Andromeda’s Actual Size If It Was Brighter

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

by Joseph Brimacombe

One of the challenges in studying tornadoes is being in the right place at the right time. In that regard, storm chaser Brandon Clement hit the jackpot earlier this week when he captured this footage of a tornado near Sulphur, Oklahoma from his drone. He was able to follow the twister for several minutes until it apparently dissipated. 

Scientists are still uncertain exactly how tornadoes form, but they’ve learned to recognize the key ingredients. A strong variation of wind speed with altitude can create a horizontally-oriented vortex, which a localized updraft of warm, moist air can lift and rotate to vertical, birthing a tornado. These storms most commonly occur in the central U.S. and Canada during springtime, and researchers are actively pursing new ways to predict and track tornadoes, including microphone arrays capable of locating them before they fully form. (Image and video credit: B. Clement; via Earther)

The Surprising Reason Why Neutron Stars Don’t All Collapse To Form Black Holes

“The measurements of the enormous pressure inside the proton, as well as the distribution of that pressure, show us what’s responsible for preventing the collapse of neutron stars. It’s the internal pressure inside each proton and neutron, arising from the strong force, that holds up neutron stars when white dwarfs have long given out. Determining exactly where that mass threshold is just got a great boost. Rather than solely relying on astrophysical observations, the experimental side of nuclear physics may provide the guidepost we need to theoretically understand where the limits of neutron stars actually lie.”

If you take a large, massive collection of matter and compress it down into a small space, it’s going to attempt to form a black hole. The only thing that can stop it is some sort of internal pressure that pushes back. For stars, that’s thermal, radiation pressure. For white dwarfs, that’s the quantum degeneracy pressure from the electrons. And for neutron stars, there’s quantum degeneracy pressure between the neutrons (or quarks) themselves. Only, if that last case were the only factor at play, neutron stars wouldn’t be able to get more massive than white dwarfs, and there’s strong evidence that they can reach almost twice the Chandrasekhar mass limit of 1.4 solar masses. Instead, there must be a big contribution from the internal pressure each the individual nucleon to resist collapse.

For the first time, we’ve measured that pressure distribution inside the proton, paving the way to understanding why massive neutron stars don’t all form black holes.

A view you’d see from an asteroid’s surface!

Japan’s space agency (JAXA) has successfully landed two small rovers on the asteroid Ryugu. Their “mothership” Hayabusa 2 reached the asteroid in summer at a distance of 313 million km (194 million miles) from Earth, a journey which took 3.5 years. Rover-1B captured this video of 15 frames on September 23, 2018. 

Another spectacular sight was the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft’s shadow visible on the surface before releasing the rovers:  

The mission’s goal is to study this potentially hazardous asteroid, and bring back a sample in 2020! Asteroids are not only space rocks that might collide with our planet, though. They are remnants from our solar system’s formation and help to investigate the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans.

⭐ Stay connected with Sci-universe on Tumblr and Instagram 📸: JAXA / Roman Tkachenko via @haya2e_jaxa

In “Float” artist Susi Sie uses water and oil to create a whimsical landscape of bubbles and droplets. Coalescence is a major player in the action, though Sie uses some clever time manipulations to make her bubbles and droplets multiply as well. Watching coalescence in reverse feels like seeing mitosis happen before your eyes. (Video and image credit: S. Sie)

M64, The Black Eye Galaxy

Arp 188 and the Tadpole’s Tail

Two Weeks in the Life of a Sunspot

On July 5, 2017, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory watched AR26665, an active region – an area of intense and complex magnetic fields – rotate into view on the sun. The satellite continued to track the region as it grew and eventually rotated across the sun and out of view on July 17.

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