Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ Moon Is Hiding an Ocean Beneath Its Mangled Surface
An odd little moon that orbits closely to Saturn just revealed its biggest mystery: a hidden ocean that lies beneath its heavily cratered surface.
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An odd little moon that orbits closely to Saturn just revealed its biggest mystery: a hidden ocean that lies beneath its heavily cratered surface.
Astronomers have found a planet they believe is blanketed by active volcanoes. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature, a multi-national team of scientists said they discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet they believe may have water on part of its surface. The boringly named LP 791-18 d (sadly, no one thought to call it Mustafar) is located about 90 light-years from Earth in the Crater constellation. LP 791-18 d orbits a red dwarf it is tidally locked to, meaning the planet doesn’t have a day and night cycle like Earth. Instead, one part of LP 791-18 d is constantly scorched by sunlight, while the other is always in darkness.
“The day side would probably be too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface. But the amount of volcanic activity we suspect occurs all over the planet could sustain an atmosphere, which may allow water to condense on the night side,” Björn Benneke, one of the astronomers who studied the planet, told NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The LP 791-18 system contains at least two other planets, called LP 791-18 b and c. The latter is two-and-a-half times larger than Earth and more than seven times its mass. It also affects the orbit of LP 791-18 d, making it travel along an elliptical path around the system’s sun. That path means LP 791-18 d is deformed every time it completes an orbit. “These deformations can create enough internal friction to substantially heat the planet’s interior and produce volcanic activity at its surface,” according to NASA.
“A big question in astrobiology, the field that broadly studies the origins of life on Earth and beyond, is if tectonic or volcanic activity is necessary for life,” study co-author Jessie Christiansen said. “In addition to potentially providing an atmosphere, these processes could churn up materials that would otherwise sink down and get trapped in the crust, including those we think are important for life, like carbon.”
NASA, ESA and CSA already plan to turn the James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared imaging instruments on LP 791-18 c. The team that discovered LP 791-18 d thinks the exoplanet would make for an “exceptional candidate for atmospheric studies by the mission.” Notably, the retired Spitzer Space Telescope helped spot LP 791-18 d before NASA decommissioned it in 2020. This week, the US Space Force awarded a $250,000 grant to explore the feasibility of bringing the telescope out of retirement.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/astronomers-identify-volcano-covered-planet-that-could-have-water-on-its-surface-185050937.html?src=rss
Satellites flying overhead in Earth’s orbit largely provide a two-dimensional view of our planet, but a Florida-based company is hoping to change that by using satellites to routinely build 3D maps of Earth’s entire surface.
The company has continued to release Android security updates, but the changelogs for these monthly updates make no mention of general OS fixes or improvements, which implies Microsoft is doing the bare minimum for these releases. Even then, the bare minimum clearly wasn’t enough in April, as the Surface Duo failed to receive the April 2023 security update, marking the first time since the device launched that Microsoft has failed to issue an up-to-date security patch for the device. And it’s not just the OS that’s being neglected, Microsoft’s own Android app teams seem to have abandoned the Surface Duo too. SwiftKey just recently got updated with Bing AI capabilities, which is awesome and it works across a wide range of Android smartphones, including the latest Samsung devices. But the feature is not available on Surface Duo.
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Chanda and his team tested the impact this paint had on the temperature of buildings covered in structural paint versus commercial paints and they found that structural paint kept surfaces 20 to 30 degrees cooler. This, Chanda said, is a massive new tool that could be used to fight rising temperatures caused by global warming while still allowing us to have a bright and colorful world. Unlike white and black cars, structural paint’s ability to reflect heat isn’t determined by how dark the color is. Blue, black or purple structural paints reflect just as much heat as bright whites or beige. This opens the door for more colorful, cooler architecture and design without having to worry about the heat.
It’s not just cleaner, Chanda said. Structural paint weighs much less than pigmented paint and doesn’t fade over time like traditional pigments. “A raisin’s worth of structural paint is enough to cover the front and back of a door,” he said. Unlike pigments which rely on layers of pigment to achieve depth of color, structural paint only requires one thin layer of particles to fully cover a surface in color. This means that structural paint could be a boon for aerospace engineers who rely on the lowest weight possible to achieve higher fuel efficiency. The possibilities for structural paint are endless and Chanda hopes that cans of structural paint will soon be available in hardware stores.
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