Martian Dunes; Carina Nebula; Nobel Prize in Physics

Oct 7, 2020 | Daily Space, Gemini North, Mars, Nebulae, Star Forming Region, Supermassive Black Holes | 0 comments

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NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, we do not have a transcript for today’s show. We apologize. If one becomes available in the future, we will edit this post.

Stay tuned after the news for an interview with guest Darly Choa, a producer from NOVA Labs who is introducing GBH’s new presence on Twitch.

IMAGE: Wind-driven sand dunes are common on modern Mars and the presence of certain sedimentary rock layers indicates these landforms occurred there in the past. This oblique color view from NASA’s HiRISE instrument shows a lithified field of sand dunes within Melas Chasma, Valles Marineris. The large degree of preserved morphology for many of these paleo-dunes reveals important information regarding the acting wind regime and climate prior to their cementation. CREDIT: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
IMAGE: A 50-trillion-km (33-trillion-mile, or 5 light-year) long section of the western wall in the Carina Nebula, as observed with adaptive optics on the Gemini South telescope. This mountainous section of the nebula reveals a number of unusual structures including a long series of parallel ridges that could be produced by a magnetic field, a remarkable almost perfectly smooth wave, and fragments that appear to be in the process of being sheared off the cloud by a strong wind. There is also evidence for a jet of material ejected from a newly-formed star. The exquisite detail seen in the image is in part due to a technology known as adaptive optics, which resulted in a ten-fold improvement in the resolution of the research team’s observations. CREDIT: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. Acknowledgment: PI: Patrick Hartigan (Rice University). Image processing: Patrick Hartigan (Rice University), Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin
IMAGE: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided, one half awarded to Roger Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”, the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.” CREDIT: Niklas Elmehed / Nobel Media.

Learn More 

Preserved Dune Fields Offer Insights into Martian History

Most Detailed Image Yet of Famous Stellar Nursery

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

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Written by Pamela Gay
Hosted by Pamela Gay
Audio and Video Editing by Ally Pelphrey
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Intro and Outro music by Kevin MacLeod, https://incompetech.com/music/

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