Connect with us

Published

2 years ago

on

OK, all you meteorites that are falling to Earth … You are being watched!

The ever-expanding use of security cameras, doorbell cams and vehicle dashcams have increased the number of fireballs that have been spotted streaking across the skies. And sometimes, all that visual data provides the side benefit of allowing rocks from space to be tracked and found.

Back in February of 2020, hundreds of people across Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Austria and Hungary reported seeing a bright ball of light hurtling across the morning sky, along with a loud explosion and a visible trail of dust in the sky. The event was captured by several cameras, including one that was on a cyclist’s helmet.

Composite of video observations of the Slovenia fireball from Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia. Credit: Denis Vida and colleagues.

“By combining observations from several cameras around 100 kilometers apart, a fireball’s position can be pinpointed to within 50 meters, and it’s usually fairly easy to compute its atmospheric trajectory and pre-atmospheric orbit this way,” said Dr. Denis Vida from the University of Western Ontario, who presented a paper on finding the meteorites at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2021.

Vida and his colleagues estimate the initial stony object that streaked through the sky was about one meter across and weighed roughly four metric tons. But it broke apart into at least 17 pieces.

Three fragments amounting to 720 grams have been recovered and taken to laboratories for analysis. The largest fragment that was recorded falling in the videos has an estimated mass of about ten kilograms, but is yet to be found. Vida said it may have dropped into a muddy field and may have accidentally been plowed in before its fall area was known.

Dashcam video of the fireball observed from Sesvete in Croatia. Credit: Denis Vida et al.

Vida said the pieces of the now-named Novo Mesto space rock — named after the Slovenian city near where the fragments were found — are ordinary chondrites, and the researchers are hoping to determine where in the Solar System it might have originated. Knowing where it came from could possibly reveal details of the asteroids from its original location, as well as about the early Solar System, the space rock was formed.

SkyFit software fireball calibration.Credit Vida et al 1024x528 2
Screenshot of the SkyFit software using the heights of houses and lampposts for dashcam calibration. Credit: Denis Vida et al.

Vida said the fireball’s path is in an area where there are several all-sky cameras that specifically look for fireballs and meteors. However, this fireball occurred during the day when most of those cameras are turned off.  That’s why footage recorded by the dashcams and security cameras were so important in locating the meteorites.

The researchers said this is one of only around 40 fallen space rocks that have been recovered within weeks of falling to Earth. Another famous fireball was the Chelyabinsk airburst in 2013, which was also recorded by dashcams and security cameras. A security camera caught the moment a chunk of that meteor hit a frozen lake, creating a 20-foot (6 meter) hole in the ice. Divers were able to fish out a 1/2 ton chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteorite that measured 5 feet long (1.5 meter). It broke into three pieces as scientists hoisted it into a scale to weigh it.

Lead image caption: A 48-gram piece of the Novo Mesto meteorite. Credit: Bojan Ambroži? (Center of Excellence on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Slovenia and https://bojanambrozic.com/).

Further reading:
Europlanet Press Release
Paper: Novo Mesto meteorite fall – trajectory, orbit, and fragmentation analysis from optical observations

The post By Using Dashcams and Security Cameras, Astronomers Were Able to Track Down the Location of a Meteorite appeared first on Universe Today.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.mansbrand.com/nasas-viper-rover-will-hunt-for-water-near-nobile-crater-at-moons-south-pole/

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Frontier Adventure

Chinese Astronauts May Build a Base Inside a Lunar Lava Tube

Published

8 hours ago

on

September 28, 2023

By

1080px Lava tube Big island Hawaii 44459923190 1024x683 1

Caves were some of humanity’s first shelters. Who knows what our distant ancestors were thinking as they sought refuge there, huddling and cooking meat over a fire, maybe drawing animals on the walls. Caves protected our ancient ancestors from the elements, and from predators and rivals, back when sticks, stones, furs and fire were our only technologies.

So there’s a poetic parallel between early humans and us. We’re visiting the Moon again, and lunar caves could shelter us the way caves sheltered our ancestors on Earth.

On the Moon, astronauts will need protection from a different set of hazards. They’ll have to contend with cosmic and solar radiation, meteorites, wild temperature swings, and even impact ejecta. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has found hundreds of lunar ‘skylights,’ locations where a lava tube’s ceiling has collapsed, making a natural opening into the tube. It’s hard to tell without exploring, but lava tubes several hundred meters in diameter could exist on the Moon. That’s a lot of room to work with, and they could provide the shelter astronauts will need. The idea is to build a base inside a lunar lava tube, where astronauts gain additional protection from the thick rock ceiling overhead.

China is considering the idea now, just like others before them. Lunar lava caves might be a resource too valuable to ignore.

Lava tubes are also called pyroducts. They formed when lava flowing across the surface of the Moon began to cool. The top of the flowing lava formed a hardened crust, but the molten lava kept flowing underneath it and eventually drained, leaving an empty tube. They’re here on Earth as well.

This is the entrance to a lava tube on Hawaii's Big Island. Image Credit: By dronepicr - Lava tube Big island Hawaii, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75616740
This is the entrance to a lava tube on Hawaii’s Big Island. Image Credit: By dronepicr – Lava tube Big island Hawaii, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75616740

Scientists aren’t sure when lunar volcanism ended. It may have been as far back as one billion years ago, though some evidence shows there was small-scale volcanism in the last 50 million years. In either case, these lava tubes are ancient and untouched.

On the Moon, astronauts will have to contend with the temperature swings. Earth’s natural satellite is a world of temperature extremes. One side of the Moon is in direct sunlight for half of the time, and surface temperatures reach as high as 127 Celsius (260 F.) The side that’s shrouded in darkness sinks as low as -173 C (-280 F.) That wild temperature swing makes it challenging to work on the lunar surface, and to engineer and build equipment that can be effective in such a large range. Lava tubes provide a natural steady-temperature environment that can’t be found elsewhere on the Moon.

Radiation is also hazardous on the lunar surface. It can be as much as 150 times more powerful than on Earth’s surface. That’s deadly, but in lunar caves astronauts would be sheltered by several metres of overhead rock. That’s a thick enough barrier to provide effective protection.

The risk of impacts and impact debris is much smaller, but it has to be accounted for. Obviously, lava tubes provide shelter from small impacts.

Different teams of scientists from different countries and agencies have studied the idea of using lava tubes as shelter. At a recent conference in China, Zhang Chongfeng from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology presented a study into the underground world of lava tubes. Chinese researchers did fieldwork in Chinese lava tubes to understand how to use them on the Moon.

According to Zhang, there’s enough similarity between lunar and Earthly lava tubes for one to be an analogue of the other. It starts with their two types of entrances, vertical and sloped. Both worlds have both types.

Most of what we’ve found
Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/even-tiny-amounts-of-dna-on-mars-will-be-detectable/

Continue Reading

Frontier Adventure

Even Tiny Amounts of DNA on Mars Will Be Detectable

Published

10 hours ago

on

September 28, 2023

By

shuster 2 screenshot skinner 1024x567 1

The Search for Life is focused on the search for biosignatures. Planetary life leaves a chemical fingerprint on a planet’s atmosphere, and scientists are trying to work out which chemicals in what combinations and amounts are a surefire indicator of life. Martian methane is one they’re puzzling over right now.

But new evidence suggests that super-tiny amounts of DNA can be detected in Martian rocks if it’s there. And though it requires physical samples rather than remote sensing, it’s still an intriguing development.

DNA is the gold standard for biosignatures. “DNA is an incontrovertible biosignature whose sequencing aids in species identification, genome functionality, and evolutionary relationships,” a new paper states. Advances in DNA have led to all kinds of leaps in industry, medicine, paleontology, and even criminal justice. Now, it looks like the search for life might receive similar benefits.

The new paper is “DNA sequencing at the picogram level to investigate life on Mars and Earth.” It’s published in Nature Scientific Reports, and the lead author is Jyothi Basapathi Raghavendra. Raghavendra is a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of Planetary Sciences in the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen.

“There is a slim chance that microbial life exists on Mars today, but to find it, we need to operate at the sample scale, and that’s where the size and power of the hardware that’s used in space exploration is a crucial factor,” said study co-author Javier Martin-Torres.

If this technology can be brought to bear on Martian soil samples, it could be a game-changer.

“Investigating active life forms in extremely low biomass environments is a topic of interest for expanding our knowledge of Earth’s biodiversity and the search for life on Mars,” the authors write.

NASA's Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called
NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Perseverance gathered an important sample of sedimentary rock here. If there’s any biomass in any of Perseverance’s samples, there will almost certainly be very little of it. But new DNA detection tools could find it. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Low biomass environments are samples with a very small number of desirable cells. The tiny amount of material makes them more difficult to study, and they present problems to researchers because they’re more easily contaminated. With such a tiny amount of genetic material, it’s also harder to accurately amplify them without errors. “Hence, for the study of low concentrations of DNA, there is a need for new technologies with improved efficiency, sensitivity, and specificity,” the authors write.

The new method is called nanopore technology. A nanopore is simply a really, really tiny hole. Basically, researchers pass an electric current through the nanopore, and if something—a strand of DNA, in this case—passes through the pore, it changes the current. Different changes tell scientists different things about the DNA. Group a couple thousand of these nanopores into one tool, and you’re really onto something.

A company named Oxford Nanopore Technologies developed a tool named MinION to sequence DNA in this way. They say they can sequence any fragment of DNA or RNA from short to ultra-long. They can also do it with as little as two picograms of material. (A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram.) “This result is an excellent advancement in sensitivity, immediately applicable to investigating low biomass samples,” the authors of the study write.

“We aim to push the technology even further for when the Mars Sample Return mission returns in 2033.”

Clive Brown, CTO, Oxford Nanopore
Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/its-official-no-more-astronomy-at-arecibo/

Continue Reading

Frontier Adventure

It’s Official. No More Astronomy at Arecibo

Published

12 hours ago

on

September 28, 2023

By

Arecibo NAIC credit

Even though the National Science Foundation announced last year that it would not rebuild or replace the iconic Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico — which collapsed in 2020 – a glimmer of hope remained among supporters that the remaining astronomy infrastructure would be utilized in some way.  

Instead, the NSF announced this week they have chosen four institutions to transition the site from its historic hub of astronomical research to a STEM educational outreach center, with a seeming focus on biology. A biomedical laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York along with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) and the University of the Sacred Heart, both in San Juan will oversee the new education center.

NSF said they will invest over $5 million in the site over five years to create the Arecibo Center for Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Science Education, Computational Skills, and Community Engagement (Arecibo C3). According to a press release, NSF said the site “will serve as a catalyst for increased and inclusive engagement in a broad range of science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines, cutting-edge research and workforce development initiatives by students, teachers, researchers, local communities and the public within and outside of Puerto Rico.” It is scheduled to open in early 2024.

Previously, before the telescope’s collapse, NSF contributed about $7.5 million annually to the operation of the site.

Arecibo NAIC credit 1
Arecibo Observatory in its heyday. Credit: NSF.

Iconic History

The Arecibo telescope was a 305 m (1,000 ft) spherical reflector radio telescope built into a natural sinkhole and located near Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It was completed in 1963 and for over 50 years (until the China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) was complete in 2016) it was the world’s largest single-aperture telescope. It was used in three major areas of research: radio astronomy, atmospheric science, and radar astronomy.

The facility contributed to significant breakthroughs in astronomy and cosmology, including the discovery of the first binary pulsar, the first-millisecond pulsar, and the first exoplanets, along with helping to study asteroids and planets in the Solar System. In addition, the facility has also played an important role in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The observatory has appeared in movies, television shows and more, and is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places.

Issues for the telescope began in 2017 when Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, shearing off one of the 29-meter (96-foot) antennas suspended above dish, with falling debris puncturing the dish in several places. In early 2020, earthquakes temporarily closing the observatory for safety reasons; then a succession of cable failures ultimately led to the December 2020 collapse of the 900-ton instrument platform suspended above the observatory, which crashed down on the iconic telescope’s giant dish.

WEBAreciboDishDamage 1024x683 1
Damage at the Arecibo Observatory in August, 2020. Credit: NSF/NAIC

Other Options

Since the collapse, many called for the telescope to be rebuilt or for building an even better replacement telescope at the site. A group of astronomers have proposed building a site with 102 13-meter dishes to create a “next generation” Arecibo observatory, arranging them in a fixed circular array 130 meters across. This would be less than half
Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/how-do-lava-worlds-become-earth-like-living-planets/

Continue Reading

Trending