Our universe has been an intriguing mystery to us since the beginning of, well, humankind. We are always looking up, looking at the sky, trying to figure out what lays beyond the beautiful stillness of darkness. And we have come a long way, from the heliocentric theories to finding out about gravitational waves (still not over it!) We keep on trying to find new, exciting phenomenons in our universe. I have listed some fantastic discoveries in the past few months, but the pandemic and other events overshadowed this news.
1. Life on Venus?
Behind the beautiful exterior of Venus, there lies a turbulent world with a surface temperature of 900 Fahrenheit (480 Celsius), which isn’t ideal. However, this year in September, NASA discovered signs of Phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere (concentrations reported up to 20 parts per billion). This research used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. However, as with every other discovery, not everyone is convinced that the gas is Phosphine and proposes “someone else” to confirm this. Planetary scientist Jason Dittmann at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is planning to research this further with NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii.
This new theory is an exciting find, even if it gets proved wrong. Firstly, because if the gas is not Phosphine, scientists will have a deeper understanding of how much they should rely on biosignatures. Secondly, if scientists find a way of Phosphine production without a living thing, this would be extremely helpful in more planetary research. Whatever the result is, this is one of the most remarkable discoveries in our universe this year! To read more, click here.
2. Looks like Ceres is also an Ocean World!
Ceres, the most massive object in the asteroid belt and a well known dwarf planet, has been studied by NASA’s Dawn mission scientists. The new and high-resolution pictures show that Ceres might have a global salty oceanic substructure and have been active geologically in the last few years. During Dawns’ mission, the scientists noticed several “bright spots” on the surface of Ceres. One of the most intriguing and brightly shining craters found was named “Occator.” The bright spots were determined to be the remnants of sodium carbonate, which must’ve evaporated from the surface, leaving behind a reflective surface. These bright conical surfaces are similar to those found here on Earth, requiring water or ice slurries movement long after the crater was created.
Dr. Hannah Sizemore, a co-author of five journals published in Nature this week, told Universe Today, “Evidence that Ceres has long-lived deep brine reservoirs is an exciting result. That a body of Ceres’ size can retain both heat and interior liquids over the age of the solar system implies that small bodies are more geologically active — may be more ‘habitable’ — than we thought.”
Dawn explored Ceres for almost three years, from March 2015 to November 2018, on its mission in the asteroid belt, where it studied Vesta! To learn more about this in detail, click here.
3. Most Distant Galaxy Found: Wolfe Galaxy
In late May, scientists discovered the most distant galaxy that is 70 billion times the sun’s mass and is spinning at the speed of 170 miles (272 kilometers) per second, just like our Milky Way. It is named Galaxy DLA0817g, nicknamed Wolfe Galaxy (after the late astronomer Arthur M. Wolfe). The intriguing part is that galaxies, such as the Wolfe Galaxy, are not formed until very late in our universe’s life. Some date around 6 billion years after the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago. But the Wolfe galaxy dated back to 12.5 billion years ago! Therefore, the Wolfe Galaxy, being so similar to our galaxy despite only being formed at one-tenth of the universe’s age, can change the way we think about galaxy birth and other related things. The early stages of the universe were very messy and all the hot materials collided against each other (most of the first galaxies found are complete train wrecks). It was only after a long time when the gas cooled down that galaxies had a perfect “form,” so how is a universe at such a turbulent stage not only surviving but also perfectly rotating and thriving??
Our knowledge of the galaxy formation process is this: dark matter halos, a large unseen bubble in space, known by its effects of surrounding matter, and attracted gas. Mergers of gas and matter made star formation possible, eventually leading to galaxy formations. Professor J. Xavier Prochaska, study co-author and astrophysics professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, declared, “We think the Wolfe Disk has grown primarily through the steady accretion of cold gas,” explaining the formation of the Wolfe galaxy.
The Wolfe was first discovered in 2017 by Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). To read about this study in more detail, click here.
4. D-star Hexaquark
Since 1960, scientists have postulated that Baryonic Matter (luminous matter) constitutes only about 5% of our universe, and the other 85% of matter is “Dark Matter.” However, many experiments are searching for this Dark Matter, but none proved the existence of any particle related to Dark Matter. Amidst this, a particle discovered in 2011(merely theoretical until 2011, announced in 2014) called “d-star hexaquark” presents itself to be a promising candidate to prove the existence of Dark Matter.
A hexaquark is a Bose-Einstein condensate, the fifth state of matter, which forms when low-density bosons are cooled at absolute zero. The experiments’ condition, which discovered this hexaquark, is said to be roughly the same as sometime after the Big Bang when the matter was forming. Therefore, the experiment can provide insights on how dark matter was created and will help us know more about its mysteries, one of the biggest puzzles in our universe!
A group of scientists at the University of York in the UK conducted this research. To know more about this research, click here.
There you go, fellow astrophile! Some exciting news and discoveries of this year, do tell me your thoughts on them below in the comments section! If you have any suggestions or if some information in this article is not correct, please contact me.