Researchers studying images of the distant star N6946-BH1 were shocked to find that the otherwise extremely bright star had outright disappeared. The star was still visible in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as recently as 2009, but in images taken in 2015, it was barely a faint glow when viewed in infrared, and not visible at all in the visible spectrum.
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Two new studies have been released that illustrate that the dry Martian lakebed that is currently being explored by NASA’s Curiosity rover was home to a habitable environment for over 700 million years, and possibly for well over a billion years.
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Three top-secret satellites launched by Russia between 2013 and 2015 have recently been reactivated, and appear to be carrying out missions to rendezvous with other man-made objects in orbit, performing comparatively dramatic maneuvers to make their intercepts. Despite assurances from the Russian government that these vehicles are benign, there is speculation that these satellites might be anti-satellite weapons, designed to maneuver close to another satellite and destroy it with an onboard weapon.
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The study of space weather has taken on an increased importance in recent decades, as the importance of the effects of the day-to-day conditions of our immediate solar system continue to be uncovered, with the effects here on Earth ranging from the awe-inspiring beauty of an aurora borealis display, to the potential nightmare a large-scale solar flare could unleash on our technology.
However, in much the same way that human-based activity has affected Earth-based weather through climate change, it turns out that we’ve also been affecting the nature of space weather in the immediate vicinity around our planet, in the form of a forcefield-like bubble that has been pushing away the natural radiation bands that circle Earth, high in the magnetosphere.
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