Space News & Blog Articles

Here at UT, we’ve had several stories that describe the concept of a space elevator. They are designed to make it easier to get objects off Earth and into space. That, so far, has proven technically or economically infeasible, as no material is strong enough to support the structure passively, and it’s too energy-intensive to support it actively. However, it could be more viable on other worlds, such as the Moon. But what about worlds farther afield? A student team from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs looked at the use case of a space elevator on Ceres and found that it could be done with existing technology.

Exoplanets have been discovered with a wide range of environmental conditions. WASP-76b is one of the most extreme with a dayside temperature of over 2,000 degrees. A team of researchers have found that it’s even more bizarre than first thought! It’s tidally locked to its host star so intense winds encircle the planet. They contain high quantities of iron atoms that stream from the lower to upper layers around the atmosphere.

According to Nebula Theory, stars and their systems of planets form when a massive cloud of gas and dust (a nebula) undergoes gravitational collapse at the center, forming a new star. The remaining material from the nebula then forms a disk around the star from which planets, moons, and other bodies will eventually accrete (a protoplanetary disk). This is how Earth and the many bodies that make up the Solar System came together roughly 4.5 billion years ago, eventually settling into their current orbits (after a few migrations and collisions).

In 2012, two previous dark matter detection experiments—the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) and ZonEd Proportional scintillation in Liquid Noble gases (ZEPLIN)—came together to form the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. Since it commenced operations, this collaboration has conducted the most sensitive search ever mounted for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) – one of the leading Dark Matter candidates. This collaboration includes around 250 scientists from 39 institutions in the U.S., U.K., Portugal, Switzerland, South Korea, and Australia.

Throughout Earth’s history, the planet’s surface has been regularly impacted by comets, meteors, and the occasional large asteroid. While these events were often destructive, sometimes to the point of triggering a mass extinction, they may have also played an important role in the emergence of life on Earth. This is especially true of the Hadean Era (ca. 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago) and the Late Heavy Bombardment, when Earth and other planets in the inner Solar System were impacted by a disproportionately high number of asteroids and comets.