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'Mathematically perfect' star system discovered 105 light-years from Earth may still be in its infancy. Could that change its prospects for life?
December 30, 2024
Tucked away in the constellation Coma Berenices just 105 light-years from Earth, the star HD 110067 is a hidden gem of the Milky Way.
This parent star has guided its litter of six exoplanets to orbit in a cosmic waltz, locked in rhythmic timing by gravitational forces.
Synchronicity like this takes practice — but new research suggests that the star's elegant sextuplet system might be billions of years younger than previously thought.
If so, it might dwindle down the candidates for life-supporting planets in this anomalous system.
Previous studies that used the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram — a tried-and-true chart that traces a star's age through its luminosity and temperature — placed the star at about 8 billion years old.
But for stars less massive than the sun, this method may falter, according to Klaus-Peter Schröder, an astronomer at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.
So Schröder and his colleagues set out to reappraise the star's age by examining other characteristics: its activity levels and rotation rate.
Their new study puts HD 110067 at a relatively spry 2.5 billion years old — roughly 5.5 billion years younger than initially estimated. The team's research was published Nov. 22 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"A star like our sun that's halfway through its life cycle is moderately active," Schröder said. "But this star is a lot more active than that."
Next, the team analyzed the star's "spin-down" — a gradual braking of rotation that all stars experience. HD 110067 takes about 20 Earth days to complete one spin, placing it in the earlier stages of its deceleration.
(For comparison, the older and slower sun takes at least 27 days to rotate once on its axis, according to NASA.)
With this information, the researchers looked for analogue stars — such as the stellar doppelgänger Sigma Draconis in the northern constellation Draco — to zero in on HD 110067's epoch in life.
"Because these stars have similar evolution tracks and rotation rates, we can understand what point the star is at in its lifetime," said lead study author Maddie Loupien, an astronomy master’s student at Sorbonne University in Paris.
The calcium lines and spin rate led the team to calculate an age of about 2.5 billion years for HD 110067 — give or take 800 million years.
Even if this measurement could be more precise, it still paints a far more lifelike portrait of the star's age than the figure derived from the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, according to Adam Burgasser, an exoplanet host star researcher at the University of California, San Diego who was not involved in the research.
"This team really did their due diligence to double-check the star's age with robust methods," Burgasser said.
This truer estimate should also help astronomers understand how the star's surrounding exoplanets have evolved, he added.
Possibilities of life?
The perfect clockwork of HD 110067's planets doesn't necessarily require long-term parenting from a middle-aged star.
Rather, according to Schröder, it may have taken as little as 1 billion years for some of the inner planets to begin rehearsing their careful dance through a gravitational phenomenon called tidal locking — meaning one side of a planet perpetually faces its host star, much like the fixed face of Earth's moon.
D 110067's unexpected youth may also shine a new light on exoplanet environments. So far, all six known planets in the system orbit close to their parent star, where conditions are too scorching for life to arise.
But current exoplanet detection methods favor planets with smaller orbits. More planets may yet revolve farther from HD 110067 in its habitable zone and accordingly have milder climates, Schröder said.
But temperature is just one factor; younger stars also spew lethal doses of X-rays and gamma rays. In turn, HD 110067's newly refined age may limit the possibility of life on these unseen alien worlds.
https://www.space.com/the-universe/exoplanets/mathematically-perfect-star-system-discovered-105-light-years-from-earth-may-still-be-in-its-infancy-could-that-change-its-prospects-for-life
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/11/aa51619-24/aa51619-24.html
New flexible 'metamaterial' inspired by nature could help us build shapeshifting space habitats and telescopes
December 30, 2024
In living things, structures are built from simple, repeatable patterns. These often come in the form of a disorganized lattice.
Large structures, like bones or coral, emerge from repeated rounds of growth of a fundamental pattern that builds off of itself in a haphazard way.
Despite this apparent disorganization, the resulting structures can acquire a variety of shapes and have surprising strengths, versatility and other useful properties.
Most importantly, the resulting structure often has properties that the underlying lattice unit doesn't possess.
For example, individual bone cells or coral polyp skeletons aren't very strong, but when they work together, they can support huge animals or gigantic underwater colonies.
Drawing inspiration from nature, engineers have sought to repeat this flexibility with human-designed materials.
The goal is to make useful materials that can be built from the repeated growth of an underlying pattern, where the new structure acquires properties that the underlying pattern doesn't have alone.
An advance beyond that is the study of metamaterials, which are structures that can change their shape or properties through the application of a simple external force, like an electric field or compression.
These kinds of materials are especially interesting for applications in space. We would love to launch a payload of simple materials and then have those materials assemble — and reassemble — themselves in space.
This would avoid the challenges of testing and launch-proofing large, complex structures, like habitats and telescopes, and give us the flexibility to change those structures if mission needs are updated.
One promising kind of metamaterial is known as a totimorphic lattice. The basic component of this lattice is a triangular structure.
On one side is a fixed beam with a ball joint in the center. An arm attaches to that ball joint, and the other end of the arm is attached to the ends of the fixed beam with two springs.
When many of these shapes are attached together, the resulting structure can morph into a wide variety of shapes and structures, all with very minimal input.
This gives the totimorphic lattice incredible flexibility.
In a recent paper, scientists with the European Space Agency's Advanced Concepts Team took a major leap in advancing totimorphic lattices from a hypothetical idea to practical applications.
One major question with these lattices was how to reconfigure a large structure into another shape without the lattice getting tangled and how to accomplish that transformation as efficiently as possible.
The researchers developed a computer simulation of totimorphic lattices and figured out how to optimize the transformation of one shape into another.
They showcased their new technique with two examples. In the first, they designed a simple habitat structure that could change its shape and stiffness.
Future space explorers could deploy the same kind of material to build a variety of habitat modules.
These modules would hold their shape until they were reprogrammed to change their form and fulfill some other need.
In the second example, the researchers designed a flexible space telescope. With totimorphic lattices, the telescope could change its focal length by adapting the curvature of its lens.
This would enable the launch of a single, multipurpose telescope that could adapt and readapt to provide the optimal observation strategies for various targets.
This work is still preliminary, however. Totimorphic lattices are still hypothetical; we don't actually have any of these materials that you could hold in your hands, let alone build into space telescopes.
But this research is crucial for advancing humanity into space. The cost and difficulty of launching materials into space mean that we need flexible, adaptable structures that are cheap to launch and easy to deploy.
By drawing inspiration from nature and investigating the surprising properties of metamaterials, we may be getting closer to achieving our futuristic space goals.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/tech/new-flexible-metamaterial-inspired-by-nature-could-help-us-build-shapeshifting-space-habitats-and-telescopes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.15266
Watch India launch 2 satellites on a space docking test flight on Dec. 30
December 29, 2024
India will launch an ambitious space docking test flight on Monday (Dec. 30) that could set the stage for a future mission to the moon.
The India Space Research Organisation will launch the two small satellites of its Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) atop an Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on Monday.
Liftoff is set for 11:30 a.m. EST (10 p.m. IST, 1628 GMT) from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
You can watch the SpaDeX mission launch live online via ISRO's YouTube livestream, which is expected to begin at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT).
The SpaDeX mission will launch two satellites, a Target and a Chaser, on a mission to test autonomous docking technology in orbit. But ISRO hopes to do more than just test automatic docking gear.
The mission also includes a secondary payload module with 24 different experiments aboard, including a small robotic arm.
Scientists hope to test the arm and other payloads after docking in a payload operations demonstration, and also test dual spacecraft control and power transfer between the docked spacecraft.
"This technology is essential for India's space ambitions such as Indian on Moon, sample return from the Moon, the building and operation of Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), etc.," ISRO officials wrote in an mission overview, using the official name to India's planned space station.
"In-space docking technology is essential when multiple rocket launches are required to achieve common mission objectives."
The docking technology will be vital ISRO's planned Chandrayaan-4 mission to the moon, which aims to return samples to Earth from the lunar south pole.
A sample-return vehicle will have to dock in lunar orbit to transfer to sample to a return capsule.
The ability to dock autonomously is also required for space station construction and operation as ISRO develops its human spaceflight program.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/india-spadex-space-docking-satellites-launch
https://www.youtube.com/live/_OBGAiJrjJU
China’s space agency faces leadership change amid shake-up
December 30, 2024
China appears set for a leadership transition at its national space agency, with Zhang Kejian expected to step down after being removed from a top position.
Zhang, 63, who has been head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) since May 2018, is to be removed as Party Secretary of the State Administration for National Defense Science, Technology, and Industry (SASTIND), the agency announced Dec. 26. Shan Zhongde, 54, has been appointed as his replacement.
The leader of SASTIND typically also heads CNSA and the China Atomic Energy Authority, both of which are subordinate agencies to SASTIND. CNSA has yet to announce the expected change.
Shan was earlier this year promoted to one of the vice ministers of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). MIIT is the parent agency of SASTIND. Zhang Keijan is also an MIIT vice minister.
Before this, Shan served as president of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which was sanctioned under the first Trump administration for its ties to China’s military-industrial complex.
Shan earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Xi’an University of Technology in 1996 and held positions at the China Academy of Machinery Science and Technology.
The head of CNSA oversees the implementation of China’s national space policy and ensures alignment with broader goals, such as technological self-reliance, national security, and global leadership in space, and plays a key role in bilateral and multilateral agreements, including attracting partners for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
The administrator also coordinates with key space groups including the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSEO.
The head of CNSA serves as a spokesperson for its achievements and a figurehead for international engagement.
During Zhang’s tenure China has made the first landing on the far side of the moon, collected lunar samples from the near and far sides, landed a rover on Mars, constructed the modular Tiangong space station, completed the Beidou navigation system and initiated a program to put astronauts on the moon by 2030.
Zhang was named among the 100 most influential people of 2019 by Time.
Shan is expected to take over as the crewed lunar program progresses and the country continues to attempt to attract countries and other entities to join the ILRS.
It is not clear from the terse announcement what is next for Zhang Kejian. The announcement does not provide any specific reason for Zhang Kejian’s removal.
Such changes may be routine, related to reassignment, promotion or retirement, or could indicate underlying issues, such as poor performance, policy disagreements, or investigations.
Previous CNSA heads such as Tang Dengjie, Xu Dazhe and Ma Xingrui have gone on to be promoted to leaders of Chinese provinces or autonomous regions.
Meanwhile, two senior officials at the top of CASC, China’s main space contractor, were removed within the last year, following reports of corruption afflicting the People’s Liberation Army.
Zhang was one of the longest-serving CNSA administrators since the agency’s foundation in 1993.
https://spacenews.com/chinas-space-agency-faces-leadership-change-amid-shake-up/
https://web.archive.org/web/20241226134552/https://www.sastind.gov.cn/n10086200/n10086344/c10640100/content.html
President Jimmy Carter swore he saw a UFO and vowed to reveal the TRUTH… but he never did. So what happened, asks SHANE CASHMAN
Updated: 09:00 EST, 30 December 2024
One Georgia night in 1969, Jimmy Carter looked up over the pine trees and saw a moving orb, as bright as the moon.
He was standing outside the local Lions' Club in Leary, where he was planning to address the meeting. But local politicking quickly vanished from his mind.
The orb 'seemed to move toward us from a distance, stop, move partially away, return, then depart,' he said later, describing it as 'bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid.'
He called it 'the darndest thing I've ever seen.'
Carter's encounter with a UFO may pop up as a line in some of his obituaries, sandwiched between the sober analysis of his presidency and notable humanitarian work since.
And like all politicians, he should be judged for his successes and failures, in office and out. But more than just an amusing footnote, this story gives us important insight into who he was as a man.
We have almost forgotten what it's like to have leaders capable of marveling at the unknown.
For all the problems the country may have faced during his presidency, Jimmy Carter would openly consider the mysteries of life – before, during, and after his time in the White House – and he should be remembered for that.
Carter wasn't embarrassed to talk about his UFO sighting. In 1973, while serving as governor of Georgia, he filed a report documenting the sighting with the International UFO Bureau.
He later said that after his own encounter, he would never again make fun of anybody who reported a similar experience.
His open-mindedness was rooted in the scientific training he received at college in Georgia, at the US Naval Academy, and later with his work on nuclear submarines.
Carter maintained that just because something may be a UFO didn't mean it is extraterrestrial. Ultimately, he believed that what he saw - while unexplainable - was likely man-made.
Regardless, the encounter stayed with him for years. On the campaign trail in 1976, he made a point of promising that, as president, he'd release all UFO-related documents.
By some accounts, after his election, he did in fact meet with then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush to make that request.
Whatever may or may not have been said at that meeting, Carter never seemed to mention UFOs again - at least not publicly in his official capacity as a president.
He would later tell the American public that releasing such information would harm the interests of national security.
However, Carter's interest in UFOs didn't fully disappear. In 1977, with the help of Carl Sagan, NASA sent the Voyager spacecraft into deep space with a golden record that held recordings of greetings and music from various nations and cultures.
President Carter sent a message that read, in part: 'This is a present from a small distant world… We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.
This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.'
It's hard to imagine many of his successors using such language. No other president has even attempted to address UFO sightings head-on.
Clinton reportedly said that if he'd seen any evidence, he would tell the people - but never did. George W. Bush joked to late night host Jimmy Kimmel that such a disclosure 'might spin you into orbit.'
Obama seemed to give up on the cosmos altogether, basically halting NASA funding. President Trump created Space Force - but for the purposes of national security rather than space exploration.
On UFOs, Trump said, 'I'm not a believer, but anything's possible.'
Carter's fascination with the unknown stayed with him long after he left the White House. In 1994, he published a poem called 'Considering the Void' - a meditation on the images the Voyager spacecraft sent back to Earth.
Nearly twenty years after he sent his letter into space, the 'void' still haunted him: 'When I behold the charm of evening skies, their lulling endurance… the skyscape of our Milky Way holding in its shimmering disc an infinity of suns (or say a thousand billion)… knowing that this galaxy of ours is one of multitudes in what we call the heavens, it troubles me. It troubles me.'
If he was troubled by the vastness of the cosmos, at least it's because he had the will to try to comprehend it – and that's something to be admired in a leader.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14234807/jimmy-carter-ufo-cashman-shane.html
https://nypost.com/2024/12/30/us-news/jimmy-carter-once-saw-a-ufo-but-had-this-to-say-about-aliens-on-earth/
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2024/dec/29/nevada-lawmaker-seeks-criminal-penalties-for-wrong/
Nevada lawmaker seeks criminal penalties for wrong-way drivers
Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Darea Swain remembers her daughter Jaya Brooks as the “crazy cool kid,” who would fall and immediately get back up insisting she wasn’t hurt.
Jaya, 3, had a habit of walking up to strangers to hug them, a love for Minnie Mouse and an obsession with the “Baby Shark” song to the point that her parents had to scavenge for different versions to play.
Jaya was one of three people killed in a car crash in December 2023, when police said a wrong-way driver slammed into two cars on the northbound U.S. 95 off-ramp at Durango Drive.
Swain is honoring her daughter’s legacy by taking actions to address wrong-way driving, working with Nevada Assemblyman Brian Hibbetts, R-Las Vegas, to craft legislation to be considered in the upcoming Legislature that would make wrong-way driving a misdemeanor. It’s currently a civil infraction.
Wrong-way driving has steadily increased nationally since 2020. In 2022, the last year data was compiled, there were 704 fatalities resulting from wrong-way driving, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration.
That’s an increase of 259 deaths in a four-year period.
Those deaths have been felt on Nevada roads, including this month when off-duty Metro Police Officer Colton Pulsipher was killed in a collision with a wrong-way driver, 31-year-old Fernando Jimenez-Jimenez, who also died in the crash.
Jimenez-Jimenez was driving south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 15 near the Valley of Fire exit when he collided with Pulsipher’s vehicle.
The Nevada State Police recorded at least 800 cases of wrong-way driving in 2022.
“No matter what age, everybody’s hurting right now just because of the simple fact of wrong-way drivers,” Swain said.
“You know how many times I turn on the news and I see something on that? People are losing their lives daily.”
Hibbetts said his proposal would call for making people driving in the wrong direction on a divided highway eligible for criminal charges, even if they don’t cause a crash.
He realizes wrong-way drivers who cause crashes resulting in death or injury often face charges, but he wants to target those who don’t.
Hibbetts said he was still finalizing the proposal. It hasn’t been prefiled.
“Not all wrong-way drivers can be shown to be reckless, and not all wrong-way drivers are under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances,” Hibbetts said.
“I don’t think there’s any reason that getting on a divided highway going the wrong direction shouldn’t be criminal.”
The car Jessica Jordan-Tabares and her husband, Jose, were driving two years ago was struck by a wrong-way driver near the South Town Center Drive ramp on the 215 Beltway.
Police say the wrong-way driver was operating the vehicle under the influence. Jose, 48, was killed.
Jordan-Tabares faced extensive recovery, including learning how to regain use of her legs and right arm, an additional challenge because she is right-handed.
And now, as she approaches the two-year anniversary of the crash, learning about the pending legislation is “a bittersweet feeling.” Jordan-Tabares said she supported Hibbetts’ proposal, but that there were many factors that would need to be considered and many discussions to make it a reality.
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“In situations like myself and the accident that I was involved with, there’s a lot of mental health awareness to work on as well,” Jordan-Tabares said.
“She had to be in a really bad place for her to do what she did and get behind a wheel and drive. So that’s just another layer to this major issue that we have in our city.”
Nevada lawmakers in 2021 passed Assembly Bill 116, which decriminalizes minor traffic offenses, including wrong-way driving, and switches the offense from a criminal to a civil infraction. Major offenses like DUI charges aren’t included.
At the time, Nevada was one of 13 states that still arrested violators for unpaid major traffic infractions, which resulted in what was deemed as unnecessary jail time and suspended driver’s licenses.
State Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, D-Las Vegas, was one among several primary sponsors of the 2021 bill, and said she was open to change once she read the proposed legislation.
AB 116 received overwhelming approval by lawmakers, passing 20-1 in the state Senate and 38-1 in the Assembly.
“Sometimes implementing a new system does take some time. There should be cleanup. There should be things that make it more efficient,” Nguyen said.
“There are things that we should always be open to looking at. I don’t think we always get everything right the first time around.
And so we should always be open to cleaning things up, and that may or may not have an effect, and we shouldn’t be afraid to look at what we need to correct going forward.”
Criminalizing wrong-way driving isn’t the only way officials are looking to combat the problem.
The Nevada Department of Transportation installed an alert system as a pilot program to notify drivers as they enter on the wrong direction of the freeway.
There are four such systems in Southern Nevada at Interstate 15 at Starr Avenue; U.S. 95 at Kyle Canyon Road; U.S. 95 at Skye Canyon Drive; and U.S. 95 at Durango Drive.
In Northern Nevada, the alert systems have shown an efficacy rate of 85%, the department said.
Drivers who encountered the signs stopped, turned around and didn’t make it onto the highway traveling the wrong way.
Both Jordan-Tabares and Swain called the idea of Hibbetts’ legislation a means of hope for them and, ideally, said it could prevent wrong-way driving.
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Hundreds of motorists caught breaking major driving law with ‘deadly’ travelling manoeuvre at risk of £5,000 fine
Updated: 30/12/2024 - 09:46
Nearly 1,000 motorists have been caught breaking major safety rules by driving the wrong way on England's motorways in the past year, according to a shocking report.
National Highways data revealed that 988 incidents involving oncoming vehicles were reported this year, marking a concerning 15 per cent rise from the previous year's total of 858.
The alarming figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request represent an average of 19 wrong-way driving cases recorded every week on England's motorway network.
AA president Edmund King described the increase in wrong-way driving as "frightening" and warned of potentially devastating consequences.
He said: “The consequences of wrong-way driving can be devastating and deadly.” Some incidents were linked to criminals evading police, while others involved drivers blindly following sat navs.
Foreign drivers accustomed to driving on the right side of the road were also cited as a factor, though signs in multiple languages near UK ports now warn drivers to keep left.
Now the AA has called for "a full review of signage and road layout" in locations where genuine mistakes have occurred.
It comes after National Highways recorded two fatal incidents which occurred due to wrong-way driving in 2023.
Five people died in a crash on the M6 near Tebay services in Cumbria on October 15 when a vehicle was caught driving in the wrong direction.
In another tragic incident on February 4, two people were killed and four were seriously injured when a stolen van was driven the wrong way on the M25 in Hertfordshire during a police pursuit.
The incident led to an 18-year prison sentence for the driver.
National Highways said it takes immediate action when wrong-way drivers are reported, implementing emergency safety measures.
Speed limits are promptly reduced to 20mph when vehicles are reported travelling towards oncoming traffic.
Electronic warning signals are activated to alert other motorway users of the danger ahead, National Highways explained.
A spokesperson said: "Safety is our top priority which is why we take immediate steps to keep people safe when a report of an oncoming vehicle comes in, such as setting signals to warn and inform drivers, and lowering the speed limit.
"Motorways are designed to be as intuitive as possible to reduce the likelihood of this happening."
Drivers caught travelling the wrong way on roads face severe penalties under UK law. Offenders can be fined up to £5,000 and face up to two years in prison. Wrong-way driving typically results in mandatory disqualification from driving for at least 12 months.
Additional penalties may include unpaid community work and an electronically monitored curfew. Offenders can receive up to 39 penalty points on their licence and must pay court costs.
"If anyone spots someone driving the wrong way, they should call 999 when safe to do so," the National Highways spokesperson advised.
In a bid to prevent future incidents, the AA has called for improved signage near ports to help prevent incidents involving foreign drivers.
https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/hundreds-motorists-breaking-major-driving-law-travelling-manoeuvre-risking-fine