Science World

2021-05-06 16:57:48 Open / Comment

2021-05-06 13:16:10 What would happen if an asteroid hit Earth?

A 1 mile wide asteroid traveling at 30,000 mph has the energy roughly equal to a 1 million megaton bomb. If a sufficiently large asteroid hits the ocean it'll cause massive tidal waves hundreds of feet high destroying much of the life in the vicinity. If a sufficiently large asteroid hits the land, it can completely wipe out life on the planet. The force of the impact would generate a large amount of dust and debris into the atmosphere blocking out the sun for a long time killing most of the life. Any asteroid falling from the sky would have a tremendous amount of energy due to its speed. Open / Comment

2021-05-06 09:44:51 Look in the middle of the picture for 20 seconds and then somewhere else!

What happens? Comment below. Open / Comment

2021-05-06 07:40:06 NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the nautical southern constellation of Carina. The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this narrowband, false-color view. Though the deep image reveals a more or less complete bubble shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edge along the top. Near the center is a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulae with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interstellar material. In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate a bow shock produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. But measurements have shown the star is not really moving directly toward the bright edge. So a more likely explanation is that the material surrounding the star is not uniform, but clumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199. Open / Comment

2021-05-06 03:49:52 A team of international scientists has proposed a simple and novel method to bring the accuracy of the Hubble constant measurements down to 2%, using a single observation of a pair of merging neutron stars.  The Universe is in continuous expansion. Because of this, distant objects such as galaxies move away from us. In fact, the further away they are, the faster they move. Scientists describe this expansion through a famous number known as the Hubble constant, which tells us how fast objects in the Universe recede from us depending on their distance to us. By measuring the Hubble constant in a precise way, we can also determine some of the most fundamental properties of the Universe, including its age. Open / Comment

2021-05-05 18:29:12 Open / Comment

2021-05-05 15:15:47 What creates STEVEs?

Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements have likely been seen since antiquity, but only in the past five years has it been realized that their colors and shapes make them different from auroras. Seen as single bright streaks of pink and purple, the origin of STEVEs remain an active topic of research. STEVEs may be related to subauroral ion drifts, a supersonic river of hot atmospheric ions. For reasons currently unknown, STEVEs are frequently accompanied by green picket-fence auroras. The featured STEVE image is a combination of foreground and background exposures taken consecutively in mid-March from Copper Harbor, Michigan, USA. This bright STEVE lasted several minutes, spanned from horizon to horizon, and appeared in between times of normal auroras. Open / Comment

2021-05-05 14:41:45 Open / Comment

2021-05-05 11:57:43 Top countries by total satellites in space! Open / Comment