In this week’s episode of The Best of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:
The solar wind makes water for asteroids, which carry it to Earth Originally emitted on December 4, 2021
Researchers have found evidence that particles emitted by the sun may have helped give the Earth its seas and oceans. The team included Hope Ishii, a research professor at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in Hawaii at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. They studied the dust of an ancient asteroid and found evidence that “solar wind” (charged hydrogen particles coming out of the sun) could have combined with dust grains to create water, which would have traveled to Earth later. of the formation of the planet 4.6 billion years. does. The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Quirks and Quarks7: 08 Solar wind and space dust may explain the presence of much of the Earth’s water
Solar winds are currents of hydrogen and helium ions that constantly rise from the sun. When these hydrogen ions touch space dust or asteroids, they can break chemical bonds and interact with the oxygen in the rock to create water. (BRIAN BIELMANN / AFP via Getty Images)
The crests on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa could mean water and life Originally issued on April 23, 2022
The moon of Jupiter, Europe, has fascinated planetary scientists because they believe that beneath its 30 km thick icy shell is a huge ocean of water and water could mean life. Now, new research, led in part by doctoral student Riley Culberg, suggests that icy ridges detected on the Moon could mean that water is closer to the surface than we thought, meaning it could be easier for future missions in Europe to explore it. The work was published in the journal Communications of nature.
A 75 km long strip of the Atacama Desert in Chile today is covered with broken slabs of natural glass. Researchers have now identified material in this glass that suggests it formed when a comet exploded into the atmosphere and its heat melted the desert floor. Peter Schultz of Brown University says the heat of the blast melted the ground over a nearly 80-mile strip of desert into fragments, balls and small glass slabs, warming the ground to more than 1700 degrees Celsius. The study was published in the journal GeoScienceWorld.
A strip of the Atacama Desert in Chile is strewn with glass plates, which scientists say was created by the intense heat of an exploding comet. (Scott Harris)
Labrador astronauts have a taste of lunar geology Originally issued on November 27, 2021
To prepare to return to the moon, geologist Gordon Osinski took Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and an American colleague to a 35-million-year-old crater north of Labrador to teach them the geology of impact crater. It was like the moon, except for the rain, the howling winds, and the voracious black flies.
Astronomers have known for decades that the Earth and our sun are in the middle of a cosmic bubble, 1,000 light-years wide, known as the local bubble. A new study has traced its history and evolution, explaining why this area of space is strangely empty and why a burst of star formation has occurred on its edge. It was developed by a team that included Catherine Zucker of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
Quirks and Quarks10: 07The Earth is at the center of a cosmic bubble created by supernovae
Labeled illustration of the local bubble (Leah Hustak, Space Telescope Science Institute)
Seeing gravitational waves of the largest things in the universe Originally issued on February 5, 2022
Astronomers believe that when galaxies collide, the titanic black holes in their nuclei, which weigh up to a hundred million or even a billion suns, fall into close orbit with each other and emit low-frequency gravitational waves in the process. Astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin of the University of West Virginia is participating in a new project that aims to use pulsars, a special type of neutron star, to measure these difficult ripples to make in space-time. Preliminary results for his team were published in the Monthly notices from the Royal Astronomical Society.
Quirks and Quarks8: 07See gravitational waves of the greatest things in the universe