Topic: Pamela Gay
New Weird Star-Star-Planet Combination

New Weird Star-Star-Planet Combination

The Universe sometimes likes to mock us. Such is the case with exoplanets. Once upon a time, researchers would sagely say, “Solar Systems like Tatooine, with twin stars, likely don’t exist.” The thing is, this was based on models that relied on limits created with human minds, and reality is a lot more creative than we are. Over the years, we’ve found just about every kind of planet in just about every kind of situation: They snuggle with their stars. They run loose through the galaxy. They’ve been seen orbiting one star in a binary system. They’ve been seen orbiting both stars in the binary...

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A Bit of Joy: Jury Duty Strikes Astronaut

A Bit of Joy: Jury Duty Strikes Astronaut

On Oct 28, Astronaut Don Pettit’s son posted to Twitter, “My family just got served two jury summons at once. And as if that wasn’t absurd enough, one is for the one of us in space right now.” I know that legally jobs are required to provide workers time off to serve...

Telescopes galore: Euclid, Rubin, and Roman

Telescopes galore: Euclid, Rubin, and Roman

Back in 1998, researchers studying supernovae discovered that our universe is accelerating apart. Up until that point, it had been understood that our universe’s expansion was either going to slow to a stop, continue on as is-ish, or reverse it’s motion and collapse...

Black Holes Fire Off Cosmos Altering Jets

Black Holes Fire Off Cosmos Altering Jets

High-energy jets emerge from two sides of a black hole (illustrated). The black hole resides in a galaxy that is part of a filament of the cosmic web (silvery wisps). E. Wernquist, M. Oei, D. Nelson/IllustrisTNG Collaboration The definition of a black hole allows for...

Invasion of the Microscopic Black Holes

Invasion of the Microscopic Black Holes

Image credit: Tech Explorist Every once in a while, a story comes along that just makes me giggle, and also forces me to fix some misinformation living in my brain. Consider the microscopic black hole. In my brain, these diminutive creations of the early universe...

When Asteroids (Don’t) Attack

When Asteroids (Don’t) Attack

Artist's concept of the Hera mission gliding past Didymos to Dimorphos. Image credit: ESA For a hot second back in 2004, it looked like there was a couple percent chance the asteroid 99942 Apophis just might crash into the planet Earth on April 13, 2029. And even if...

VIPER May Live to Rove Another Day

VIPER May Live to Rove Another Day

A computer generated concept image of the VIPER rover Despite what the contents of this and recent episodes might imply, my passion is for science not for spacecraft. The thing is, sometimes spacecraft are needed to do the science. And lately, I and many others have...

The Cost of Space Flight on the Planet

The Cost of Space Flight on the Planet

As a nerdy member of GenX, I can state with pride and shame that I watched Buck Rogers in the early 80s and was constantly fascinated by all the weird ways their writers found for fictional 24th century scientists to misunderstand the relics from the 20th century....