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Researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have discovered X-ray activity that sheds light on the evolution of galaxies.

Big tech companies are offering new ways to interact with devices, powered by natural language processing – but here's why we are unlikely to give up our screens just yet

A combination of cooling technologies and techniques could reduce the temperature and energy needs of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Researchers use light-reactive molecules to influence the acidity of a liquid and thereby capture of carbon dioxide. They have developed a special mixture of different solvents to ensure that the light-reactive molecules remain stable over a long period of time. Conventional carbon capture technologies are driven by temperature or pressure differences and require a lot of energy. This is no longer necessary with the new light-based process.

Researchers are using crystallography to gain a better understanding of how proteins shapeshift. The knowledge can provide valuable insight into stopping and treating diseases.

Scientists were able to show that statistical models created by artificial intelligence (AI) predict very accurately whether a medication responds in people with schizophrenia. However, the models are highly context-dependent and cannot be generalized.

An international team of scientists provide an overview of the latest research on light-matter interactions. In a new paper, they provide an overview of the latest research on polaritons, tiny particles that arise when light and material interact in a special way.

A model of US water systems foresees a big drop in hydropower generation by 2050 as the climate gets drier and river flow decreases, while electricity demand is set to increase

When we exhale, we reveal distinctive information about the shape of our airways, which could serve as an ID test for unlocking smartphones – and unlike some other biometric ID tests, this one can’t be hacked after we die

We think of magnetic fields as a part of planets and stars. The Earth and Sun have relatively strong magnetic fields, as do more exotic objects such as neutron stars and the accretion disks of black holes. But magnetic field lines also run throughout galaxies, and even between the vast voids of intergalactic space. Magnetic fields are quite literally everywhere, and we aren’t entirely sure why. One idea is that faint magnetic fields formed during the earliest moments of the Universe. If that’s the case, we might be able to prove it through the distribution of dark matter.

The idea of mapping primordial magnetic fields with dark matter is a bit subtle. As far as we know, dark matter only interacts with regular matter gravitationally. It doesn’t interact with magnetic fields, so the mere presence of a magnetic field shouldn’t affect dark matter in any way. But magnetic fields do interact with charged regular matter such as electrons, and those electrons interact with dark matter gravitationally.

So the idea is that intergalactic magnetic fields would tend to cluster electrons and ionized intergalactic hydrogen along their field lines, making those regions of the intergalactic voids just slightly denser than the rest of the void. This would cause dark matter to cluster a bit along the field lines as well. The gravitational effect would be extremely tiny, but over the entire history of the Universe, it would add up. So if primordial magnetic fields did form in the early Universe, tendrils of dark matter should be present along the same lines.

Artist rendering of the dark matter halo surrounding our galaxy. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

In a recent work in Physical Review Letters the authors argue that this effect would produce minihalos of dark matter. Just as galaxies are surrounded by a halo of dark matter due to gravitational clustering, faint halos of dark matter should exist around primordial magnetic field lines to do the gravitational tug of ionized matter along the field lines.

What’s interesting about this idea is that over time the charged ions and electrons would interact with the primordial magnetic fields and tend to cancel them out. The ions and electrons could even merge to create neutral hydrogen, so in the modern Universe, there would be no trace of these early magnetic fields in regular matter. But the microhalos of dark matter would still exist, and they could be seen through the gravitational lensing of distant light sources. These tendrils of dark matter could be the only evidence remaining of the earliest magnetic fields in the cosmos.

This study is purely theoretical, and current telescopes aren’t sensitive enough to measure the gravitational lensing effect of microhalos. But it’s interesting to see how dark matter can carry the history of the Universe in its structure, even for things that have long faded from view.

Reference: Ralegankar, Pranjal. “Dark Matter Minihalos from Primordial Magnetic Fields.” Physical Review Letters 131 (2023): 231002.

The post Dark Matter Could Map the Universe's Early Magnetic Fields appeared first on Universe Today.

The Moon has a four-week cycle; it is full every four weeks (actually every 29.5 days). But ocean tides exhibit a two-week cycle; they are large one week and then smaller the next.

Specifically, as in Fig. 1 below, ocean tides are stronger (“spring tides”) around New Moon and Full Moon than they are at First Quarter Moon and Last Quarter Moon (“neap tides”). The pattern is seen, roughly at least, all around the world (though the details are not simple, as they depend on the shape of the coastline and other factors.)

Figure 1: Tides in Anchorage, Alaska, USA, during October 2023; the blue line shows how the water rises and falls about twice a day (note the vertical columns are each two days wide!) The pattern of strong and weak tides on alternate weeks is clearly visible. New Moon occurred on October 14 and Full Moon on October 28th, just before the peak tides.

What’s behind this pattern? And what does it tell us about the Sun and Moon that we wouldn’t otherwise easily know? Perhaps surprisingly, it tells us that the average mass density of the Sun — its mass divided by its volume — is only a little smaller than the average mass density of the Moon. Here’s why.

Moon-Tide

The Moon creates a tide twice a day, for reasons I have explained here. This is not merely because it pulls on the Earth via gravity but because its gravitational pull on the Earth varies with distance. It pulls more strongly on the near side of the Earth, and more weakly on the far side, than it does on Earth’s center. The net effect (Fig. 2) is a tidal force which tends to distort the Earth into an oval shape.

Figure 2: The varying gravity of the Moon (grey) tends to stretch the Earth (blue) along the line between the Earth and Moon, and squeeze it in the perpendicular directions (grey arrows). This causes the oceans (green) to bulge on the sides facing toward and away from the Moon. Not to scale.

The Earth’s rock is sturdy, and it barely responds to this tidal effect. But the Earth’s fluid oceans do respond by shifting slightly. The shift creates two small bulges in the ocean, one on the side facing the Moon and one on the other side, with dips between the bulges. When a bulge passes a coastline, a high tide results; when a dip passes, there’s a low tide.

But actually this is oversimplified, and not just because the coastlines and underwater topography affect the water’s flow and the shape of the bulges. We have forgotten the Sun.

Sun-Tide

The Sun, too, pulls more strongly on the noon-side of the Earth, and more weakly on the midnight side, than it does on Earth’s center. It, too, creates a tidal force that, on its own, would cause two bulges in the ocean. If there were no Moon, we’d still have twice daily tides, just smaller ones and always at the same time of day.

Together, the combination of the Moon’s tidal force and that of the Sun determines the locations and sizes of the two bulges in the ocean (Fig. 3). If the two forces point in the same direction, as at Full and New Moon, they squeeze the Earth in the same way, with an overall effect that is larger, creating larger bulges and dips, and thus more powerful tides. If they point at 90 degrees to one another, as at First and Last Quarter Moon, then one squeezes where the other stretches. As a result, they partially cancel, and the bulges and resulting tides are smaller.

Figure 3: When the Moon and Sun lie in a line, whether at New Moon or at Full Moon, their tidal effects stretch and squeeze the Earth the same way, causing a larger effect on the oceans. At a Quarter Moon, the Moon stretches the Earth where the Sun is squeezing it, and vice versa, and the overall effect is therefore smaller. Not to scale.

This is where it matters that the tidal force of the Sun is neither much larger nor much smaller than that of the Moon. Let’s consider how different things could be otherwise.

If the Moon were, say, three times further away than it actually is, its tidal force would be less than 1/10th that of the Sun’s. Then the tides would have been almost the same every day, peaking around noon and midnight all year long. There would have been no significant monthly or daily changes.

Figure 4: If the Moon were much farther than it is, then its tidal effects would be small and the Earth’s tidal bulges would always align with the Sun. Not to scale.

If instead the Moon’s distance to Earth were a third of what it actually is, then its tidal force would be almost 50 times that of the Sun. Then the tides would be almost the same size all month, shifting by about one hour every day as the Moon orbits the Earth monthly.

Figure 5: If the Moon were much closer than it is, then the Sun would be irrelevant to the tides, which would always be about the same size. Not to scale.

(Actually, the tides would then show a subtle four-week pattern. That’s because the Moon, in its elliptical orbit of the Earth, comes slightly closer to the Earth once a month, making the tidal force larger, and reaches its furthest point from Earth two weeks later, making the tidal forces smaller. There’s some hint of this in Figure 1, where the two spring tides of the month aren’t the same size.)

But in fact the Moon’s tidal force is only about 2.5 times larger than that of the Sun, and so both objects are important in the tides. When their tidal forces align every two weeks, at Full Moon and New Moon, the overall tidal force is considerably stronger, while it is considerably weaker when they are 90 degrees apart, as seen in Fig. 2. The result is that the tides grow and shrink every two weeks, all while their timing shifts by about one hour every day.

What the Tides Teach Us

Thus the two-week pattern of the tides is remarkable in that it only occurs because of a special relationship between the Moon and the Sun, one which is not obvious. As I’ll show at the end of this post using simple math, if there are two spherical objects A and B, then

• the strength of the tidal force of object B on object A is proportional to
  • the angular size of B in the sky of A, and
  • the average mass density of B (its mass divided by its volume.)

This is true both for the Moon’s tidal force on Earth and for the Sun’s.

As we see from monthly tidal cycles, such as that in Fig. 1, the Sun’s tidal force is roughly half that of the Moon. More precisely, it’s about 40% of the Moon’s tidal force. But we can all see that in Earth’s sky, the angular sizes of the Moon and Sun are about the same; that’s why the Moon can perfectly but briefly cover the Sun during total solar eclipses. The Sun is about 400 times further away than the Moon, but also its diameter (more precisely, the diameter of its opaque region) is about 400 times larger than the Moon’s, and as a result, their angular sizes appear the same.

The difference between the tidal forces can then only come from a difference in their mass densities. In particular, we can conclude that

• the Sun’s average mass density is about 40% that of the Moon.

(Meanwhile the Earth’s density is a bit larger than that of the Moon, and about four times larger than that of the Sun.)

It’s not surprising that the Moon and Earth have roughly similar densities; both are made of rock. But the Sun is made of a completely different material, a gas (really, an “electrically-charged plasma”) of electrons and atomic nuclei. It’s far from obvious that it should have even a vaguely similar density. Nevertheless, it does. We can return to the reasons for this on another day.

A Side Comment on Other Methods

I should point out that this is not the only simple way to learn about the relative mass densities of the Sun and Moon, although it is the simplest. Specifically,

• The Earth’s mass and density can be learned from the period of the Moon’s orbit, along with measurements of the radius of the Earth and the distance to the Moon, and Newton’s gravitational constant.
• The Moon’s density and mass can be inferred, albeit imprecisely, from the average size of Earth’s ocean tides and the Earth-Moon distance.
• The Sun’s density (but not its mass or size) can be learned (using Kepler’s third law) from the period of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and the Sun’s apparent size in the sky.

From these results, the ratio of the Sun and Moon’s mass densities can be obtained in a second way, along with their relation to the Earth’s mass density. The fact that this approach and the tidal method give the same answer confirms that Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation are largely correct. Notice also that nothing in either of these two methods requires knowing the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is one of the most difficult astronomical quantities to measure.

Why Tides Teach Us About Densities — Using A Little Math

Finally, for those of you who are interested in the details, here’s why the tidal effect of an object on the Earth is proportional to its angular size and to its mass density. The explanation just requires Newton’s law of gravity and some simple reasoning.

First, let’s define angular size and mass density. The angular diameter θB of an object B of diameter DB, as seen from object A at a distance LAB , is given by

The right triangle that stretches from A to the center of B and to the edge of B has sides of length DB/2 and LAB, with small angle θB/2. (I have drawn this with a very large angle in order to make it easier to see, but for the Moon and Sun the angle is much smaller.)

If the angle θB is small then tan (θB/2) is approximately the same as θB/2, giving approximately

and so, approximately,

Meanwhile the mass density of B (usually called ρB) is its mass MB divided by its volume VB , which in terms of its diameter is

meaning that

or equivalently

The average gravitational pull of B on A, FA;B , is given by Newton’s law of gravitation, involving Newton’s gravitational constant, G:

which causes an acceleration aA;B of the object A due to object B that is equal to FA;B /MA :

But if the acceleration were constant across the object, there’d be no tidal force. The tidal force comes from the fact that B is closer to objects on the near side of A, which are separated from B only a distance LAB-½ DA , than to objects on the far side of A, which are a distance LAB+½DA from B.

The near side of A is DA/2 closer to B, and the far side DA/2 further, than is A’s center.

Thus the acceleration due to B differs for objects on the near and far sides of A by an amount

But if LAB is much larger than DA , we can approximate the denominator by

which then simplifies the tidal effect to

Note that the tidal force of one object on another decreases as the cube (not the square) of the distance LAB between them, and so if the Moon were 3 times further away, its tidal force would be 27 times smaller than it is, while a Moon at 1/3 the distance would make a tide 27 times larger.

Then, using the boxed equations (1) and (2) above to replace MB and LAB, we find

and thus the tidal force of B on A is proportional to the angular size of B as seen from A and to the average density of B.

Therefore the tidal force of the Sun on the Earth is related to the tidal force of the Moon on the Earth by

and since, in Earth’s skies, θSun /θMoon is approximately 1,

which confirms the main claim of this post: the substantial variation in the size of the tides from week to week reflects the similar densities of the Moon and the Sun.

Black holes may be hiding within stars and their extra mass could help explain odd gravitational effects in the universe ascribed to dark matter

University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) PhD student Alexia Lopez, who two years ago discovered a giant arc of galaxy clusters in the distant universe, has now discovered a Big Ring. This (if real) is one of the largest structures in the observable universe at 1.3 billion light years in diameter. The problem is – such a large structure should not be possible based on current cosmological theory. It violates what is known as the Cosmological Principle (CP), the notion that at the largest scales the universe is uniform with evenly distributed matter.

The CP actually has two components. One is called isotropy, which means that if you look in any direction in the universe, the distribution of matter should be the same. The other component is homogeneity, which means that wherever you are in the universe, the distribution of matter should be smooth. Of course, this is only true beyond a certain scale. At small scale, like within a galaxy or even galaxy cluster, matter is not evenly distributed, and it does matter which direction you look. But at some point in scale, isotropy and heterogeneity are the rule. Another way to look at this is – there is an upper limit to the size of any structure in the universe. The Giant Arc and Big Ring are both too big. If the CP is correct, they should not exist. There are also a handful of other giant structures in the universe, so these are not the first to violate the CP.

The Big Ring is just that, a two-dimensional structure in the shape of a near-perfect ring facing Earth (likely not a coincidence but rather the reason it was discoverable from Earth). Alexia Lopez later discovered that the ring is actually a corkscrew shape. The Giant Arc is just that, the arc of a circle. Interestingly, it is in the same region of space and the same distance as the Big Ring, so the two structures exist at the same time and place. This suggests they may be part of an even bigger structure.

How certain are we that these structures are real, and not just a coincidence? Professor Don Pollacco, of the department of physics at the University of Warwick, said the probability of this being a statistical fluke is “vanishingly small”. But still, it seems premature to hang our hat on these observations just yet. I would like to see some replications and attempts at poking holes in Lopez’s conclusions. That is the normal process of science, and it takes time to play out. But so far, it seems like solid work.

If her observations hold up, then the Big Ring would be the seventh such giant structure that violates our current formulation of the CP. This is also how science works. The Cosmological Principle is based on both observation and our theories about how the universe works, as well as its origins and history. It’s not just a guess or an aesthetic wish. Scientists have very good reasons for supporting the CP. But in recent years the number of apparent violations of the CP have been growing. This is often how it works in science – the number of problems or exceptions to a theory grows until the theory has to be abandoned or significantly modified. What might be going on here?

There are already a number of hypotheses to explain these giant structures. Perhaps there was some effect at work in the very early universe, shortly have the Big Bang, and this created ripples in the cosmos. These ripples would be like pressure waves, which would affect star and galaxy formation. Are we seeing the distant echo of these ripples? More specifically, there is the cosmic string idea, with the strings being filamentary defects in the distribution of matter after the Big Bang. There is also Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), a cosmology proposed by Roger Penrose. Apparently such structures might be a sign of CCC.

What we have in the Big Ring is a possible piece to a very big puzzle. First astronomers will need to confirm that it is a real piece, and not some statistical error, systematic bias in data analysis, or statistical fluke. If it holds up then cosmologists will have to work out what the theoretical implications are, and propose testable alternative hypotheses that would account for this cosmology. And the process of science grinds on.

The post Big Ring Challenges Cosmological Principle first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Drone attacks on shipping in the Red Sea are having a global economic impact and showing how an organisation without a navy can challenge control of the seas

The Guinness brewery has kept a record of the yeast strains it has used going back to 1903 – a genetic analysis shows these are distinct from those used to brew other Irish beers

The many sheltered doctors who confidently said herd immunity was at hand and that fear of COVID was pathological are the last people to sanctimoniously sermonize on the importance of trust in medicine.

The post Dr. Lucy McBride: “As physicians, dispensing false hope is dangerous & unethical.” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

There can’t be many ideas that beat the crazy yet ingenious idea of a rocket engine that actually uses part of the fuselage for fuel! Typically a rocket will utilise multiple stages so that excess weight can be jetisoned allowing the rocket to be as efficient as possible. Now a team in Scotland is working on a rocket engine that actually consumes part of its body to use as fuel, reducing weight and providing even more thrust so that greater payloads can be used. 

Rockets go back thousands of years from the earliest rocket propelled arrows used by the Mongolian empire to the mighty Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon, the principle has remained largely the same. Take a fuel, cram it inside a container of some sort, ignite it in some way and you can use it to propel something forwards or upwards… or actually backwards too now I think about it. 

The Apollo 10 Saturn V during rollout. Credit: NASA

Things are changing though. A team from the James Watt School of Engineering at University of Glasgow and led by Professor Patrick Harkness have developed the self-eating rocket engine! When the ‘autophage’ (from the latin for self-eating) fires it consumes part of its own body for fuel. 

It’s really quite an ingenious concept, essentially some fuel is stored up inside the rocket chamber itself. As the engine fires, some of the heat melts through the plastic of its own fuselage and as the plastic melts, it is fed into the chamber as fuel to suplement the usual liquid propellant. 

Using the rocket chamber itself as fuel means less fuel has to be carried and the mass saving can be used up by more massive payloads. There are further benefits too, as the rocket chamber is used in the combustion it will reduce the chances of space debris. 

The idea is not a new one though since the idea of a self-eating rocket was first discussed just over 80 years ago. The team from Glasgow have taken the concept a step further though by building one! The container was made out of polyethylene plastic which would burn as suplementary fuel along side the regular liquid propellant, a mix of gaseous oxygen and liquid propane. 

They succesfully fired the engine that they have called Ouroborous-3 which produced 100 newtons of thrust. The thrust was stable even through the autophage stage when the plastic case was providing a fifth of the total propellant used.  

Previous rocket tech used a solid propellant, for example the solid boosters on the side of the space shuttle and once this stuff was lit, whether you liked it or not, you were going in to space. This new design is controllable, indeed the team demonstrated how it was capable of being restarted, throttled and pulsed in an on/off pattern, all of which are necessary for an efficient rocket enginge. 

Source : Self-Eating Rocket Could Help UK Take a Big Bite of Space Industry

The post A Self-Eating Engine Could Make Rockets More Efficient appeared first on Universe Today.

When scientists detected phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere in 2020, it triggered renewed, animated discussions about Venus and its potential habitability. It would be weird if the detection didn’t generate interest since phosphine is a potential biomarker. So people were understandably curious. Unfortunately, further study couldn’t confirm its presence.

But even without phosphine, Venus’ atmosphere is full of chemical intrigue that hints at biological processes. Is it time to send an astrobiology mission to our hellish sister planet?

While the phosphine discussion petered out pretty quickly, there are other, more long-lived indications that Venus’ atmosphere contains chemical anomalies, some of which might relate to life. Some of the atmospheric gases appear to be out of thermodynamic equilibrium, for example. Adding to the complexity, scientists aren’t certain what the composition of large particles in the lower atmosphere is.

The authors of a new paper illustrate why Venus captures our chemical curiosity and suggest that it’s time for an astrobiological mission to satisfy it.

The paper is “Astrobiological Potential of Venus Atmosphere Chemical Anomalies and Other Unexplained Cloud Properties.” It hasn’t been peer-reviewed and published yet, but it’s available on the preprint server arxiv.org. The lead author is Janusz Petkowski, an astrobiology researcher in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

“Scientists have been speculating on Venus as a habitable world for over half a century,” the authors write, “based on the Earth-like temperature and pressure in Venus’ clouds at 48–60 km above the surface.”

Most space-interested people know that Venus’ atmosphere is extremely dense ant hot. We also know that it’s dominated by carbon dioxide, that its other main component is nitrogen, and that it supports dense clouds of sulfuric acid. Other chemicals are present in only tiny, trace amounts.

There’s not much else to Venus’ atmosphere beyond CO2 and a small component of nitrogen. The trace elements add up to less than one percent of the atmosphere. Image Credit: By Junkcharts – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31595105

The atmospheric region between 48 to 60 km above the surface is particularly interesting. At that altitude, both the pressure and the temperature approach near Earth-like levels. Between about 52.5 km and 54 km, the temperature is between 20 °C and 37 °C.) At about 49.5 km above the surface, the pressure is the same as at Earth’s sea level. There’s no way that liquid water could be present on Venus’ surface, but in the atmosphere it’s possible.

That’s the backdrop for considering Venus’ potential habitability.

But there are ample chemical considerations, too, and in their paper, the authors outline one long-standing mystery in the planet’s atmosphere.

“In this paper, we review and summarize Venus’ long-lasting, unexplained atmospheric observations,
which have been acquired over the span of the last half-century,” they write.

A lot of the mystery around Venus concerns the so-called “unknown absorber(s).” As far back as the 1920s, ultraviolet observations showed unusual high-contrast features that move in conjunction with Venus’ upper cloud deck’s four-day rotation. Something is absorbing the UV light. “Much effort has gone into attempting to identify the substance(s) responsible for the absorption between 320–400 nm, but no proposed candidate satisfies all of the observational constraints, leading to the oft-used descriptive term ‘unknown UV absorber,'” the authors write.

Researchers have made a prolonged effort to understand what the absorber or absorbers might be, and some have made progress. Research has shown that sulphur allotropes and sulphur compounds could be responsible, and researchers have uncovered new pathways for their formation in Venus’ atmosphere. But these pathways are the result of simulations, not exploration. Not everyone agrees with these findings. There’s no consensus.

“Despite decades of effort and observations by two orbiting spacecraft in the 21st century (Venus Express
by ESA and Akatsuki by JAXA), none of the proposed candidate molecules have been found to entirely fit
the observational data,” the authors explain. The candidates either don’t match the profile well, or they’re not abundant enough. Some of the proposed candidates aren’t stable, either.

But it’s critical that we figure out what it is. “The unknown absorber is remarkably efficient, capturing more than 50% of the solar energy reaching Venus, with consequent effects on atmospheric structure and dynamics,” write the authors. Though the mystery persists, it’s a huge missing piece that stymies our efforts to understand the planet.

Some researchers propose that the UV absorber is a sign of cloud-based biological activity. “The spectral characteristics of the Venus clouds, including the strong UV absorption, are consistent with the spectrum of certain types of terrestrial bacteria,” the authors explain.

A composite image of the planet Venus as seen by the Japanese probe Akatsuki. The clouds of Venus could have environmental conditions conducive to microbial life. Credit: JAXA/Institute of Space and Astronautical Science

Another of the mysteries concerns lower clouds. A subset of cloud particles larger than 7 µm is unknown. Adding to the mystery is that some of them aren’t round. We know this from NASA’s Pioneer Venus mission. Since the particles, called Mode 3 particles, are non-spherical, they can’t be liquid droplets. “The nature and composition of the Mode 3 particles is debated with data presently in hand,” the authors write, making it clear that we need more data from a modern mission.

Some have proposed that the particles could be sulfuric acid, but the authors say data rules that out. If they’re not sulfuric acid, that works in favour of the idea that life could persist in the clouds. “This result could indicate unknown chemistry and is intriguing with regard to the possible presence of ‘life as we know it,’ which cannot withstand a concentrated sulfuric acid environment,” the authors explain.

It should be noted, however, that not all scientists agree that the large particles even exist and that calibration errors could be responsible for their detection instead.

The authors outline other reasons why only a biological mission to Venus can solve these mysteries. In-situ measurements from the Venera program and the VeGa balloons suggested that the atmosphere hosted non-volatile compounds necessary for life. Life as we know it requires metals, including iron. Venera found iron, while VeGa didn’t. More mystery waiting to be solved.

There are other unexplained components in Venus’ atmosphere. There are trace gases with abundance profiles that scientists can’t explain. Venera and Pioneer also found oxygen there. Nobody knows where it came from, and it’s a subject of frequent discussion. Other chemical detections add to the mystery and complexity.

The maddening thing about studying Venus from afar is that many of the observations could be explained by either biotic or abiotic processes. That’s why we need a biological mission.

NASA’s upcoming DAVINCI mission will send an orbiter and an atmospheric probe to Venus sometime in the 2030s. Image Credit: NASA

“The habitability of the Venusian clouds should also be explored by new in situ missions,” the author explains. Lots of scientists agree with them, including renowned planetary scientist Sara Seager. In fact, Seager goes even further, suggesting that a sample-return mission is needed.

There are missions to Venus coming in the future. NASA’s VERITAS mission and DAVINCI mission will both head to Venus, but not for several more years. DAVINCI will send a probe into Venus’s atmosphere for in situ observations, while VERITAS will map the surface in more detail.

In the meantime, the data we have is all the data scientists have to work with. While scientists are resourceful and determined, that’s not enough.

Only a mission to Venus that’s solely focused on biology and chemistry can solve the planet’s mysteries.

The post There are Mysteries at Venus. It’s Time for an Astrobiology Mission appeared first on Universe Today.

Astrophysicists have confirmed the accuracy of an analytical model that can unlock key information about supermassive black holes and the stars they engulf.

A team of astronomers has created the first-ever map of magnetic field structures within a spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Previous studies on galactic magnetic fields only gave a very general picture, but the new study reveals that magnetic fields in the spiral arms of our galaxy break away from this general picture significantly and are tilted away from the galactic average by a high degree. The findings suggest magnetic fields strongly impact star-forming regions which means they played a part in the creation of our own solar system.