The

Eclectic

Newsletter

Vol. 1, No. 6

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Time for your bi-weekly dose of the new, strange, and interesting.

Let’s head into space for this issue.

Space Has Turned Astro-Science on its Head

An artist’s impression of the size and location of the Big Ring (blue) and Giant Arc (red) in the sky. (University of Central Lancashire/Stellarium)

Cosmology has had a big upset with the discovery of two large structures.

No, not structures, as in buildings.

But structure as in formations of celestial objects.

Scientists have found a ring of galaxies. It is almost perfectly circular and more than a billion light-years in diameter. However, further examination posits the theory that the Big Ring is corkscrew-shaped, and we can see only the cylindrical end.

The Big Ring is the second anomaly making researchers question everything they know about the formations in space.

In 2021, the Giant Arc was discovered in the same part of the sky. It is approximately the same distance from Earth as the Big Ring.

The Cosmological Principle states that, in all directions, any given patch of space should look pretty much the same. These formations throw that principle into chaos.

The size and shape of these structures defies explanation under the current framework based on all previous observations.

Water on Mars?!? Maybe a billion years ago…

The NASA rover Perseverance has explored the Jezero crater on Mars, finding at least three areas where sediment proves the existence of water on the Red Planet.

The first area showed fine-grained sand and dried mud, indicating flowing water at some point. Exploration of the second area suggested that the crater held a lake approximately 22 miles wide and 100 feet deep.

The third area explored discovered boulders, rounded by moving through fast-running water.

You can watch an artist’s animated rendering here.

Cleaning Up Near-Space

Closer to home, companies in Japan and Australia plan to team up to vaporize junk in space.

Various space junk, or debris, whirls around the Earth at phenomenal rates of speed.

So much so that even the tiniest particles can create mega-hazards to other orbiting objects, like spaceships and satellites.

A consortium of companies is banding together to create a laser system to vaporize these particles.

But it’s not like what you’d see in the movies.

They expect to use the laser, fired in pulses behind the object, to slow it down enough that it will fall into the atmosphere and burn up.

Their current focus is on particles of approximately 4 inches in diameter.

I don’t know about you, but I have trouble seeing something as small as 4 inches from across the room.

They’ve definitely bitten off a lot with this one.

Did You Know?!? 👁️‍🗨️

There are at least half a dozen missions planned into space in 2024.

These missions are set to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa, three returning to our moon with different objectives, visits to both Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos, and one return visit to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system.

And I’m sure there will be countless launches of various rockets planting satellites in Earth orbit.

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