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The European Space Agency’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission will be launched in 2034 and will study gravitational waves in more depth. Just last year, astronomers declared they had spotted two gravitational waves – or ripples in space - for the first time, validating Albert Einstein’s 100 year old theory. The consequence of the discovery has been enormous, with it opening up many diverse realms in the world of physics. Since the first discovery, two more gravitational waves have been found, and researchers are looking to discover more. The LISA mission will let researchers to sense gravitational waves on the edge of the observable universe and ultimately open a world of information that physicists are uncertain of. ESA's director of science, Alvaro Giménez Cañete, told the BBC : "We have no idea what we will discover, but perhaps we can get closer to the line that divides gravity from quantum physics. This may take us there.” LISA consist of three satellites ...

Uranus is all over the place. It spins weirdly, its magnetic field is off-center, and now we’ve just found out it may open and shut its magnetosphere every day, too.  The research by Xin Cao and Carol Paty from the Georgia Institute of Technology was published in the  Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics .  Modeling the system around Uranus, they found that its magnetosphere occasionally opens up to allow solar wind through. This seemed to happen almost every day, about every 17 Earth hours. This opening and closing happens around Earth, and it’s called  magnetic reconnection  – where the magnetic field lines of our magnetosphere and the solar wind align. This produces aurorae at its poles, and it’s likely doing the same at Uranus. But at Earth, this process is fairly irregular. At Uranus, it seems to be much more frequent. “As it is tumbling around, the magnetosphere’s orientation is changing in all sorts of directions,” Paty told  New Scien...

A planet-size object may be orbiting the sun in the icy reaches of the solar system beyond Pluto. Scientists at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) have determined that an unseen object with a mass somewhere between that of Earth and Mars could be lurking in the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond Neptune filled with thousands of icy asteroids, comets and dwarf planets. A planetary-mass object the size of Mars may be lurking in the outer solar system. Credit: Heather Roper/LPL In January 2016, a separate group of scientists predicted the existence of a Neptune-size planet orbiting the sun far, far beyond Pluto — about 25 times farther from the sun than Pluto is. This hypothetical planet was dubbed "Planet Nine," so if both predictions are correct, one of these putative objects could be the solar system's 10th planet. The so-called "planetary-mass object" described by the scientists from LPL appears to affect the orbits of a population ...

Wormholes have long been considered to exist only in the realms of science fiction, but some physicists believe the theoretical portals could be real, and there could be one relatively close by. Wormholes, which were predicted by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity, are areas where space and time are bent to manipulate the distance. It would take a huge mass to produce the manipulation of spacetime, and no natural examples have ever been found. However, experts from the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, say they are possible, and could be hiding within dark matter inside the Milky Way. Professor Paulo Salucci, said: "If we combine the map of the dark matter in the Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe, and we hypothesise the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the size of the galaxy itself. "But there'...

The big bang postures a big question: if it was truly the cataclysm that blasted our cosmos into reality 13.7 billion years ago, what sparked it? A group of three researchers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo suggest that the big bang might be the three-dimensional "mirage" of a collapsing star in a universe deeply different than our own. The event horizon of a black hole — the point of no return for anything that falls in — is a sphere-shaped surface. In a higher-dimensional cosmos, a black hole might have a three-dimensional event horizon, which could seed a whole new universe as it forms. So technically it might be the time to bid the Big Bang bye-bye. Cosmologists have proposed that the Universe formed from the wreckages expelled when a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole — a situation that would help to clarify why the cosmos appears to be so uniform in all directions. You can learn more about their amazing th...

Venera was a series of satellites launched by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to study Venus’ environment. It was also the program aimed at returning the first images of the surface of another planet. Over the course of the program, thirteen probes successfully reached Venus and transmitted data about planetary neighbour, eight landed successfully on the surface, and four returned pretty outstanding images. Watch the video below for details:

Ever since being laughed off by Einstein as “ spooky action at a distance ,” quantum entanglement has come a far way. For those who do not know what quantum entanglement is, simply stated, quantum entanglement is a peculiar phenomenon of our complex cosmos whenever two (or more) particles basically conjoin and instantaneously affect each other, regardless of their distance. Think of it as two coins-- if you observed one of the coins to be heads, the other is guaranteed to be tails. This will occur between particles if they’re one millimeter apart, or on the other side of the great cosmos. Quantum entanglement is proving to be useful for applications in quantum computing and hack-proof banking, regardless of what Einstein thought on the matter. Quantum mechanics and entanglement is driving the modern world further. A new study allowed Chinese scientists to successfully achieve entanglement among photons between a satellite and earth at a distance of over 1,200 kilometers, equal to 1,93...

We hear a lot about Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and that’s because we have extremely fancy hardware floating around and, in some cases, cruising on the surface of those planets. The planets that lie further away from the Sun don’t get nearly as much attention, but they may soon, as NASA is currently spitballing some missions that will give us a better look at Uranus than we’ve ever gotten. The theoretical missions, which would see NASA spacecraft heading to both Uranus and Neptune, would be of huge scientific benefit. The idea is to determine what the planets are made of, get an idea of the atmospheric composition, and take lots of fantastic photographs, too.  Researchers hope to study the weather and overall climate of the planets, while determining how they fit into the overall makeup of our Solar System. Both Uranus and Neptune still hold many secrets yet to be revealed, and the proposed missions would include both flybys and an orbiter that would send an atmospheric probe to U...

Almost two centuries ago, a theory that is accepted by whole scientific community was proposed by chemist John Dalton. All matter and objects are made up of particles called atoms .  Atoms are made up of an incredibly miniscule nucleus and even tinier electrons that move around the nucleus at quite the distance from the center. To fully understand this concept, an example has to be made. Imagine a table that is a billion times larger than what you are accustomed to-- stretch your imagination. Upon this table of enormous size, its atoms would equate to the size of the average melon and even then, the nucleus and electrons of the atom would be far too small to see. Fascinating. If there are such vast spaces within the atom, why don’t our fingers pass through the atom? Why doesn’t light pass through the empty space? The answer to this question is to be found within the electrons of the atom.  In order to fully comprehend the concept, one has to forget what they think they know ab...

Asgardia, a rather strange effort to initiate a nation in space, has declared it wants to ultimately build a space station in Earth orbit and on the Moon. In a press conference yesterday in Hong Kong, Asgardia also revealed its plans to launch its primary satellite, Asgardia-1, in autumn this year. Asgardia claims to become the world’s first space nation. It plans to launch a small cubesat on an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft from Wallops Island, Virginia in September. Mainly a flying 512gb hard drive, this will be deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) by NanoRacks, and orbit Earth for five years. People who have already signed up online to join the space nation, called Asgardians, will be able to send data onto the cubesat. While this is maybe envisioned to be photos and messages, there is the probability this could be some kind of data harbor for illegal content. Asgardia told New Scientist , though, that they would filter any data before it is uploaded. Each person can...

Astronomers have finally figure out how old Jupiter is. According to a recent study , the gas giant's main core had already grown to be 20 times more massive than Earth just 1 million years after the sun formed. Lead author of this study, Thomas Kruijer, of the University of Munster in Germany and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said in a statement : "Jupiter is the oldest planet of the solar system, and its solid core formed well before the solar nebula gas dissipated, consistent with the core-accretion model for giant planet formation," Jupiter is not only the largest planet in our solar system, but it’s also the oldest, according to a new study. Credit: NASA Some 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system coalesced from an enormous cloud of gas and dust. The sun formed first, and the planets then accreted from the leftover material spinning around the newborn star in a vast disc. Theoretical work powerfully proposes that Jupiter took form pretty earl...

NASA has been working determinedly to find dangers that Earth face from space, and has said that it has discovered 10 new asteroids which it considers could damage life on Earth. This vital discovery was made by NASA’s asteroid identifying mission – Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or NEOWISE. Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE main researcher from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said :  “NEOWISE is not only discovering previously uncharted asteroids and comets, but it is providing excellent data on many of those already in our catalog. It is also proving to be an invaluable tool in in the refining and perfecting of techniques for near-Earth object discovery and characterization by a space-based infrared observatory.” On top of the 10 “potentially hazardous” objects, NASA says that they have discovered 97 others pace rocks and observed a baffling spike in comet activity. Emily Kramer, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at JPL and lead author of pa...

According to a recent news from Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2017) located in Beijing, China is planning and preparing for a manned lunar landing. At a group interview, Yang Liwei, deputy director general of China Manned Space Agency and China’s first astronaut in 2003, made a comment on the subject , saying that they were making “preliminary preparations for a manned lunar landing.” Similar to the manned Apollo missions, the manned spacecraft would be launched in different segments— more specifically— the manned capsule and lunar lander. Zinhua (Yang Liwei) stated that they would then rendezvous in lunar orbit. The plans for such a great lunar landing were confirmed by Wu Yangsheng— president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). China also stated last year that they plan to effectuate this feat by 2036. However, details and further information is currently lacking. Although it should be mentioned that China has been making enormous progress in sp...

It is a stunning new view of one of mankind's greatest achievements. A new short film has used digital effects to turn thousands of NASA images of the Apollo missions into a short film. Called Lunar, it uses techniques such as stop motion and panoramic stitching to bring the photographs to life.

Throughout the exploration of our gigantic universe and the massive findings made almost daily, scientists appear to edge closer towards the discovery of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Because of this possibility, scientists began estimating possible communication strategies with extraterrestrial intelligence. Clearly a language from another planet will be incredibly unfathomable to humans, so a new alternative demands to be found. Carl de Vito from University of Arizona in Tucson believes that a new substitute exists... Mathematics. De Vito believes that if aliens are ever encountered by us humans, math is the indispensable, primary key in communicating with them, for it is a language based on universal scientific beliefs and observations. Carl De Vito said the following to Space.com : “Maybe extraterrestrial intelligence will have similar ideas and thereby make themselves known to us.” Then, he proposed a counterargument to his claim by saying that the ideas of aliens may possibly di...