The solar wind produces water on asteroids, which transport it to Earth Original broadcast 04 December 2021 Researchers have found evidence that particles emitted from the sun may have helped give Earth its seas and oceans. The team included Hope Ishii, a research professor at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. They studied dust from an ancient asteroid and found evidence that the “solar wind” – charged hydrogen particles flowing from the sun – may have combined with dust grains to create water, which would then have traveled to Earth after its formation planet 4.6 billion years ago. The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Quirks and Quarks7:08 Solar wind and space dust may explain the presence of much of Earth’s water Solar winds are streams of hydrogen and helium ions that constantly flow out of the sun. When these hydrogen ions hit space dust or asteroids, they can break chemical bonds and interact with the oxygen present in the rock to create water. (BRIAN BIELMANN/AFP via Getty Images) Ridges on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa could mean water — and life Originally Posted on April 23, 2022 Jupiter’s moon Europa has fascinated planetary scientists because they believe that beneath its 30km-thick icy shell is a vast ocean of water, and the water could mean life. Now, new research, led in part by PhD student Riley Culberg, suggests that icy ridges spotted on the moon could mean water is closer to the surface than previously thought, meaning it might be easier for future missions to Europe to explore it. The paper was published in the journal Nature communications. A 75-kilometer stretch of Chile’s Atacama Desert today is covered in broken sheets of natural glass. Now researchers have detected material in that glass that suggests it was formed when a comet exploded in the atmosphere and its heat melted the desert soil. Peter Schultz of Brown University says the heat from the explosion melted the ground across a nearly 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch of desert into shards, balls and small slabs of glass, heating the ground to more than 1,700 degrees Celsius. The study was published in the journal GeoScienceWorld. A strip of the Atacama Desert in Chile is dotted with glass plates, which scientists say were created by the intense heat of an exploding comet. (Scott Harris) Astronauts in Labrador get a taste of lunar geology Original broadcast November 27, 2021 To prepare for the return to the moon, geologist Gordon Osinski took Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and an American colleague to a 35-million-year-old crater in northern Labrador to teach them about impact crater geology. It was just like the moon, except for the rain, howling winds and predatory black flies. Astronomers have known for several decades that Earth and our sun sit in the middle of a cosmic bubble, 1000 light years across, known as the Local Bubble. A new study has traced its history and evolution, explaining why this region of space is strangely empty and why a burst of star formation has occurred at its edge. It was developed by a team that included Catherine Zucker from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Quirks and Quarks10:07 Earth is at the center of a cosmic bubble created by a supernova Labeled image of the local bubble (Leah Hustak, Space Telescope Science Institute) Seeing Gravitational Waves from the Biggest Things in the Universe Originally broadcast February 5, 2022 Astronomers believe that when galaxies collide, the titanic black holes at their cores, weighing up to a hundred million or even a billion suns, fall into tight orbits around each other and emit low-frequency gravitational waves in the process. Astrophysical Maura McLaughlin of West Virginia University is involved in a new project that aims to use pulsars—a special kind of neutron star—to measure these elusive ripples in spacetime. Her team’s preliminary results were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Quirks and Quarks8:07Seeing gravitational waves from the biggest things in the universe
