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An early migration to the interior of Jupiter in the solar system explain the mass of terrestrial planets and the asteroid belt.
(© Dan DURD / SwRI,
In this artist’s view, Jupiter and Saturn are carpets on the edge of our solar system. Their migration near the orbit of Mars could have guided the formation of terrestrial planets.)
Jupiter at the current position of Mars? This is the scenario envisaged by Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, Sean Raymond, of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, and their colleagues to explain the characteristics of the inner solar system – Mercury to the asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars. In this scenario, Jupiter would have migrated to the Sun to the current position of Mars early in the history of the solar system, before moving to its current position.
The mass of Mars, ten times lower than that of the Earth, has long been a puzzle for models of planetary formation. In 2009, Brad Hansen of the University of California at Los Angeles, proposed a model in which the terrestrial planets were born of a disk of material that ranged from 0.7 to 1 astronomical unit (1 astronomical unit, or AU is the mean Earth-Sun distance). The central region of the ring, the denser, contain materials necessary for the formation of Venus and Earth. The inner and outer edges would, in turn, led to Mercury and Mars, which would then mlgré their current position (0.38 and 1.52 AU).
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The international project “The Moon in your hands’, the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia, every detail of the satellite closer to the blind. Map data with the probe Clementine from NASA, will design a sphere that reproduces the moon with its craters and seas more important.
(Face of the moon from Valencia. Image: Vicent Peris (OAUV).)
“The Moon is the most striking star from childhood look in the sky. Absolutely we have all seen many times, and this project is aimed to blind people also have that same experience the only natural satellite of our planet, “said Amelia Ortiz-Gil, head of the initiative” The Moon in your hands. “
The project ‘Luna touch’, which has received a grant of 4,000 euros, is the design and creation of a sphere of the moon in relief so that the blind can touch this star as we see in the night sky, although including also the dark side.
To do this, from the satellite completely mapped by the spacecraft Clementine of NASA, will design the relief of the lunar surface and will highlight the major craters and seas. Moreover, “we plan to create a file of the moon dial highlighted in a format suitable for printing in three dimensions, which will be made freely available to the public so that people who wish to print and bring the moon his blind public, “said Ortiz-Gil.
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On June 3, 2010 started the first full simulation of a manned mission to Mars. The project is part of the program Mars500 Russian institute IBMP ( Institute of Biomedical Problems ) to study human factors in interplanetary travel. Just one year later, the crew members are ‘back’ without incident from the red planet.
(Funny portrait of the crew with red goggles. Image: ESA.)
“It’s hard to believe that a year has passed!”. So begins the entry in the diary of the mission Diego Urbina, one of the European part of the crew of a simulated voyage of 520 days. This is the last and most important of the experiments included in the program Mars500 , which began in 2007 as a project of the Russian institute IBMP ( Institute of Biomedical Problems ), and in which the ESA is also participating.
The first phase consisted of a simulation of 14 days during which validated the facilities and operating protocols. During the second, developed in 2009, four Russians and two Europeans remained in the form of confinement for 105 days.
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The first stages of the young star L1448-MM is characterized by the presence of molecular gas jets of water vapor away from the protostar. This is reflected in the results of a study involving two Spanish researchers, presented at the International Congress ‘The Molecular Universe’ held this week in Toledo.
(The observations of a solar-type young star revealed the presence of water moving at high speeds. The images were obtained with the HIFI instrument installed in the space observatory Herschel. Image: WISH / CAB.)
Located in the constellation Perseus, a distance of 750 light years, is the object L1448-MM, a young solar-type star formation process. These early stages in the life of a star is characterized by the presence of bipolar jets winds or molecular gas away from the protostar.
The presence of water vapor and its location in these bipolar jets was well known. Thanks to the HIFI instrument on board the Space Telescope HerschelNot only have discovered large amounts of water vapor in the vicinity of the protostar, but has found that the gas away from it at very high speeds.
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After removal of the LISA project NASA, the European Space Agency initiates steps to adapt to a new mission scenario, which aims to detect signals from different sources of gravitational radiation. Scientists at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC-IEEC) and the Universitat de les Illes Balears involved in the project with support from the National Center for Particle Physics, Astroparticle and Nuclear (CPAN), Consolider 2010.
(Recreation LISA mission. Credits: ESA)
In February 2011, the European Space Agency (ESA) Initiated a process to choose the next important task in its space program in 2015-2025. Among the candidates is the first gravitational wave observatory in space, called LISA (Short for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), in which NASA has worked from the beginning.
However, due to the extra cost on the mission of the James Webb Space Telescope and the priorities established by the Astronomy Decadal Surveyin August 2010, the U.S. space agency recently announced the inability to collaborate in LISA in financial terms agreed to co-financing in the time required by the ESA. Thus, the European agency has just begun the process of redesigning LISA to make it compatible with a European single budget, a process involving Spanish scientists.
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The explanation has been completed thanks to a new method to describe all the possible ways in which neutrons and protons in a nucleus can bind
Carbon is the basis for the suit life forms known, but the Big Bang did not produuce carbon, where it comes from then? To explain, more than 50 years ago, the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle calculated that when a star in the center of three helium nuclei come together, it is difficult to combine to form carbon-12 in the form as we know it. So he suggested the existence of a new state of carbon 12 with an energy suitable to make possible the formation of carbon in stars. This new state called the state of Hoyle. Subsequent experiments showed that this carbon was there, but nobody has been able to reproduce the state of Hoyle “from below”, from the known interactions between protons and neutrons.
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The winds faster come from galaxies containing active galactic nuclei brighter
Massive flows of molecular gas that escape galaxies have been observed directly for the first time ESA Herschel Space Observatory. The winds recorded to be extraordinary for both size and speed: The fastest observed so far moves at a speed of more than one thousand kilometers per second.
The discovery is significant because its stars form the interstellar gas in galaxies and streams as intense as those found in some of them could herald the arrest of the formation of new stars in those cosmic structures.
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The Gaia satellite, European Space Agency, will map the sky with unprecedented accuracy and help us create the most comprehensive map of stars in our galaxy.
(Artist concept of the Gaia mission. Image: ESA)
Star Systems Group of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) organizes a scientific conference, entitled “Star Clusters and Associations”, aims to analyze the new opportunities that will provide astrophysics commissioning of Gaia, A satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) to be launched in late 2012 and will prepare a census of larger stars in our galaxy and discover hundreds of thousands of new cosmic objects, such as new extrasolar planets, asteroids and multiple systems.
The meeting will focus on the role played by the data Gaia in understanding the formation, evolution and destruction of star clusters. These objects are groupings of stars drawn together by gravity that are born of the same cloud of gas and, therefore, have the same chemical composition, the same age and are located at the same distance.
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The fifth dwarf planet in the solar system, Haumea, and at least one of its two satellites, maintained crystalline water ice due to the tidal forces between them and the heat of radioactive elements. This is reflected in an international, with Spanish participation, observations made with the Very Large Telescope European Southern Observatory in Chile.
Beyond Neptune’s orbit moves the tiny and strange planet Haumea. Presents a-ball rugby flattening about 2,000 km long, which gives a full rotation in less than four hours, with one of the fastest speeds in the solar system. The crystalline ice covering the planet and its two satellites (Hi’iaka and Namaka) makes them glow in the darkness of space.
Now an international team of researchers has confirmed that 75% of Haumea and 100% of Hi’iaka (about 400 km in diameter) are covered with crystalline water ice (with ordered structure), and not, as expected, by disorganized amorphous ice by solar radiation. The study suggests that the planet is formed by the outer layer and ice inner fraction between 88% and 97% rock (with a density of 3.5 g/cm3).
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Scientists of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), including those of the CNRS (IN2P3 and INSU) and CEA / IRFU, have produced the largest map of the distant universe in three dimensions and it never obtained, using the light of the brightest objects in the cosmos through the clouds of intergalactic hydrogen. The card offers a unique glimpse of the universe as it existed there 11 billion years.
Quasars are extremely bright objects whose energy comes from giant black holes. They are visible to billions of light years away. When light from a quasar makes his long journey to Earth , it passes through clouds of gas that intergalactic hydrogen absorb light at specific wavelengths, depending on the distance of the clouds. This absorption prints an irregular pattern in the light of the quasar known as the “Lyman-alpha forest.
An observation of a single quasar provides a map (one dimension) of hydrogen along the line of sight to the quasar. If there is enough quasars, one can draw a map in three dimensions: that is what makes the statement Boss ( Baryon oscillations spectroscopic survey ) of the project by observing SDSS-III 14 000 quasars.
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Scientists of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), including those of the CNRS (IN2P3 and INSU) and CEA / IRFU, have produced the largest map of the distant universe in three dimensions and it never obtained, using the light of the brightest objects in the cosmos through the clouds of intergalactic hydrogen. The card offers a unique glimpse of the universe as it existed there 11 billion years.