A mysterious object dragged into the black hole at the center of our galaxy!

By analyzing 20 years of observations, a team of scientists led by UCLA astrophysicist Anna Ciorlo discovered a dramatic shift in the shape of X7, as it expanded to almost twice its initial length.

This change in structure indicates that the strange blob is likely made of debris ejected during a relatively recent collision between two stars.

"No other object in this region has shown such extreme evolution. It started as a comet and people thought it might have gotten this shape from stellar winds or jets of particles from the black hole. But as we followed it for 20 years we saw it become more elongated," Cirlu explains. Something must have put this cloud on its surface. A track of its own direction."

And if the debris cloud is indeed the object, its discovery sheds light on some fascinating dynamics at the center of the galaxy, such as the frequency of stellar collisions and the intense gravitational effects. In just a few short years, the cloud of dust and gas will become more and more complex and will fall into the black hole (SgrA*).

By studying X7 over a period of years, researchers were able to calculate its mass, which weighs about 50 times that of Earth.

Changes in the debris cloud's position and velocity also indicate that it is in an elliptical orbit around the center of the galaxy, with a period of about 170 years. Or rather, it would be so, if they were together a little more. Simulations indicate that it will not have the opportunity to complete one orbit.

Its closest approach to Sgr A*, known as a periastron, is expected to occur in 2036. At that point, the gravitational environment will tear the cloud apart, leaving the scattered remnants to continue orbiting the black hole until it irreversibly disappears beyond event horizon.

"It's exciting to see significant changes in the shape and dynamics of X7 in great detail over a relatively short period of time, as the gravitational forces of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy act on this object," said co-author astronomer Randy Campbell of the Keck Observatory.

X7 shares some similarities with other mysterious blobs orbiting the center of the galaxy, known as G Objects. They were first discovered about 20 years ago, and posed an important mystery: they looked like clouds of gas, but behaved like stars, stretching out at perihelion, only to emerge intact and shrink back into a more compact shape to continue their orbits.

Astronomers hypothesized that the G objects were stars merging together, producing a huge cloud of material that remained within the gravitational field of the newly merged star, hiding it from view. Then a study published in 2021 found that one such object, G2, was a molecular cloud, hiding three small stars.

And while there are similarities, the X7 is significantly different from the G Objects, too. Its evolution was more dramatic than that of G bodies, both in shape and in speed as it expanded and accelerated towards Sgr A*.

"One possibility is that X7's gas and dust were emitted at the moment two stars merged. In this process, the merged star is hidden within a shell of dust and gas, which may fit the description of G objects," says Cirlu.

Because X7 is not held together by an underlying mass at its center, it is expected to have a much shorter lifetime than that of G objects. Meanwhile, the compact star from which X7 bulged out could still be present at the center of the galaxy, in its own separate orbit. The researchers note that its orbit is very similar to that of object G G3, and they suggest that G3 may be the parent object.

However, it is not currently easy to rule out other possibilities. The X7 could be a piece of debris stripped from a larger cloud, for example.

And of course, watching the X7 should be fun and rewarding in itself, as it draws ever closer to its doom.

"Continued monitoring of X7 will allow us to watch these extreme changes more closely, ending with the tidal dissipation of the remnants of this intriguing structure," the researchers write.

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Source: ScienceAlert

What time is it on the surface of the moon? The European Space Agency wants a "moon reference time"!

The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to define lunar time zones where humans are set to work and eventually live on the moon.

The idea has been around since last year, but the European Space Agency and international partners are pressing ahead with the process of creating a 'common lunar reference time' accepted by all spacefaring nations.

Currently, the moon mission operates according to the time of the country that operates the spacecraft.

The team looking into lunar time is debating whether one organization should set and maintain lunar time, but they are investigating a technical issue.

Clocks run faster on the Moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds each day and ticking differently on the Moon than in lunar orbit.

And perhaps most importantly, lunar time should be practical for the astronauts there, noted Bernhard Hoffenbach of the space agency.

This news comes as many countries are looking forward to launching missions to the Moon, especially the US Space Agency.

NASA is looking forward to 2025 as the year to return humans to the moon - the first time in more than 50 years.

This is part of the Artemis programme, which completed the first phase late last year. The next installment is Artemis II, which will send NASA astronauts on a trip around the moon in 2024.

"This will be a great challenge, as each day lasts 29.5 Earth days. But after we have established a timing system to work on the surface of the Moon, we can move forward to do the same for other planetary destinations," Hoffenbach said in a statement.

Talks to set a specific time for the moon were brought up last year during a meeting at the European Space Agency's ESTEC technology center in the Netherlands.

European space officials said the internationally accepted lunar time zone would make it easier for everyone, mainly because more countries and even private companies are targeting the moon and NASA is preparing to send astronauts there.

And NASA had to deal with the issue of time while designing and building the International Space Station, as the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first piece approached.

While the space station does not have its own time zone, it operates in Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which is based precisely on atomic clocks.

This helps split the time lag between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and other partner space programs in Russia, Japan and Europe.

"Interoperability of time and geodetic reference frames has been successfully achieved here on Earth for global navigation satellite systems; all smartphones today are able to take advantage of The current GNSS system calculates user position down to the meter or even decimeter level.The experience of this success can be reused for future technical long-range lunar systems, although stable timekeeping on the Moon will present its own unique challenges - such as taking into account the fact that time passes in different because of the effects of gravity and the specific velocity of the moon."

Source: Daily Mail

NASA announces the date of the second attempt to launch the Crew Dragon, with an Emirati astronaut on board

The Ross Cosmos Foundation announced that NASA plans to launch the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft to the International Space Station on March 2.

And "Ross Cosmos," quoting sources at NASA, indicated, "The agency's experts discovered the reason for the technical malfunction that caused the Crew Dragon flight to be delayed last time, and after they fixed the malfunction, they decided to retry the launch on March 2."

NASA had planned to launch the Crew Dragon vehicle on a Falcon 9 rocket on February 26, but postponed the date to the next day, and on February 27 announced that the launch was postponed again for technical reasons.

According to the information provided by the agency, the delay in the launch process on February 27 was due to a clogged filter in the ground ignition fluid supply system for the Falcon 9 rocket engines, and after discovering the problem, experts at SpaceX were able to replace the filter, and they completely purged the ignition circuit with nitrogen and made sure that the system became Now clean and ready to launch.

Crew Dragon is supposed to carry to the station two NASA astronauts, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, Russian astronaut Andrei Vidyaev, and Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi.

Source: Novosti

A NASA astronaut shared a "captivating" view of the Earth from a height of 400 km

An American astronaut captured the most unique display of the Northern Lights to date, as he published a dazzling view of this phenomenon from the International Space Station (ISS), about 400 km from Earth.

NASA astronaut Josh Casada got a stunning shot of the light show from his seat on the International Space Station, and posted the photo on his Twitter account on Tuesday, February 28, commenting on the post by saying: "Totally unrealistic."

Kasada has been aboard the International Space Station since last October, along with NASA's Nicole Mann, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian astronaut Anna Kikina.

It is part of SpaceX's Crew-5 mission, whose crew is scheduled to return to Earth about five days after the arrival of the Crew-6 mission to the orbiting laboratory, which will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Thursday morning. March 2.

The Casada image shows Earth with a green aurora light show dancing along the planet's curve.

The light appeared as a result of the interaction of charged solar particles with particles in the Earth's atmosphere, after it was recently charged by the strong activity of the sun.

Specifically, the presence of a 'hole' in the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, has increased the flow of the solar wind, the constant flow of charged particles from our star.

Huge clouds of solar plasma ejected into space by coronal mass ejections spread over our planet on Sunday, February 26 and Monday, February 27, increasing the intensity of the light show.

As a result, the aurora borealis have spread to places where they are not normally seen, far from the ultra-high latitudes that are their natural habitat. (Earth's magnetic field lines tend to direct charged particles toward our planet's poles.)

Casada did not give any details about the aurora borealis. But white spots can be seen on the planet reflecting the lights of the cities, while the ethereal green aurorae seem to cover a wide area of ​​the world.

The image joins an impressive collection of beautiful ground-based shots from the International Space Station.

Source: Myspace

Russian scientists are developing a drone to study Mars

The Moscow Aviation Institute announced that its scientists are working on a project to develop a drone to study Mars and its atmosphere.

On the subject, Elena Karpovich, a researcher affiliated with the institute and participating in the aforementioned project, said: “A team of scientists from the Moscow Aviation Institute is working with specialists from India on a project to develop a fixed-wing drone, whose aim is to study the atmosphere and the surface of Mars. Public prototype vehicle by the end of 2024.

She added, "In addition to scientists and specialists affiliated with our institute, specialists in aerodynamic sciences affiliated with the Indian Kharagpur Technical Institute are working on the project, and the project's goal is to develop a fixed-wing drone that can participate in Mars exploration operations."

The researcher pointed out, "The main difficulties in the project lie in the specificity of the Martian climate and atmosphere of this planet, so the aircraft that will operate there must deal with harsh weather conditions, volatile climate and dust storms on the Red Planet."

According to Karpovich, work on the aforementioned project had begun in April 2022, after approval of its funding by the Russian Science Foundation, and by 2024 the Moscow Aviation Institute is supposed to have published ten articles on tests and results of work on new technologies that are developing within its framework.

Source: Vesti

"heartbeat" coming from our sun!

Scientists have discovered mysterious "heartbeat" signals from our sun that repeat every 10 to 20 seconds.

The strange pattern has been pinpointed for a C-class solar flare located 3,106 miles above the star's surface.

These pulses, known as quasi-periodic pulses (QPP), have long been a mystery and a source of controversy among solar physicists.

The team, led by the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), said revealing the source of the heartbeat - a solar flare - could help scientists better understand how catastrophic solar storms are triggered.

"The discovery is unexpected. This pulsating pattern is important for understanding how energy is released and dissipated in the sun's atmosphere during these incredibly powerful explosions on the sun," study co-author Seiji Yu, an NJIT affiliated astronomer, said in a statement. Solar radio bursts are intense bursts of radio waves from the Sun, often associated with solar flares and known to be characterized by signals with repeating patterns.

The team determined the source of these heartbeats after analyzing observations of a solar flare event on July 13, 2017, captured by the NJIT Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA) radio telescope.

These observations showed a repeating signal pattern, and the team identified a QPP signal at the base of the electric current plate extending more than 15,534 miles across the primary ignition zone of the eruption as opposite elements approach each other, separate and reconnect, generating intense energy that leads to the glow.

This is called magnetic reconnection and this is the first time a QPP has been found in such a location.

Even more intriguing, the team detected a second pulse in the flare.

The signals likely originate from near-frequent magnetic reconnections in the current flare.

This is the first time that a quasi-periodic radio signal has been detected located in the reconnection region.

Using EOVSA's unique microwave imaging capabilities, the team was able to measure the energy spectrum of the electrons in the two radio sources at the event.

"EOVSA spectral imaging gave us new spatial and temporal diagnoses of non-thermal electrons in the flare," said Ben Chen, assistant professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology and co-author of the paper. "We found that the distribution of high-energy electrons in the primary QPP source differs in phase with that of the secondary QPP source." in the electronic current paper.

Ultimately, the researchers say, the study findings shed new light on an important phenomenon that underlies the reconnection process that drives these explosive events.

Source: Daily Mail

3 huge asteroids will pass Earth this week, two of which may be dangerous

Our universe is filled with an unknown number of recalcitrant space rocks that follow paths that not all of us can follow, and many of them are in fact heading towards our planet, some of which could even crash into the Earth.

According to the US space agency, three huge asteroids, two of which are "potentially dangerous", will cross Earth's orbit around the sun this week.

However, there is no cause for concern given that the closest distance of these asteroids from Earth will be 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers), or about 10 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, according to NASA.

On Monday, February 27, an asteroid called 2012 DK31 passed near our planet at a distance of about 3 million miles (4.8 million kilometers).

The width of this asteroid is 450 feet (137 meters), or equivalent to the width of a skyscraper of approximately 40 floors, and its orbit around the sun crosses Earth's orbit every few years.

Although this space rock does not pose an imminent threat to Earth, NASA classifies it as a "potentially hazardous asteroid" (PHA), which means that the rock is large enough and orbits close to Earth that it could cause severe damage if it changes its trajectory. And a collision occurred.

In general, any asteroid more than 450 feet (137 meters) across and orbiting within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth is considered a "potentially dangerous asteroid."

NASA has determined the path of this asteroid over the next 200 years, and no collisions are expected.

On Tuesday, February 28, a second "potentially dangerous asteroid" the size of a skyscraper, with a diameter of about 450 feet (137 meters), will cross our planet's orbit at an estimated distance of 2.2 million miles (3.5 million km).

The orbit of this massive space rock, known as 2006 BE55, crosses Earth's orbit every four to five years.

Finally, on Friday, March 3, an asteroid about 250 feet (76 meters) across will fly by 3.3 million miles (5.3 million km).

This space rock, called 2021 QW, is not large enough to qualify as a "potentially hazardous asteroid", but it continues to come relatively close to Earth every few years.

Scientists pay close attention to space rocks that cross Earth's path millions of miles away, because even slight changes in an asteroid's trajectory can send nearby objects on a direct collision course with Earth.

Fortunately, NASA calculations show that there are no known asteroids currently on their way to hitting Earth at any time for at least the next 100 years.

And if one day a large asteroid poses a direct threat to our planet, astronomers are already working on ways to avoid the risks. This was the impetus for NASA's recent mission to test asteroid reorientation DART, which collided with an asteroid to change its orbital velocity.

The mission did not completely destroy its target, but it proved that direct missile attacks are able to change the trajectory of space rocks and keep them away from Earth.

Source: Live Science