Astro Wonders

2021-05-12 15:30:01 Discovery of New Planet That is Six Times Heavier Than Jupiter

Planet YSES 2b is located 360 light-years from Earth in the direction of the southern constellation of Musca and is six times heavier than Jupiter(largest planet in the solar system)

The newly-discovered planet orbits 110 times more distant from its star than the Earth does from the sun (or 20 times the distance between the sun and Jupiter). The accompanying star is only 14 million years old and resembles our sun in its childhood.

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2021-05-12 10:30:01 Space is full of "space junk.

Space is full of junk like used rocket parts and dead satellites. These objects continue to orbit Earth at about 17,500 mph — 10 times as fast as a speeding bullet.

The Space Surveillance Network (SSN) keeps track of how much debris is out there and who's responsible for it. The SSN is currently tracking 23,000 objects larger than a softball.

Space junk is dangerous because one collision could trigger a chain reaction of objects hitting each other, resulting in a thick cloud of debris that would make space travel extremely dangerous. This kind of disaster was the premise of the 2013 movie "Gravity" starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

The US is responsible for the most space junk with 3,990 pieces of debris as of March 28, 2018. Russia is responsible for 3,959 pieces of debris, followed by China with 3,893.

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2021-05-12 05:30:00 Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158

Clusters of stars can be near or far, young or old, diffuse or compact. The featured image shows two quite contrasting open star clusters in the same field. M35, on the lower left, is relatively nearby at 2800 light years distant, relatively young at 150 million years old, and relatively diffuse, with about 2500 stars spread out over a volume 30 light years across. Bright blue stars frequently distinguish younger open clusters like M35. Contrastingly, NGC 2158, on the upper right, is four times more distant than M35, over 10 times older, and much more compact. NGC 2158's bright blue stars have self-destructed, leaving cluster light to be dominated by older and yellower stars. In general, open star clusters are found in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, and contain anywhere from 100 to 10,000 stars -- all of which formed at nearly the same time. Both open clusters M35 and NGC 2158 can be found together with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Twins (Gemini). Open / Comment

2021-05-11 20:30:00 National Technology Day 2021 on May 11 celebrates the achievements and contributions of Indians to science and technology. This day serves as a reminder of India breaking into the elite group of nations with nuclear weapons. On May 11, 1998, India conducted three successful nuclear tests at the Indian Army's Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan under Operation Shakti. Two more nuclear tests were conducted on May 13. The tests were led by late President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. The National Technology Day was observed for the first time on May 11, 1999.

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2021-05-11 15:30:02 Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are bursts of highly energetic gamma rays lasting from less than a second to several minutes – the blink of an eye on cosmological timescales. They are known to occur at huge distances from Earth, towards the limits of the observable Universe.Currently, orbiting satellites detect on average approximately one GRB per day. All detected GRB have been outside the Milky Way.

The intense radiation of most observed GRBs is thought to be released during a supernova or superluminous supernova as a high-mass star implodes to form a neutron star or a black hole.

A subclass of GRBs (the "short" bursts) appear to originate from the merger of binary neutron stars.observe each burst soon after detection. Such observations have revealed that GRBs are located in the distant Universe, are accompanied by afterglows at less energetic wavelengths(X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, microwave and radio)

Gamma ray bursts can have harmful or destructive effects on life.

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2021-05-11 10:30:01 Happy Birthday to the great American theoretical physicist who was widely regarded as the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-World War II era --- Richard Phillips Feynman.

He's well known for his work in the "path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of "quantum electrodynamics", and the physics of the "superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the "parton model." Feynman used to love mathematics and is extremely brilliant in maths!
For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

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2021-05-11 10:30:01 Emailing “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!” – Adventures of a Curious Character (by Richard P. Feynman).pdf Open / Comment

2021-05-11 06:03:00 Total Internal Reflection.

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