Exotic Objects, Stars If a supernova’s original star is massive enough to form a black hole, why is there any explosion? Why doesn’t the entire mass of the original star simply fall onto the newly formed black hole and instantly vanish?
Exoplanets, Planets, Robotic Spaceflight, Solar System How does NASA navigate a Mars rover’s direction and determine its location with the planet having no global magnetic field?
Exotic Objects, Stars I’ve read that the gas ejected during supernova explosions glows at millions of degrees; I also have read that gas is tenuous. How would a million-degree gas feel physically? Would I vaporize while flying through such a cloud?
Milky Way What impact has the Kepler space telescope’s exoplanet discoveries had on the Drake equation?
Science As Earth wobbles due to precession, do the seasons change in regard to the months (i.e., 13,000 years from now, will June be winter for the Northern Hemisphere and December summer)?
Cosmology If the light from a galaxy traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth, does that mean the light left this galaxy when the universe was 500 million years old? Was the galaxy 13.3 billion light-years away from Earth then?
Science In my astronomy studies decades ago, we used the “Roche limit” to determine when a smaller body is too close to survive a larger object’s gravitational force. Do astronomers still use that term?
Exotic Objects Why do we see a flash instead of a constant signal from a millisecond pulsar, which spins 20-700 times per second? Is that not fast enough to maintain a steady beam of light?
Exotic Objects, Stars A recent study found that a type Ia supernova’s original star could be anywhere from 0.9 to 1.4 times our Sun’s mass. Astronomers use these blasts’ brightnesses to estimate distances, so are those measurements now incorrect?
