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A Virtual Telescope Project image shows a rogue rocket stage on the road to oblivion, nearly a month before it smashed into the the moon on Friday (March 4). The image was taken Feb. 8 during the stage’s last close flyby of Earth, when it was visible in the 17-inch (43 centimeters) Planewave telescope stationed … Read more
A rogue rocket stage is on its way to oblivion Friday (March 4), bound for an unintentional crash into the moon. The event will take place at 7:25 a.m. EST (1225 GMT) on the lunar far side, meaning it will be out of view of ground-based telescopes. Even NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will not get … Read more
A doomed rocket stage that’s expected to crash into the moon on March 4 will do so out of view of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The collision is set to take place on the far side of the moon, out of range of Earthbound telescopes. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) does have the ability to … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Joanna Barstow, Ernest Rutherford Fellow, The Open University We now know of almost 5,000 planets outside the solar system. If you were to picture what it would be like on one of these distant worlds, or exoplanets, your mental … Read more
In November of 2020, a freak wave came out of the blue, lifting a lonesome buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters high (58 feet). The four-story wall of water has now been confirmed as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded. Such an exceptional event is thought to occur only once … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University In a few weeks’ time, a rocket launched in 2015 is expected to crash into the moon. The fast-moving piece of space junk is the upper stage … Read more
Astronomers may have for the first time detected and measured the mass of an isolated stellar-mass black hole, a new study finds. Previous research suggested that when giant stars more than 20 times the mass reach the end of their lives, they usually die in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas, and their dense cores are … Read more
Rogue black holes are usually detected by the matter falling into them, but the first truly isolated black hole has been found because of the way it bends the light of a distant star Space 3 February 2022 By Alex Wilkins Artist’s illustration of a rogue black hole Shutterstock/Vadim Sadovski An isolated stellar-mass black hole … Read more
These are boom times for astronomers hunting black holes. The biggest ones—supermassive black holes that can weigh billions of suns—have been found at the centers of most every galaxy, and we have even managed to image one. Meanwhile, researchers now routinely detect gravitational waves rippling through the universe from smaller merging black holes. Closer to … Read more
The recent case of a driverless car that tried to escape its handlers might make us laugh, but it also warns us about what could happen when AI is given a “body”, writes Annalee Newitz Technology | Columnist 2 February 2022 By Annalee Newitz MicroOne/Shutterstock DRIVING in San Francisco is like watching a robot uprising … Read more