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The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a faraway planet’s skies, scoring another first for the exoplanet science community.

WASP-39b, otherwise known as Bocaprins, can be found orbiting a star some 700 light-years away. It is an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — as massive as Saturn but much closer to its host star, making for an estimated temperature of 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit (871 degrees Celsius) emitting from its gases, according to NASA. This “hot Saturn” was one of the first exoplanets that the Webb telescope examined when it first began its regular science operations.

The new readings provide a full breakdown of Bocaprins’ atmosphere, including atoms, molecules, cloud formations (which appear to be broken up, rather than a single, uniform blanket as scientists previously expected) and even signs of photochemistry caused by its host star.

Human-robot hybrids are advancing quickly, but the applications aren’t just for complete synthetic humans. There’s a lot we can learn about ourselves in the process.

Hosted by: Hank Green.

Continue reading “Why Scientists are Giving Robots Human Muscles” »

WASP-39b could be key to finding much calmer, more habitable worlds.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just scored another first: a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies.

The telescope’s array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of a “hot Saturn”—a planet about as massive as Saturn orbiting a star some 700 light-years away—known as WASP-39 b. While JWST and other space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this broiling planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds.

Continue reading “James Webb Space Telescope reveals an exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before” »

“We are going to be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmospheres.”

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided a detailed molecular and chemical profile of a distant exoplanet’s skies in a world first, a blog post from the space agency reveals.

However, the new observations from James Webb reveal the makeup of the exoplanet’s atmosphere like never before and reveal further details of active chemistry and clouds.

Continue reading “James Webb uncovers the mysteries of an alien world’s atmosphere 700 light-years away” »

In this video we discuss the different types of civilizations mention in the Culture series by Iain M. Banks. This video wont have any major spoilers for the series.

Art: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16JYYq4_SqGtPirGfSc6otg_a…sp=sharing.

Continue reading “The Species That Eats The Universe | Culture” »

Putting humans on the moon is more political than you might think.

Using radial velocity measurements, astronomers from Japan and China have detected a new exoplanet orbiting a G-type giant star. The newfound alien world is similar in mass to Jupiter but much hotter than the solar system’s biggest planet. The discovery is reported in a paper published November 12 on the arXiv pre-print server.

The radial velocity (RV) method to detect an exoplanet is based on the detection of variations in the velocity of the central star, due to the changing direction of the gravitational pull from an unseen exoplanet as it orbits the star. Thanks to this technique, more than 600 exoplanets have been detected so far.

Now, a group of astronomers led by Huan-Yu Teng of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Tokyo, Japan, reports the finding of a new giant planet as a result of RV measurements using the HIgh Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph (HIDES) at Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO) in Japan. The planet orbits a deeply evolved solar-mass G-type giant star known as HD 167,768, located some 353 light years away.

On its journey to a world-record-breaking orbit, NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which had test dummies in place of people, buzzed the lunar surface and whipped around the far side.

It marks a significant accomplishment in the $4.1 billion test journey that started last Wednesday and is the first time a capsule has reached the moon in 50 years.

The crew capsule and its three wired-up dummies maneuvered within 81 miles of the Moon on the far side.