Society, 05 Sep 2017, 22:52
Flying high: the best images from the Voyager spacecraft 40 years ago, as part of the American NASA project, Voyager 1 was launched into space - the first device to fly beyond Sunny systems. Since 1998, Voyager has been the furthest artificial object from Earth - its location in real time is available on the NASA website. The best photographs taken from the station are in the RBC photo gallery Anna Kim Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet in the solar system ... discovered a new dwarf planet, which became the third most distant object Sunny systems. The planet, designated 2014 UZ224, was described by the Minor Planet Center... with a diameter of approximately 530 km. For comparison: the diameter of the largest dwarf Sunny systems- Pluto is 2600 km, and the diameter of its largest satellite Charon... Scientists have discovered the closest potentially habitable planet to Earth ... a study according to which the star Proxima Centauri, closest to ours, Sunny system, there is a planet that could potentially be habitable According to... the closest planet beyond Sunny systems which will ever be found because there is no star closer to Sunny system than this,” said the presenter... Scientists have discovered the first tailless comet ...allow scientists to answer questions related to formation and evolution Sunny systems, writes Reuters. The comet called C/2014 S3 is different from... . Most comets are made of ice and form in other parts Sunny systems. Presumably, after the birth of C/2014 S3 was thrown into the cloud... in Sunny system. Scientists are now trying to figure out how many more Manx comets are in space. C/2014 S3 was opened using automatic systems ... Scientists have admitted the existence of a ninth planet in the solar system ... their work has been published in the Astronomical Journal. Scientists have found that in Sunny system there may be another planet whose mass is ten times... The sun's planet Sunny systems- Neptune. "A significant area of our Sunny systems will remain unexplored,” said one of the study participants, astronomer Michael Brown. Planets in Sunny system 8 left... NASA published color video from the other end of the solar system ... NASA published a color video from the other end Sunny systems. The recording was made from the New Horizons probe above Pluto. “But... perhaps they didn’t expect it: he recorded the first footage from the edge of our Sunny systems", the message says. LORRI cameras were used to record the video...,” the message notes. Pluto through stained glass: video from the edge Sunny systems In July 2015, NASA presented the first images of Pluto's surface... Titanium propylenes: raw materials for plastic found on Saturn's moon ... this is the first time plastic raw materials have been discovered at any facility Sunny systems besides the Earth. . The presence of this component in the lower part of Titan's atmosphere... fuel. On Saturn's moon they are formed due to the fact that solar light promotes the breakdown of methane (the second most abundant component in the atmosphere... Scientists: The Voyager probe has finally left the solar system ... the Voyager 1 probe, launched by NASA in 1977, finally left its borders Sunny systems. This was reported by The Daily Tech. . Researchers came to this conclusion... 2013, but this was not enough to go beyond our Sunny systems: the satellite entered a transition zone called the "heliopause", which is the last... -1 "- an automatic probe weighing 723 kilograms. Was launched for research Sunny systems and its environs September 5, 1977 He was the first space... NASA caught the solar system by the tail: it is shaped like a clover ... there is a slowdown sunny wind."Interstellar Boundary Explorer" IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) - a US research satellite designed to study the territory Sunny systems and interstellar space. It was launched in October 2008. and a year later discovered inexplicable high-energy radiation at the edge Sunny systems.Society, March 20, 2013, 00:00
Humanity for the first time went beyond the solar system ... by people, for the first time went beyond Sunny systems. This was reported by the American Geophysical Union. . Evidence of exit from Sunny systems are the characteristics of hydrogen and helium obtained... another zone outside Sunny systems. Voyager 1 is an automatic probe weighing 723 kilograms. Was launched for research Sunny systems and its surroundings on September 5... The interplanetary station MESSENGER discovered ice in the craters of Mercury ... at its poles there are “pockets” that almost never fall into solar light. Scientists have suggested the presence of water at the poles of Mercury... the orbit of Mercury. This planet is one of the most difficult to reach objects Sunny systems: in order to move from near-Earth orbit to near-Mercurian orbit, you need to extinguish a significant... NASA was able to see how a black hole tore apart a star the size of the Sun ...torn to pieces. Astrophysicists were able to record the phenomenon only because Solar system By chance she found herself in the path of the flow of energy produced by the flash."Death... The world's first nanosatellite will search for extraterrestrial life in space ...possible signs of life on so-called exoplanets beyond Sunny systems. British media reported this. . They are working on the creation of the ExoPlanetSat satellite... years ago and designed to search for planets. ExoPlanetSat, powered by solar batteries, will shoot a star at the moment when in front of it... Predictions for the future of astronautics: Mars colonization and Star Wars ... forever in its cradle on Earth, but will spread throughout Sunny system. The launch of the satellite and the first steps in space exploration assured... the Moon, Venus, Mars, the satellites of Jupiter and even went beyond Sunny systems, met with aliens and managed to take part in Star Wars. The main thing... is to hope for a meeting with living beings of unearthly origin within Sunny systems unrealistic, but humanity wanted to believe that Mars was inhabited. True, after...Society, 03 Feb 2011, 11:58
Astronomers have discovered Earth-like planets ... Earth-like planets in others solar systems. Planets approximately the size of our Earth are located in system, consisting of a star and six planets... the shapes of the orbits of these planets; estimate the number of planets located in multistellar systems. The mission of the device will last about two more years. The Moon's North Pole is the coldest place in the solar system The coldest place in Sunny system, the temperature of which has ever been measured by a spacecraft, was discovered on..., "temperature conditions on the Moon are among the most extreme in all of Sunny system"."At the height of the day, the temperature at the [lunar] equator can rise to... at the poles, due to this, a slight shift in the angle of incidence occurs solar rays - by about three degrees during the year. "And this...Society, 14 Sep 2009, 16:20
Scientists: There may be thousands of planets “for life” in the Galaxy ... scientists. According to University College London, outside our solar systems there may be thousands of Moon-like planets on which existence is possible... colleagues managed to find a new way to detect planets beyond ours solar systems- the so-called exoplanets. Scientists have been searching for exoplanets recently, actively competing... Australian scientists have arranged SMS correspondence with aliens ... Gliese 581d is the closest Earth-like planet beyond Sunny systems. The expected delivery time is approximately 20 years, with no impact on the planet,” said Greetings from Earth project spokesman Wilson de Silva. System space SMS mail was developed in preparation for the National...Society, 06 Feb 2009, 11:03
The scientist calculated the number of extraterrestrial civilizations ... University of Edinburgh. Thanks to the fact that in recent years outside Sunny systems more than 330 planets were discovered, scientists were able to create a more accurate... for ours, built solar systems, based on our knowledge of so-called exoplanets - planets that are beyond our Sunny systems. Then he used... NASA explores the boundaries of the solar system ... into space a spacecraft designed to find out what is happening on the borders Sunny systems, reports Associated Press. The Ibex device (short for “Interstellar Boundaries Explorer.... At the site of the collision of interstellar matter and sunny wind passes through a boundary called the heliopause. She is the one who protects Sunny system from cosmic radiation. Region... in 1977 and their main goal was to study other planets Sunny systems. However, unlike Voyager, Ibex will not leave the...Society, 06 Sep 2008, 15:04
NASA sponsors search for extraterrestrial life NASA announced a fellowship to search for planets beyond Sunny systems(exoplanets) and traces of life on them, reports Reuters. . In the ad... a star comparable to the Sun. Since 1994 astronomers have discovered beyond Sunny systems there are already more than 300 planets, most of which are unsuitable for support... The smallest planet in the solar system has become even smaller Messenger spacecraft observations show smallest planet Sunny systems, Mercury, has become even smaller, reports the BBC. . Analysis of photographs ... these elements were knocked out from the surface of the planet sunny wind - a stream of charged particles that bombards Sunny system. Mercury is closest to... A meteorite will tell about the emergence of life on Earth ...a rare meteorite, with the help of which scientists hope to understand how the Solar system, reports the BBC. . The Natural History Museum in London acquired... a rare meteorite, with the help of which scientists expect to understand how Solar system, reports the BBC. The Ivuna meteorite weighing 705 grams fell... Tanzania. "Ivuna" consists of the same substances from which it was formed Solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Of the 35 thousand known meteorites... The planet Pluto has acquired a new status ... . This is what Pluto, previously considered the ninth planet, will now be called Sunny systems, reports the BBC. . Almost two years have passed since... our Sunny system there could be more than 50 planets. To prevent this, IAU members made a historic decision - to consider that Sunny system... located even further from the Sun in the Kuiper belt at the boundaries Sunny systems. According to tradition, the celestial bodies of this belt receive mythological names. Committee... Fastest spinning object in space discovered An amateur astronomer from the UK has discovered the fastest-rotating astronomical object in history. Sunny system, reports the BBC. According to the author of the discovery, Richard Miles...Astronomers have discovered a mini-copy of the solar system At a distance of 5 thousand light years from ours Sunny systems astronomers have discovered a star that is half the size of the Sun, and... from each other exactly half as small as ours system, i.e. Researchers talk about almost complete proportional correspondence. Observation of this stellar system and the planet began back in 2006. The lens effect increased the brightness...
Society, 23 Sep 2007, 15:03
Scientists have discovered warm areas on icy Neptune Scientists have found that on Neptune, one of the coldest planets Sunny systems, where the average air temperature is 320 degrees below zero by... The sun, lasts 165 Earth years. Neptune receives 1/900th part sunny Water found on a planet outside the solar system ...that life exists not only on Earth. . On the planet outside Sunny systems water found. Scientists from the US National Aeronautics Administration center... and Uranus. This is the second time water has been discovered on a planet outside Sunny systems, reports the BBC. Before this, American scientists discovered signs... scientists hope that on other, “colder” planets beyond Sunny systems Conditions similar to those that allowed life to arise on... Astronomers have discovered a planet suitable for life ... exoplanet (that is, a celestial body orbiting a star beyond Sunny NASA will send Dawn into space to study asteroids ...NASA has decided to resume the program to study the two largest asteroids Sunny systems- Ceres and Vesta. Previously, preparations for the flight of the Dawn spacecraft were suspended... it is believed that the asteroids Ceres and Vesta formed in different parts Sunny systems about 4.5 billion years ago, and their study will help... manned flights and for unmanned cargo flights. Systems The ships will be built on the basis of already proven designs and technologies... A satellite to Pluto was launched from a spaceport in the USA ... bad weather... The destination of the spacecraft is the most distant planet Sunny systems- Pluto. The distance to it is 4.8 billion km. As...apparently, not the last planet in Sunny system. Thus, according to American scientists, they managed to discover the tenth planet in system– such a statement was made by the representative...In January 2016, scientists announced that there may be another planet in the solar system. Many astronomers are looking for it; research so far has led to ambiguous conclusions. Nevertheless, the discoverers of Planet X are confident of its existence. talks about the latest results of work in this direction.
About the possible detection of Planet X beyond the orbit of Pluto, astronomers and Konstantin Batygin from the California Institute of Technology (USA). The ninth planet of the solar system, if it exists, is about 10 times heavier than the Earth, and its properties resemble Neptune - a gas giant, the most distant of the known planets orbiting our star.
According to the authors' estimates, the period of Planet X's revolution around the Sun is 15 thousand years, its orbit is highly elongated and inclined relative to the plane of the Earth's orbit. The maximum distance from the Sun of Planet X is estimated at 600-1200 astronomical units, which takes its orbit beyond the Kuiper belt, in which Pluto is located. The origin of Planet X is unknown, but Brown and Batygin believe that this cosmic object was knocked out of a protoplanetary disk near the Sun 4.5 billion years ago.
Astronomers discovered this planet theoretically by analyzing the gravitational disturbance it exerts on other celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt - the trajectories of six large trans-Neptunian objects (that is, located beyond the orbit of Neptune) were combined into one cluster (with similar perihelion arguments, longitude of the ascending node and inclination). Brown and Batygin initially estimated the probability of error in their calculations at 0.007 percent.
Where exactly Planet X is located is unknown, what part of the celestial sphere should be tracked by telescopes is unclear. The celestial body is located so far from the Sun that it is extremely difficult to notice its radiation with modern means. And the evidence for the existence of Planet X, based on the gravitational influence it exerts on celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt, is only indirect.
Video: caltech / YouTube
In June 2017, astronomers from Canada, Great Britain, Taiwan, Slovakia, the USA and France searched for Planet X using the OSSOS (Outer Solar System Origins Survey) catalog of trans-Neptunian objects. The orbital elements of eight trans-Neptunian objects were studied, the movement of which would have been influenced by Planet X - the objects would have been grouped in a certain way (clustered) according to their inclinations. Among the eight objects, four were examined for the first time; all of them are located at a distance of more than 250 astronomical units from the Sun. It turned out that the parameters of one object, 2015 GT50, did not fit into clustering, which cast doubt on the existence of Planet X.
However, the discoverers of Planet X believe that the 2015 GT50 does not contradict their calculations. As Batygin noted, numerical simulations of the dynamics of the Solar System, including Planet X, show that beyond the semi-major axis of 250 astronomical units there should be two clusters of celestial bodies whose orbits are aligned with Planet X: one stable, the other metastable. Although the 2015 GT50 is not included in any of these clusters, it is still reproduced by the simulation.
Batygin believes that there may be several such objects. The position of the minor semi-axis of Planet X is probably connected with them. The astronomer emphasizes that since the publication of data about Planet X, not six, but 13 trans-Neptunian objects indicate its existence, of which 10 celestial bodies belong to the stable cluster.
While some astronomers doubt Planet X, others are finding new evidence in its favor. Spanish scientists Carlos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos studied the parameters of the orbits of comets and asteroids in the Kuiper belt. The detected anomalies in the movement of objects (correlations between the longitude of the ascending node and inclination) are easily explained, according to the authors, by the presence in the Solar System of a massive body whose orbital semi-major axis is 300-400 astronomical units.
Moreover, there may be not nine, but ten planets in the solar system. Recently, astronomers from the University of Arizona (USA) discovered the existence of another celestial body in the Kuiper belt, with a size and mass close to Mars. Calculations show that the hypothetical tenth planet is distant from the star at a distance of 50 astronomical units, and its orbit is inclined to the ecliptic plane by eight degrees. The celestial body disturbs known objects from the Kuiper belt and, most likely, was closer to the Sun in ancient times. Experts note that the observed effects are not explained by the influence of Planet X, located much further than the “second Mars.”
Currently, about two thousand trans-Neptunian objects are known. With the introduction of new observatories, in particular LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) and JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), scientists plan to increase the number of known objects in the Kuiper belt and beyond to 40 thousand. This will make it possible not only to determine the exact parameters of the trajectories of trans-Neptunian objects and, as a result, to indirectly prove (or disprove) the existence of Planet X and the “second Mars”, but also to directly detect them.
Two American astronomers, one of whom is from Russia, stunned the scientific world on Tuesday after sensational news spread across the media: they had discovered a ninth planet on the outskirts of the solar system! The first news about this was published by the California Technological University, where both scientists and Mike work, and later by the authoritative scientific journals Science and Nature.
“She will be the real ninth planet. Only two valid planets have been found since ancient times, and this will be the third. This is a significant part of our solar system that has remained undetected, and it’s exciting,” says Brown.
It is reported that the planet was found through mathematical analysis of the disturbances experienced by many icy bodies from the so-called Kuiper Belt - a huge region of space beyond the orbit of Pluto. Calculations have shown that the planet revolves around the Sun at a distance of 20 orbits of Neptune, its mass is 10 times greater than the mass of the Earth.
Due to such a distance from the Sun, the planet is not visible and makes a full revolution around the Sun in 10-20 thousand years.
“Although we were initially skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to explore its orbit, we became increasingly confident that it was indeed there,” Batygin said.
The calculated mass of the object leaves no doubt that it can be confidently classified as a planet, because it is 5 thousand times heavier than Pluto! Unlike the vast number of small objects in the solar system, such as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates the extended region of the Kuiper Belt where it orbits. Moreover, this area is much larger than the space in which all the other known planets of the Solar System dominate.
This, as Brown puts it, makes it “the most planetary of the planets in the solar system.”
Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin
The work of scientists, which may become epoch-making, entitled “Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System” was published in the journal Astronomical Journal. In it, the authors find an explanation for many previously discovered features in the movement of icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt.
The search for the planet began in 2014, when a former Brown student published a paper claiming that 13 of the most distant Kuiper Belt objects had similar oddities in their motion. Then a version of the existence of a small planet nearby was proposed. Brown did not support this version at the time, but continued his calculations. Together with Batygin, they began a year and a half project to study the orbits of these bodies.
Caltech/R.Hurt (IPAC)
Quite soon, Batygin and Brown realized that the orbits of six of these objects passed close to the same region of space, despite the fact that all orbits were different. “It’s as if you looked at six watches on six hands that move at different speeds, and at that moment they showed the same time. The probability of this is about 1/100,” explains Brown. In addition, it turned out that the orbits of all six bodies are inclined at an angle of 30 degrees to the ecliptic plane. “Actually, this could not have been accidental. So we began to look for what formed these orbits,” the astronomer explained.
Almost by accident, scientists noticed that if a heavy planet was included in the calculations,
whose perihelion is 180 degrees away from the perihelion of these six bodies (that is, the Sun itself is between them), then its perturbations will precisely explain the observed picture.
“The healthy reaction was that such a geometry is impossible, the orbits cannot be stable for a long time, because in the end this will lead to a collision of objects,” Batygin believes. However, a mechanism known in celestial mechanics as mean motion resonances prevents this from happening: objects approaching each other exchange energy and fly apart.
For every four revolutions of the ninth planet, there are nine revolutions of those same objects, and they never collide. As often happens in astronomy, the hypothesis was confirmed when its prediction was confirmed. It turns out that the trans-Neptunian object Sedna, discovered in 2003 by Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz, and another similar object, 2012 VP113, do indeed slightly deviate their orbits where predicted. But the main assumption that came true is the existence, thanks to a heavy planet in the Kuiper Belt, of objects whose plane of rotation is completely perpendicular to the plane of the Solar System.
It turned out that over the past three years, astronomers have found at least four such objects whose orbits correspond to the predictions.
Where did the planet hidden in the depths of the Kuiper Belt come from? Scientists believe that the solar system originally had four cores that formed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. “But there could have been five,” says Brown. This fifth protoplanet, coming too close to Jupiter or Saturn, could be thrown into a distant eccentric orbit.
According to scientists, if a planet is now close to its perihelion, you can look for it in past sky surveys. If she managed to move away, telescopes like the 10-meter instruments at the Keck Observatory can catch her,
after all, the planet never approaches the Sun at a distance closer than 200 Earth orbits.
There is no consensus among scientists about the discovery. , a specialist in body dynamics from Nice, is confident that this planet exists. But not everyone thinks so. “I've seen many, many statements like this in my career. And they all turned out to be wrong,” says Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Boulder Institute in Colorado.
Until 2009, Pluto, discovered in 1930 also thanks to the analysis of the disturbances it creates, was considered the ninth planet of the solar system. Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet by a decision of the International Astronomical Union. Recently, some astronomers have created a movement to restore it to planetary status following discoveries made by the New Horizons probe.
Konstantin Batygin gave one of his first interviews to a Gazeta.Ru correspondent.
— Konstantin, searching for bodies in the Kuiper Belt is not a very popular topic among astronomers, how many people are doing this?
— There are a little more than a hundred people in the world, I think. It turned out that the most distant objects in the solar system, in physical space, look in the same direction. And the only theoretically correct model that we were able to construct is the one where their orbits are held by the gravity of one planet.
— What are the prospects for finding a planet using telescopes?
“I think it’s realistic to do this in the next two to five years.” This requires knowledge of the orbit and sufficient observing time on telescopes. Knowing the orbit is what we did in this article. To find it, you need to know where to look. At the moment we know only the closest part of it.
— I know that you were born in Moscow. How did you end up in the USA?
— We lived in Russia until 1994; I finished 1st grade in Moscow. We moved to Japan, lived there for six years, where I studied from 3rd to 6th grade, and missed the second grade because I was too tall. Then he studied at the Russian school at the embassy in Tokyo. In 1999, we moved to California, where I completed high school, university, and graduate school at Caltech.
— Good luck, we hope that your discovery will be confirmed and we will see your name in textbooks!
- Thank you.
"She's huge"
The discoverer of the ninth planet of the solar system about a new cosmic body
Photo: R. Hurt / Infrared Processing and Analysis Center / Courtesy of California Institute of Technology / AP
The discovery of the ninth planet in the solar system by two astronomers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena became known on January 20. One of them, a native of Russia, Konstantin Batygin, told Lenta.ru about the search for Planet X, difficulties in naming a new celestial body, and the unsolved mysteries of the Solar System.
"Lenta.ru": What is the planet you discovered?
: It does not fall into the category of dwarf planets. This celestial body is quite massive. Our model gives a mass of about ten Earth's, this planet is simply gigantic. It is now defined as a celestial object whose gravitational field dominates that part of the solar system.
In general, there is not even a question: is it a planet or not. We know about it because its gravity affects the orbits of distant objects in the Kuiper Belt. The mathematical modeling itself relies on the planet having enough mass to gravitationally dominate the solar system.
What about its physical properties?
Calculations, unfortunately, give us only mass and general characteristics. We can only assume that it is similar in chemical composition to Uranus or Neptune. More precisely, we will say something when a device like New Horizons is sent to the planet. Although it’s a long flight and you’ll have to wait a very long time.
Where did Planet X come from?
We think it formed in the first three million years of the solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago, from roughly the same material as Uranus and Neptune. While the solar system was still shrouded in a gas cloud, this planet was gravitationally scattered into a longer orbit.
Were you inspired by Chadwick Trujillo and Scott Sheppard's observations of the trans-Neptunian object 2012 VP113 in 2004?
We built on their work. What they found is called the perihelion argument for many orbits in the Kuiper Belt. It turns out that this is only part of the story. The reality is an order of magnitude simpler and more fundamental: further orbits in the Kuiper belt look in approximately the same direction. Their physical orbits are almost the same. And it was this fundamental point that led to us being able to calculate the orbit of Planet 9.
Image: NASA/JPL-CALTECH
How quickly do you hope to discover a planet with the Subaru telescope? Your colleagues, such as Professor Hal Levison, can't wait to see these first-hand observations.
In principle, we get results from one night of observations quite quickly. The problem is that you need a lot of nights: you need to survey a fairly large part of the sky. So I think if we integrate, it will take us two to three years to find the planet that we predicted.
Could this planet have satellites?
We think so. My colleagues and I agree that there is no reason to prevent this. Can they be seen in a telescope? Maybe. But it's difficult...
Have you thought about what to name the new planet?
Mike Brown and I (co-author of Konstantin Batygin - approx. "Tapes.ru") we believe that it is better to entrust this to the world community. It's not up to the two of us to decide. Again, we haven’t thought about this yet: we have a theoretical model, but the planet has not been found astronomically.
Could other planets be discovered in the solar system?
I guess, yes. There is nothing that contradicts this possibility. But at the moment we do not have any data indicating that there is anything else besides the ninth planet.
When will observational astronomy put an end to this plot?
Good question. By the middle of the 20th century, it seemed that observational astronomy had completed its work in the solar system. It turned out that this was not the case.
Basically, the Solar System is huge, the Sun's gravitational field dominates very far away: the dominance ends somewhere after one hundred thousand astronomical units, and we see small objects in the Kuiper belt at a distance of a maximum of eighty astronomical units. A huge space still remains unknown.
Three of the largest telescopes are currently under construction on Earth: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Will they be useful in similar studies?
The projects you named are certainly important. However, for searching for planets like ours, telescopes like Subaru, whose cameras are designed to cover most of the sky, are more suitable. The same TMT will be good for characterization and bad for searching.
What if the discovery of the ninth planet is not confirmed?
The most dramatic precedent is the discovery of Neptune in 1846 by Urban Le Verrier, who used mathematical models similar to those we have today. But our model is an order of magnitude more detailed and complex: it uses supercomputers.
And Le Verrier’s calculations were confirmed in one night of observations.
Do you maintain contacts with Russian colleagues?
I lived in Russia until 1994, after which I moved with my family to Japan and then to the USA. I am mainly a theorist, sometimes I communicate by e-mail with colleagues from Russia and Russians working in the USA and other countries.
I don’t read Russian media due to lack of time. I try to focus exclusively on science. I can say that Russia remains strong in theoretical science: there are many good scientists. The story of Mikhail Lidov, who in the 1950s calculated the effect now called the “Lidov-Kozai resonance”, comes to mind. For quite a long time people did not understand how important this effect was. Lidov was decades ahead of humanity, and there are still such scientists in Russia.
About 30 man-made spacecraft in our solar system are currently collecting information about our planet and its surroundings. Every year, evidence is collected that supports some theories while pushing others to the margins. Here are some interesting facts that we managed to learn about our solar system in 2016.
Jupiter and Saturn are throwing comets at us
In 1994, the world watched as Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter and “left an Earth-sized trail that lasted a full year.” Then astronomers happily talked about how Jupiter protects us from comets and asteroids.
Thanks to its massive gravitational field, Jupiter was thought to attract most of these threats before they reached Earth. But recently, research has shown that the exact opposite may be true, and this whole "Jupiter's shield" idea is not true.
Simulations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena show that Jupiter and Saturn are likely to dump space debris into the inner solar system and into orbits that put them in Earth's path. It turns out that the giant planets are bombarding us with comets and asteroids.
The good news is that comets that bombarded Earth during its developmental stages may have "brought in volatiles from the outer solar system necessary for the formation of life."
Pluto has liquid water
On the outskirts of the known solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is revealing strange things about the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The first interesting thing is that Pluto has a liquid ocean.
The presence of fracture lines and analysis of a large crater called Sputnik Planum led researchers to a model that shows Pluto has a 100-kilometer-thick liquid ocean with a salt content of 30% beneath a 300-kilometer-thick shell of ice. It is about as salty as the Dead Sea.
If Pluto's ocean was in the process of freezing, then the planet would have to shrink. But it seems to be expanding. Scientists suspect that there is enough radioactivity left in the core to provide at least some heat. Thick layers of exotic surface ice act as an insulator, and the ammonia likely present acts as an antifreeze.
The cores of Neptune and Uranus are wrapped in plastic
How do you know what lies beneath the clouds of distant gas giants, where atmospheric pressure is nine million times higher than on Earth? Mathematics! Scientists used the USPEX algorithm to provide a possible picture of what's happening beneath the clouds of these poorly understood planets.
Knowing that Neptune and Uranus are composed primarily of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, scientists used calculations to determine the strange chemical processes that might occur there. The result was exotic polymers, organic plastics, crystalline carbon dioxide and orthocarbonic acid (aka "Hitler's acid" because its atomic structure resembles a swastika) wrapped around a solid inner core.
While searching for extraterrestrial life on Titan and Europa, scientists hope that water may have reacted with rocks through organic processes. But if the inner core is wrapped in exotic crystals and plastic, you'll have to reconsider some things.
Mercury has a huge Grand Canyon
If there was volcanic activity on Venus and Mars a few million years ago, it seems that baby Mercury calmed down 3-4 billion years ago. The planet cooled down and began to shrink and crack.
In the process, a massive crack appeared, which scientists call the “great valley.” According to scientists at the University of Maryland:
“The valley is 400 kilometers wide and 965 kilometers long, with steep slopes that penetrate 3 kilometers below the surrounding terrain. To put it into perspective, if Mercury's 'great valley' existed on Earth, it would be twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and stretch from Washington to New York and Detroit far to the west."
On a tiny planet with a circumference of only 4,800 kilometers, such a large valley looks more like a terrible scar on the face.
Venus was once habitable
Venus is the only planet that rotates backwards. At 460 degrees Celsius, its surface is hot enough to melt lead, and the planet itself is shrouded in clouds of sulfuric acid. But one day, Venus may have been capable of supporting life.
More than four billion years ago, Venus had oceans. In fact, it is believed that there has been water on the planet for over two billion years. Today Venus is very dry and has no water vapor at all. The solar wind of the Sun blew it all away.
The atmosphere of Venus emits a large electric field five times stronger than that of Earth. This field is also strong enough to overcome Venus's gravity and push hydrogen and oxygen into the upper atmosphere, where solar winds will blow them away.
Scientists don't know why Venus' electric field is so strong, but it may have something to do with Venus being closer to the Sun.
The Earth is fueled by the Moon
The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that protects us from charged particles and harmful radiation. If it weren't for it, we would be irradiated by cosmic rays 1000 times stronger than what we are now. Our computers and electronics would fry instantly. Therefore, it’s great that a giant ball of molten iron is spinning in the center of our planet. Until recently, scientists weren't sure why it kept spinning. Eventually it should cool down and slow down.
But over the past 4.3 billion years it has cooled by only 300 degrees Celsius. Thus, we lost very little heat, which did not play a special role for the magnetic field. Scientists now believe that the Moon's orbit supports the Earth's hot core as it rotates, throwing about 1,000 billion watts of energy into the core. The moon may be much more important to us than we thought.
Saturn's rings are new
Since the 1600s, there has been debate about how long Saturn's rings have existed and where they came from. The theory is that Saturn once had more moons and some of them collided with each other. The result was a cloud of debris that disintegrated into rings and 62 satellites.
By watching Saturn squeeze geysers out of Enceladus, scientists were able to gauge the relative strength of the gas giant's tug. Since all the satellites were thrown into longer orbits, this allowed scientists to roughly estimate when the infighting among the moons occurred.
The figures showed that Saturn's rings have nothing to do with the formation of the planet four billion years ago. In fact, with the exception of the more distant moons Titan and Iapetus, Saturn's major moons appear to have formed during the Cretaceous period, the age of the dinosaurs.
There are 15,000 very large asteroids in our vicinity
In 2005, NASA was tasked with finding 90% of large objects in near-Earth space by 2020. So far, the agency has found 90% of objects measuring 915 meters or larger, but only 25% measuring 140 meters or larger.
In 2016, with 30 new discoveries per week, NASA discovered its 15,000 objects. For reference: in 1998, the agency found only 30 new objects per year. NASA is cataloging all the comets and asteroids around us to make sure we know when something is about to hit us. However, meteors sometimes erupt without warning, such as the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk in 2013.
We deliberately crashed the device on a comet
The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft orbited Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for two years. The device collected data and even placed a landing module on the surface, although not entirely successfully.
This 12-year mission produced a number of important discoveries. For example, Rosetta discovered the amino acid glycine, a basic building block of life. Although it has long been assumed that amino acids could have been formed in space at the dawn of the solar system, they were found only thanks to Rosetta.
Rosetta discovered 60 molecules, 34 of which had never been found on a comet before. The spacecraft's instruments also showed a significant difference in the composition of the comet's water and Earth's water. It turns out that water on Earth is unlikely to have appeared thanks to comets.
After a successful mission, ESA crashed the spacecraft on a comet.
Mysteries of the Sun Solved
All planets and stars have magnetic fields that change over time. On Earth, these fields turn over every 200,000-300,000 years. But now they are late.
Everything happens faster on the Sun. Every 11 years or so, the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field flips. This is accompanied by a period of increased sun activity and sunspots.
Oddly enough, Venus, Earth and Jupiter are aligned at this time. Scientists believe that these planets can influence the Sun. According to the study, when the planets align, their gravity combines to cause a tidal effect on the sun's plasma, pulling it in and disrupting the sun's magnetic field.
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