The sky is not the limit | Solar Storm, Diamonds on Mercury and more

Solar storms and an asteroid measuring approximately 3 meters hit our planet this past week, but neither event posed any risk to people. Meanwhile, new discoveries about the universe were announced.

If you haven’t followed the space news in the last few days, enjoy this “summary” and stay on top of all these news!

Scientists are increasingly aware of solar storms, as the Sun will enter its current cycle peak activity in the coming years. On March 14th and 15th, some of them, classified as light and moderate, arrived on our planet.

Solar storms like these can cause only a few minor effects on Earth, such as an increase in aurora occurrences at certain latitudes on the planet and brief problems with high-frequency radio signals. The solar maximum is expected to occur around July 2025.

It appears that the impacts of comets and asteroids falling on Mercury at very high speeds may have turned the carbon that coats much of the planet’s surface into diamonds. According to a new study, the graphite layer on the innermost planet in the Solar System could be more than 90 m thick.

With the pressure of asteroid impacts, about 60% of the graphite could be turned into “shock diamonds”. That would represent about 16 quadrillion tons of diamonds there. But this is unlikely to lead miners on an eventual adventure into space: the diamonds on Mercury are likely impure, with a messy mix with graphite and other carbon phases.

While there are no potentially dangerous asteroids on a collision course with Earth, no one can assure you that there aren’t other undiscovered space rocks ready to crash on our planet before any telescope can detect them. That’s more or less what happened on Friday (11).

A small asteroid was discovered by astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky last Friday (11) and, just two hours later, the object crossed the Earth’s atmosphere. Fortunately, it was about 3 meters in diameter and must have disintegrated as it passed through the atmosphere. Few Icelanders reported seeing any glow in the sky during the event.

The James Webb telescope has completed the refinement phase of its instruments, that is, all optical parameters have been verified and tested, and they are working according to expectations (perhaps even beyond). At the end of the process, the James Webb registered the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277 and also objects in the background.

As we can see in the image above, the sensitivity of the onboard optical system and camera made it possible to capture background stars and galaxies. There are still alignments to be carried out before scientific work begins with the telescope. Meanwhile, the James Webb is photographed by the Gaia observatory.

The two stars of the SVS 13 system, located 980 light-years away, were observed with disks of gas and dust around them. These disks appear to be enough to form new planets and have been identified in unprecedented detail. They discovered nearly 30 different molecules and 13 complex organic molecules that were precursors to life.

This is evidence that planet-forming disks can indeed exist around stars in binary systems. But it’s not yet known how, exactly, the new planets could be formed, mainly because the gravitational interactions between the two stars are complex. In addition, a larger disk is forming around both stars.

#MarsHelicopter can’t be stopped! Ingenuity successfully completed its 21st flight on the Red Planet. The small rotorcraft traveled 370 meters at a speed of 3.85 meters per second and stayed aloft for 129.2 seconds. https://t.co/TNCdXWcKWE pic.twitter.com/rNMaodihxa

– NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) March 11, 2022

O Ingenuity helicopter performed its 21st flight, traveling for 370 m at a speed of 3.85 m/s. In total, it has already covered more than 4.6 km since its first flight on the Red Planet. On its last “ride”, the aircraft remained in the air for 129.2 seconds.

With the success of his adventures on Mars, the Ingenuity will have its mission extended until September. The helicopter is expected to spend the next few months assisting the Perseverance rover as it further tests its flight capabilities in the thin Martian atmosphere.

the astronaut of NASA Mark Vande Hei broke the record for the longest US spaceflight on Thursday (15). It arrived at the Space Station (ISS) in April last year and surpassed the 340-day mark on board. Its mission was expected to last six months, but the astronaut’s stay was extended, which gave NASA an opportunity to assess the effects of microgravity on long spaceflights.

The dark matter of the universe, probably formed by some type of particle hitherto unknown, may have multiplied in the beginning of the universe through collision with particles of “ordinary” matter. This process could explain how dark matter became so much more abundant in the cosmos than the matter we see.

According to a new study, shortly after the Big Bang the universe would be compact enough for a series of interactions between particles to occur. Thus, a particle of dark and a particle of ordinary matter could collide and produce two particles of dark matter. This would have led to the exponential multiplication of dark matter until the expansion of the universe carried it away, thus stopping the collision process.

The controversial and hypothetical Planet 9 was not found in a rescan of the most distant region of the Solar System. Astronomers scanned nearly 87% of the sky with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in search of the object, which could exist beyond the orbit of Neptune. This led them to rule out the existence of Planet 9 in the region studied, with 95% certainty.

If it exists, this planet would be between 5 and 10 Earth masses, and would orbit the Sun at a distance of up to 800 astronomical units. But the new results are disappointing, as much as the presence of this body could explain the strange orbits of other objects already found there.

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