The Parker Solar Probe is the little engine that just keeps going and going by the sun. On September 27th, it made its 17th close approach and skimmed just 7.26 million kilometers (4.51 million miles) above the sun's "surface" ...
Astronomy
Oct 6, 2023
0
55
NASA's Parker Solar Probe has racked up an impressive list of superlatives in its first five years of operations: It's the closest spacecraft to the sun, the fastest human-made object and the first mission to ever "touch ...
Space Exploration
Sep 22, 2023
0
417
On March 26, the ESA's Solar Orbiter made its closest approach to the sun so far. It ventured inside Mercury's orbit and was about one-third the distance from Earth to the sun. It was hot but worth it.
Space Exploration
May 26, 2022
0
80
There's a pretty significant disadvantage to going really fast—if you get hit with anything, even if it is small, it can hurt. So when the fastest artificial object ever—the Parker Solar Probe—gets hit by grains of ...
Space Exploration
Nov 30, 2021
0
36
In 2024, a new age of space exploration will begin when NASA sends astronauts to the moon as part of their Artemis mission, a follow-up to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
Space Exploration
Aug 5, 2021
3
1748
According to classical electromagnetism, a charged particle moving in an external magnetic field experiences a force that makes the particle's path circular. This basic law of physics are exploited in designing cyclotrons ...
Nanophysics
Apr 30, 2021
0
15
A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Stanford University has tested the viability of using a type of fungus found growing in some of the destroyed nuclear reactors at the former Chernobyl ...
Deep within Earth, swirling liquid iron generates our planet's protective magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is vital for life on Earth's surface: it shields the planet from harmful solar wind and cosmic ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 20, 2020
11
2083
The discovery of terrestrial exoplanets, planets that orbit stars outside the solar system, has been one of the most significant developments in modern astronomy. Several exoplanets lie in the "habitable zones" of stars, ...
Astronomy
Dec 15, 2019
18
617
One of the big questions physicists are trying to answer is what happened to all the antimatter in our universe. The universe was born out of a hot soup of both matter and antimatter particles (for example, the antiparticle ...
General Physics
Jun 6, 2019
1
50
