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Diamonds on Mercury!
Join aerospace engineer Mike DiVerde as he takes you on a fascinating journey exploring NASA’s groundbreaking MESSENGER mission to Mercury. Discover how this remarkable spacecraft mapped our solar system’s innermost planet and uncovered extraordinary findings, including evidence of a potential diamond layer deep within Mercury’s core. Learn about the sophisticated instruments that revealed Mercury’s mysterious surface features, unique geology, and core composition. This comprehensive exploration combines cutting-edge space technology with planetary science to unravel Mercury’s secrets, from its graphite-rich surface to its intriguing magma ocean past. Whether you’re a space enthusiast or simply curious about our cosmic neighborhood, this video offers an expert’s perspective on one of NASA’s most successful deep space missions.
China’s Zhurong rover used ground-penetrating radar to find signs of beaches beneath Mars’ surface, adding evidence to the idea the planet hosted an ancient ocean.
Ultra–high-power particle pulses could boost x-ray science and laboratory astrophysics.
I was called to science to seek a truth that transcended humanity. What I found instead is much more rewarding.
A breakthrough simulation reveals how magnetars form and evolve, solving a key mystery about their magnetic origins.
Magnetars are a rare type of neutron star.
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a large (between 10 and 29 solar masses) star. Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars known to exist. Though neutron stars typically have a radius on the order of just 10 — 20 kilometers (6 — 12 miles), they can have masses of about 1.3 — 2.5 that of the Sun.
A team led by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill has made an extraordinary discovery that is reshaping our understanding of bubbles and their movement. Imagine tiny air bubbles inside a liquid-filled container. When the container is shaken up and down, these bubbles exhibit an unexpected, rhythmic “galloping” motion—bouncing like playful horses and moving horizontally, despite the vertical shaking. This counterintuitive phenomenon, revealed in a new study, has significant technological implications, from improving surface cleaning and heat transfer in microchips to advancing space applications.
These galloping bubbles are already drawing significant attention. Their impact on fluid dynamics was recently recognized with an award for their video entry at the latest Gallery of Fluid Motion, organized by the American Physical Society.
“Our research not only answers a fundamental scientific question but also inspires curiosity and exploration of the fascinating, unseen world of fluid motion,” said Pedro Sáenz, principal investigator and professor of applied mathematics at UNC-Chapel Hill. “After all, the smallest things can sometimes lead to the biggest changes.”
For the first time, astronomers have imaged dozens of belts around nearby stars where comets and tiny pebbles within them are orbiting.
This result reveals regions around 74 stars spanning a wide range of ages—from those recently formed to others billions of years old—showing how comets play a role in the formation of stars and planetary systems. The study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
To find evidence for comets outside our solar system (called “exocomets”), astronomers turned to two facilities that detect particular bands of radio waves. Because of the size of the dust and rocks in these belts, this type of light is particularly good at finding and imaging these structures.
For centuries, lenses have worked the same way: curved glass or plastic bending light to bring images into focus. But traditional lenses have a major drawback—the more powerful they need to be, the bulkier and heavier they become.
Scientists have long searched for a way to reduce the weight of lenses without sacrificing functionality. And while some slimmer alternatives exist, they tend to be limited in their capacity and are generally challenging and expensive to make.
New research from University of Utah engineering professor Rajesh Menon and colleagues at the Price College of Engineering offers a promising solution applicable to telescopes and astrophotography: a large aperture flat lens that focuses light as effectively as traditional curved lenses while preserving accurate color.
The northern lowlands of early Mars could have contained a significant quantity of liquid water. However, the ocean hypothesis remains controversial due to the lack of conclusive evidence from the Martian subsurface. We use data from the Zhurong Rover Penetrating Radar on the southern Utopia Planitia to identify subsurface dipping reflectors indicative of an ancient prograding shoreline. The reflectors dip unidirectionally with inclinations in the range 6° to 20° and are imaged to a thickness of 10 to 35 m along an uninterrupted 1.3 km northward shoreline-perpendicular traverse. The consistent dip inclinations, absence of dissection by fluvial channels along the extended traverse, and low permittivity of the sediments are consistent with terrestrial coastal deposits—and discount fluvial, aeolian, or magmatic origins favored elsewhere on Mars.
