by Jodevic Philipp Perez
Astronomy has always been a part of our daily lives, yet it goes unnoticed. The surprising part is that not much people are up to date with recent astronomical information, rather, most people confuse some news from late 20th century. Which is weird, because there have been a lot of new discoveries found these past few months.
Let us start with a bit of old to new find, the Magnetar. Magnetar is a type of neutron star, which like a normal one, pulsates quickly and emits x-rays and gamma rays. However, it has a strong magnetic field that could disrupt orbits and the likes, especially when having a starquake. That news is old news. The new, conversely, is that as of April this year, 21 are now known throughout the universe, while 5 are awaiting confirmation, including SGR-1806-20, found on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy, at the constellation Sagittarius.
Another recent intelligence is the final mission of Space Shuttle Program, Atlantis’ operation. Last July 2011, this has been confirmed by NASA, the purpose of such duty is to test the new robotics and tools for the following space actions, specifically, refuelling missions. As Space shuttle Commander Chris Ferguson stated,” We’re not ending the journey today... we’re completing a chapter of a journey that will never end,” which means that we are not stopping anytime now at going to space, we are just doing it differently.
There are some new speculations too about ages, explicitly, about the oldest galaxy so far. It is estimated that the galaxy is from 13.1 billion years ago, or in layman’s term, a four-year old next to our current adult universe. However, they still are not very sure of it, because it is just a smudge from the Hubble Telescope, describing the light as “high red-shift blob”. The basis for the study is standing at “pretty good”, quoted from Prof. Richard Ellis, from California Institute of Technology. With this discovery, we can speculate many more questions in the universe’s age and galaxies’ creation.
Now let’s jump to a Sci-fi turning to Sci-fact. In the movie “Star Wars”, there was a planet having double sunset and sunrise. NASA’s Kepler mission proved this circumbinary planet (planet orbiting two stars) in a location 200 light years away from us. The planet, known as Kepler 16-b, unlike in the film, is cold, gaseous and cannot be thought to harbour life. This research sparked a new possibility of diverse and wide range of new planetary systems, that which may possibly produce life. “Given that most stars in our galaxy are part of a binary system, this means the opportunities for life are much broader than if planets form only around single stars”, stated by Kepler principal investigator William Borucki. The investigation was founded in what was presumed to be a regular eclipse on a binary star system, but the brightness further dipped even though there was an occultation happening, that lead to a guess of a third body. Also, when there was an irregularity in the dimming of the stars, while the stars are at different positions, it seems that the third body orbits both of these stars as the stars themselves rotate one another.
Additional up to date news, just last September 12 a daredevil comet headed straight to the Sun. It happened just hours after a solar storm sent a massive cloud of charged particles streaking into space. A comet of first magnitude brightness, that disappeared on the 14th. The comet itself did not survive long enough to be studied thoroughly, though they did suspected it to be part of the Kreutz family of comets, coming from one large comet that broke into smaller ones.
As far as improving technologies go, NASA is trying to keep up. As such, they have announced a new kind of deep space exploration system, a type that gives a safe, affordable and sustainable means for venturing our minds into the unique concept of space. As they unveiled the design for the developing Space Launch System (SLS), they swear of providing a new national capability for human exploration on Earth’s orbit. The SLS and its components are made to be durable and evolvable, to ensure further development. It is believed to reduce development costs while expected to improve existing capabilities. NASA administrator Charles Bolden said, “President Obama challenged us to be bold and to dream big, and that’s exactly what we are doing at NASA.” Basically, the SLS is a rocket produced to face the current crisis of recession, while maintaining a balance in sustainability, altogether with the purpose of maximizing efficiency at a lowered risk and cost.
Another from the fresh counter, let us tackle our galaxy, the Milky Way. We easily know that our galaxy is a spiral one, and now with new data, it can be hypothesized that the spirals are a product of collision of our galaxy with another. The galaxy we interact with, in a specified and predestined course, is the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. In the report, it is said that the dark matter composing galaxies have a strong effect, as seen in the simulators. As the galaxies bump into each other, the force of impact sends the stars and other object streaming in a loop, and thus, forming our familiar curves. But, the Sagittarius galaxy is not safe from harm too, for our galaxy has stronger gravity. So when the Sagittarius galaxy collides with ours, it is ripped of its contents in 80-90% ratio.
Heating up an old gossip, we now move to the further connection of Mars and its supposed ancient water. Mars Rover Opportunity collected samples from the Endeavour Crater, in which said brought sedimentary rocks was older than anything studied by the rover. These provided new clues to the planet’s environment when there was still water lying on its surface. Further study on the composition of the samples shows enormous amount of minerals like bromine, phosphorus, chlorine and the likes, which are present and mobile in the presence of water. While these look insignificant, imagine if there was a lot of water on Mars, thus, the speculation of life is again revived. The ones handling the project says that they need more clay sample to see if there were less acid in them, showing of how much water was there in the first place.
In conclusion, we can see that many astronomical findings go beyond our regular radar. Sure, it may not affect us directly, nor change the way people think of our world. But it is still a nice change to read stuff like this rather than depressing news about worsening suicide rates.
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