If space is infused with ‘dark energy,’ as seems to be the case, we have an explanation for the continuing acceleration of the universe’s expansion. Or to speak more accurately, we have a v...
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Rocket Lab , a launch service provider based in Long Beach CA, launched a rideshare payload on April 23 from its launch complex in New Zealand. I’ve been tracking that launch because aboard the...
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Although it’s been quite some time since I’ve written about Voyager, our two interstellar craft (and this is indeed what they are at present, the first to return data from beyond the heliosph...
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Radio and optical SETI look for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations even though we have no evidence that such exist. The search is eminently worthwhile and opens up the ancillary question:...
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The propulsion technology the human characters conceive in the Netflix version of Liu Cixin’s novel The Three Body Problem clearly has roots in the ideas we’ve been kicking around lately. I s...
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Fusion runways remind me of the propulsion methods using pellets that have been suggested over the years in the literature. Before the runway concept emerged, the idea of firing pellets at a depa...
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Let’s talk about how to get a spacecraft moving without onboard propellant. As noted last week, this is apropos of the design shown in the Netflix streaming video take on Liu Cixin’s novels, ...
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You never know when a new interstellar propulsion concept is going to pop up. Some of us have been kicking around fusion runway ideas, motivated by Netflix’s streaming presentation of the Liu C...
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Eugene Parker, after whom the Parker Solar Probe was named, seems to have been the first to have accurately predicted the stream of particles emitted by the Sun that forms the ‘solar wind.’ P...
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No posts this week, as I am wrapping up an overhaul of some of the site’s internals. When I say ‘I,’ I really mean my brilliant web guru, whose team has worked tirelessly to fix a major pro...
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Europa Clipper is scheduled to launch on October 10, with arrival at Jupiter in 2030. That will keep subsurface oceans on our minds as we tangle with the problems of analyzing water locked under ...
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Don’t you love the way the cosmos keeps us from getting too comfortable with our ideas? The Hubble Constant (H0), which tells us about the rate of expansion of the universe, is still a hot issu...
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Just a few weeks ago I wrote about stellar interactions, taking note of a concept advanced by scientists including Ben Zuckerman and Greg Matloff that such stars would make for easier interstella...
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We’re a species that likes to leave evidence of itself in new places. In Greenland, for example, the Kingittorsuaq runestone, dating from the 14th Century, offers inscriptions that help chart N...
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If individual star systems show us a wide variety of formation scenarios – and we just examined recent ESO work on circumstellar disks in different star-forming regions – the variety in galax...
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Planet formation is a fascinating subtopic of the exoplanet hunt, and it may just have produced the first exoplanet detection in data that go back as far back as 1981, though the event in questio...
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A kilonova at the wrong place and time would spell trouble for any lifeforms emerging on a planetary surface. Just how we found out about kilonovae and the conditions that create them, not to men...
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Galaxies look fixed in astronomical photos, but of course they’re dynamic systems ever in motion. The closest stars to Earth at Alpha Centauri will eventually close to within about 3 light year...
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I’m going to start in the Kuiper Belt this morning before going further out, because the news that the Belt may extend much further than expected reminds us of the nature of exploration. The Ne...
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Having just discussed whether humans – as opposed to their machines – will one day make interstellar journeys, it’s a good time to ask where we could get today with near-term technologies. ...
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