astronomers led by Kamber Schwarz (MPIA in Heidelberg) have successfully deduced the mass of a potential “planet factory”, the protoplanetary disk around the star GM Aurigae. With the help of radio data from the ALMA observatory and physical modelling, the astronomers were able to track the GM Aurigae system.
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Big question regarding the formation of black holes and how they grow under different regimes have always been the holy grail for astrophysicists. Our galaxy hovers around a massive black hole which, under normal circumstances, is surrounded by spinning gases. Not much is known about these gases, however, some shine brightly, with an unceasing supply of fuel. While others go to a state of temporary dormancy and erupts again later with an influx of gases.
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Black holes are the most fascinating phenomena in the universe. Any new finding regarding the intricacies of black hole makes us wonder how less we know about it. This uncanny object is famous for ingesting huge quantities of matter from its surroundings, beaming with glittering luminosity and spilling out small portion of this matter by means of very powerful jets.
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Lately, Dr. Michio Kaku’s book The Future of Humanity caught my attention. The book is uber fascinating and it was difficult to put it down, I finished reading in less than a week. I wasn’t reading, rather I was witnessing the ‘space odyssey’ in Dr. Kaku’s style.
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Stars are the building blocks of galaxies. Turbulence, that is, the result of chaotic changes in pressure and velocity deep within the dust clouds gives rise to some mass. This “mass” results in stellar gravity due to which, the peripheral dust and gas start to disintegrate under its own gravitational attraction. And hence, star formation takes place.
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Oumuamua was name given to the mysterious interstellar object that passed through our solar system in 2017. What’s special about this object was, it happened to be the first that had come from ‘outside’ our solar system.
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Although title of the book says Astrophysics for People in a Hurry but believe me the book has more depth than the label interprets. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an epitome of masterly skill at explaining complex scientific concepts into the most elementary and comprehensible manner. He makes astrophysics so interesting that even a person who has no inclination towards the subject will surely gravitate towards the space and evolutionary history after listening to his talks. His enthusiasm is contagious indeed.
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Dark matter is one of the key ingredients in the understanding of evolution and in the formation of galaxies. Majority of scientists are of the view that dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP). It is because of their weak interactions with matter that we see around, it becomes extremely difficult to detect.
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Data from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys’ Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) has hinted at the presence of possible “fossil galaxy” within the core of our Milky Way.
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