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The answers to the biggest questions in space science – what happens inside a black hole, how a galaxy is formed or what dark matter is – lie in the farthest corners of the universe.
However, there is still much that scientists do not know about the solar system, our cosmic neighborhood.
This week, researchers shared fascinating new findings about Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun and the far side of the moon.
Other worlds
The images show how Uranus’ magnetosphere, or protective bubble, behaved before Voyager 2’s arrival (left) and during the spacecraft’s flyby (right). – NASA/JPL Caltech
What is known about Uranus may be wrong. An unusual cosmic event during the Voyager 2 spacecraft flyby in 1986 may have distorted the way scientists characterized the ice giant, new research shows.
In particular, the spacecraft’s observations of Uranus’ protective magnetosphere differed significantly from astronomers’ expectations.
The new study found that during Voyager 2’s measurements, a strong solar wind created conditions that occur four percent of the time, said Jamie Jasinski, a space plasma physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The unusual circumstances likely distorted the data collected by the researchers.
Fortunately, sending a dedicated mission to explore Uranus in the future is a priority for NASA, according to a 2022 report.
We are a family
Fifty years ago this month, paleoanthropologist Don Johanson discovered perhaps the world’s most famous fossil: the skeleton of Lucy, which provided the first evidence that ancient humans walked upright as early as 3.2 million years ago.
However, the monumental find almost didn’t happen. On November 24, 1974, while Johanson was working in Ethiopia’s Afar region, he caught a glimpse of a bone fragment when he looked to his right. “If I had looked over my left shoulder, I would have missed it,” he said.
It took Johanson and his colleagues two and a half weeks to excavate Lucy’s fragile bones. But their legacy as the first documented specimen of Australopithecus afarensis has fueled decades of scientific research and debate and opened a new chapter in human history.
Mission critical
Tigers once roamed Central Asia, part of their historic range – an area that stretched from Turkey in the west to the Korean Peninsula in the east and from the northern Siberian regions of Russia to the tropical islands of Indonesia.
The big cats now make up less than 7% of that range, and in Kazakhstan hunting and scarcer prey led to the disappearance of the Caspian region’s top predators in the 1950s, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Kazakhstan welcomed two of the majestic animals in September with the hope that their offspring will be the first wild tigers in the region in more than 70 years.
After their journey from the Netherlands, the two captive Amur tigers named Bodhana and Kuma remained in a quarantine enclosure for 30 days to allow for veterinary checks. Conservationists released the pair in early November in a natural, three-hectare enclosure in the Ile-Balkhash State Nature Reserve in Kazakhstan.
Moon update
The moon has some new stories to tell. Scientists have published two studies on the historic trove of lunar soil samples from the far side of the moon that China’s Chang’e-6 mission returned to Earth in June.
The results could shed light on an unsolved mystery – what lies behind the asymmetry between the near and far sides of the moon.
The research found that the landing site of the Chang’e-6 spacecraft was volcanically active about 2.8 billion years ago.
The eruption is unexpectedly young and represents an episode of volcanic activity not known from studying samples taken from the near-Earth side of the Moon.
In other space news, NASA fears a potentially catastrophic system failure due to leaks in a Russian module of the International Space Station, but Russia’s space agency Roscosmos disagrees on the level of risk.
Secrets of the Ocean
Bathydevius caudactylus is a newly identified species of sea snail that lives in the midnight zone of the ocean. – Courtesy of MBARI
Researchers in California have identified a species of sea snail that is new to science. The creature looks otherworldly, with a gelatinous body that glows with bioluminescence when threatened.
But the most unusual thing about Bathydevius caudactylus is its habitat – in the midnight zone, the frigid depths between 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) and 13,100 feet (4,000 meters) below the ocean’s surface.
Typically, sea slugs live on the ocean floor or in coastal environments such as tide pools.
“It’s like finding hummingbirds near the summit of Mount Everest,” said Bruce Robison, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. He first encountered the strange, shimmering animal during an expedition to the bay in February 2000 using a remote-controlled robotic vehicle.
Explorations
Check out these wonderful stories:
— A father-daughter duo decoded a simulated signal from space. Now perhaps you can help solve the cosmic mystery.
– Archaeologists identified the site of an ancient battle in modern-day Iraq by comparing historical accounts with declassified images from U.S. spy satellites.
— Photos of tiny seahorses captured by divers surprised scientists by revealing a long-lost sea worm.
— Marvel at the last supermoon of the year in these images from around the world.
And before you go, here’s how to spot a dazzling space rock during the peak of the Leonid meteor shower.
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