Tidally locked exoplanets may be more common than previously thought | UW News
http://www.washington.edu/...4/tidally-locked-exoplanets-may-be-more-common-than-previously-thought/

Many exoplanets to be found by coming high-powered telescopes will probably be tidally locked — with one side permanently
facing their host star — according to new research by astronomer Rory Barnes of the University of Washington.

Barnes, a UW assistant professor of astronomy and astrobiology, arrived at the finding by questioning the long-held assumption that only those stars
that are much smaller and dimmer than the sun could host orbiting planets that were in synchronous orbit, or tidally locked, as the moon is with the
Earth. His paper, “Tidal Locking of Habitable Exoplanets,” has been accepted for publication by the journal Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.

Tidal locking results when there is no side-to-side momentum between a body in space and its gravitational partner and they become fixed in their embrace.
Tidally locked bodies such as the Earth and moon are in synchronous rotation, meaning that each takes exactly as long to rotate around its own axis as it
does to revolve around its host star or gravitational partner. The moon takes 27 days to rotate once on its axis, and 27 days to orbit the Earth once.

ISS Crew Readies for Unique View of the Solar Eclipse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0WJFIVQOv4

Tracking a solar eruption through the Solar System / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Tracking_a_solar_eruption_through_the_Solar_System

Ten spacecraft, from ESA’s Venus Express to NASA’s Voyager-2, felt the effect of a solar eruption as it washed through
the Solar System while three other satellites watched, providing a unique perspective on this space weather event.

Scientists working on ESA’s Mars Express were looking forward to investigating the effects of the close encounter of Comet
Siding Spring on the Red Planet’s atmosphere on 19 October 2014, but instead they found what turned out to be the imprint
of a solar event.

While this made the analysis of any comet-related effects far more complex than anticipated, it triggered one of the largest
collaborative efforts to trace the journey of an interplanetary ‘coronal mass ejection’ – a CME – from the Sun to the far
reaches of the outer Solar System.

Although Earth itself was not in the firing line, a number of Sun-watching satellites near Earth – ESA’s Proba-2, the ESA/NASA
SOHO and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – had witnessed a powerful solar eruption a few days earlier, on 14 October.

NASA’s Stereo-A not only captured images of the other side of the Sun with respect to Earth, but also collected in situ
information as the CME rushed passed.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/trappist-1-is-older-than-our-solar-system

At the time of its discovery, scientists believed the TRAPPIST-1 system had to be at least 500 million years old, since it takes stars of TRAPPIST-1’s low mass
(roughly 8 percent that of the Sun) roughly that long to contract to its minimum size, just a bit larger than the planet Jupiter. However, even this lower age
limit was uncertain; in theory, the star could be almost as old as the universe itself. Are the orbits of this compact system of planets stable? Might life have
enough time to evolve on any of these worlds?

Have Two Lonely Trans-Neptunian Objects Found Each Other?
http://aasnova.org/2017/08/11/have-two-lonely-trans-neptunian-objects-found-each-other/

A new study has identified 2004 TT357 as a body that may be made up of two separate objects in contact with each other.

Though Hubble can’t recognize distant contact binaries because the components are too close together, we can potentially
identify them from their characteristic light curves. But this is a challenging process, and so far we’ve only found one
confirmed trans-Neptunian-object (TNO) contact binary and one candidate — despite predictions that 10–30% of TNOs could
be contact binaries.

Now, new observations from the 4.3-m Lowell Observatory Discovery Channel Telescope, presented in a study led by Audrey
Thirouin (Lowell Observatory), have resulted in the identification of a potential new TNO contact binary.

https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/...lactic-winds-push-researchers-to-probe-galaxies-at-unprecedented-scale/

When astronomers peer into the universe, what they see often exceeds the limits of human understanding.
Such is the case with low-mass galaxies—galaxies a fraction of the size of our own Milky Way.

These small, faint systems made up of millions or billions of stars, dust, and gas constitute the most common type
of galaxy observed in the universe. But according to astrophysicists’ most advanced models, low-mass galaxies should
contain many more stars than they appear to contain.

Cool Cloud
https://vimeo.com/228856875

The Implications of Cosmic Silence | University of Arkansas
http://news.uark.edu/articles/39255/the-implications-of-cosmic-silence

The universe is incomprehensibly vast, with billions of other planets circling billions of other stars.
The potential for intelligent life to exist somewhere out there should be enormous.

So, where is everybody?

That’s the Fermi paradox in a nutshell. Daniel Whitmire, a retired astrophysicist who teaches mathematics
at the University of Arkansas, once thought the cosmic silence indicated we as a species lagged far behind.

“I taught astronomy for 37 years,” said Whitmire. “I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have
to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years while
other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than us by millions or billions of years.”

Recently, however, he’s changed his mind. By applying a statistical concept called the principle of mediocrity –
the idea that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we should consider ourselves typical, rather than
atypical – Whitmire has concluded that instead of lagging behind, our species may be average. That’s not good news.

In a paper published Aug. 3 in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Whitmire argues that if we are typical,
it follows that species such as ours go extinct soon after attaining technological knowledge.

The argument is based on two observations: We are the first technological species to evolve on Earth, and we are
early in our technological development. (He defines “technological” as a biological species that has developed
electronic devices and can significantly alter the planet.)

The first observation seems obvious, but as Whitmire notes in his paper, researchers believe the Earth should be
habitable for animal life at least a billion years into the future. Based on how long it took proto-primates to
evolve into a technological species, that leaves enough time for it to happen again up to 23 times. On that time
scale, there could have been others before us, but there’s nothing in the geologic record to indicate we weren’t
the first. “We’d leave a heck of a fingerprint if we disappeared overnight,” Whitmire noted.

http://realdanielwhitmire.wixsite.com/home/copy-of-astrobiology-1

New observations reveal Crab Nebula's polarised emissions for first time | KTH
https://www.kth.se/...-observations-reveal-crab-nebula-s-polarised-emissions-for-first-time-1.746056

The researchers' observations of polarised X-rays from the Crab Nebula and Pulsar, published today in Scientific Reports, may help
explain sudden flares in the Crab’s X-ray intensity, as well as provide new data for modeling – and understanding – the nebula.

The polarisation of Crab X-rays reveals how and where they are produced in the extreme environment of the nebula, says Mark Pearce,
Professor of Physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and lead author of the study.

“Our measurements indicate that the X-rays come from an organized region in the vicinity of the pulsar at the centre of the nebula,"
Pearce says. "Electrons gyrating around magnetic field lines in this region produce the X-rays. The measurements are made in an unexplored
energy range, so they provide new information which will help to solve the puzzle of how high energy radiation is generated.”

Space in Images - 2017 - 08 - Asteroid 2012 TC4 will fly past Earth in October 2017
http://www.esa.int/...einimages/Images/2017/08/Asteroid_2012_TC4_will_fly_past_Earth_in_October_2017

A small asteroid flying past Earth on 12 October will provide scientists with a valuable opportunity to learn more about its orbit and
composition. The campaign will exercise the international network of observatories and research organisations working on planetary defence.

Astronomers recently spotted asteroid 2012 TC4 under a collaboration between ESA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to locate faint
objects that might strike Earth. This is the first observation since 2012, when the asteroid was discovered by the Pan-STARRS observatory in
Hawaii. It was found this time by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

The original observations revealed the asteroid’s next approach to our vicinity would be in October 2017 but its orbit meant that it could
not be tracked during the last five years, leaving astronomers unsure on how close it would come.

The new observations reveal it will miss Earth by 44 000 km. While it remains visible, astronomers will study the 15–30 m object in as much
detail as possible, such as obtaining information on its composition.

NASA Selects Proposals to Study Galaxies, Stars, Planets
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-proposals-to-study-galaxies-stars-planets

NASA has selected six astrophysics Explorers Program proposals for concept studies. The proposed missions would study gamma-ray and X-ray emissions
from clusters of galaxies and neutron star systems, as well as infrared emissions from galaxies in the early universe and atmospheres of exoplanets,
which are planets outside of our solar system.

The selected proposals, three Medium-Class Explorers missions and three Explorers Missions of Opportunity, call for focused scientific investigations
and developments of instruments that fill the scientific gaps between the agency’s larger missions.

“The Explorers Program brings out some of the most creative ideas for missions to help unravel the mysteries of the universe,” said Thomas Zurbuchen,
associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The program has resulted in great missions that have returned
transformational science, and these selections promise to continue that tradition.”

The proposals were selected based on potential science value and feasibility of development plans. After concept studies and detailed evaluations,
one of each mission type will be selected by 2019 to proceed with construction and launch. The earliest launch date would be in 2022. Medium-Class
Explorer mission costs are capped at $250 million each, excluding the launch vehicle, and Mission of Opportunity costs are capped at $70 million each.

The Fate of Merging Neutron Stars
http://aasnova.org/2017/08/09/the-fate-of-merging-neutron-stars/

When two neutron stars collide, the new object that they make can reveal information about the interior
physics of neutron stars. New theoretical work explores what we should be seeing, and what it can teach us.

So far, the only systems from which we’ve detected gravitational waves are merging black holes. But other
compact-object binaries exist and are expected to merge on observable timescales — in particular, binary
neutron stars. When two neutron stars merge, the resulting object falls into one of three categories:

- a stable neutron star,
- a black hole, or
- a supramassive neutron star, a large neutron star that’s supported by its rotation
but will eventually collapse to a black hole after it loses angular momentum.