Cosmology is at a Crossroads, But New Instruments are Coming to Help

By Brian Koberlein - December 05, 2024 11:48 AM UTC | Cosmology
Thanks to Hubble, JWST, and the Planck mission, we're starting to see cracks in the current ideas in cosmology, expressed by the Hubble Tension, the Cosmic Shear Tension, and the role dark energy plays in the expansion of the Universe over time. Good news: powerful new instruments are already surveying the Universe and should measure any deviations from the widely held cosmological models. It's a fun time to be an astronomer.
Continue reading

MeerKAT Confirms the Gravitational Wave Background of the Universe in Record Time

By Brian Koberlein - December 04, 2024 02:42 PM UTC | Cosmology
Astronomers are collecting evidence for the gravitational wave background of the Universe, caused by merging supermassive black holes. Now, the MeerKAT radio telescope has confirmed the discovery first made by the NANOGrav experiment, but in a third of the time. For the last five years, MeerKAT has monitored dozens of millisecond pulsars once a week, detecting subtle changes in their radio emissions as gravitational waves flow by.
Continue reading

Maybe Venus Was Never Habitable

By Brian Koberlein - December 04, 2024 11:02 AM UTC | Planetary Science
The planetary science community argues back and forth about when Venus was last habitable. Did it lose its oceans billions of years ago, or more recently? A new paper suggests that Venus has been a hellscape for its entire history. No oceans, ever. This result comes from the ratio of atmospheric chemicals and how quickly they're replenished by volcanic outgassing. On Earth, volcanic eruptions are mostly steam from interior water, but on Venus, they're 6% water at most.
Continue reading