A lucky alignment of two sun-studying spacecraft may have finally solved a decades-old solar mystery. Data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter suggest that plasma waves known as Alfvén waves inject energy into the solar wind as it leaves the sun’s outer atmosphere, potentially explaining why the solar wind … Ler mais
For the first time, scientists have measured a long-sought global electric field in Earth’s atmosphere. This field, called the ambipolar electric field, was predicted to exist decades ago but was never discovered until now. his animation shows how the ambipolar electric field works. The most abundant gas in the lower atmosphere, the part we live … Ler mais
Black holes about the size of a hydrogen atom may be careening into the solar system without being noticed. But their days of stealth may be numbered. Two teams of researchers propose methods to search for these hypothetical small objects, which would have the mass of an asteroid. Because they would have formed at the … Ler mais
While SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are enabling Internet access and mobile communications around the globe, they are also posing a threat to radio astronomy, a new study suggests. In several wavelength bands, the inadvertent leakage of electromagnetic radiation from the latest generation of satellites is more than 30 times brighter than emissions from earlier versions, Cees … Ler mais
Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse! The red supergiant that marks Orion’s left shoulder may have a tiny, unseen companion. Two independent studies found evidence of a star the same mass as the sun, orbiting Betelgeuse about once every 2,100 days. “It was very surprising,” says astrophysicist Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, … Ler mais