The Trace Gas Orbiter space probe detected water but not methane on Mars

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Two articles published in the journal “Nature” report the main results of the first year of work of ESA and Roscosmos’ Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), part of the ExoMars program. One article concerns the impact of the global storm that covered the planet Mars with a dust on the water in the atmosphere, while the other article reports the lack of methane detections, at least for now frustrating the hopes of discovering its origin. A third article submitted to the journal “Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Science” offers the most detailed map created so far of water ice and hydrated minerals present immediately below the red planet’s surface.

The area surrounding the supermassive black hole in the Virgo A galaxy (Image EHT Collaboration)

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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project with representatives of ALMA and APEX radio telescope researchers held a press conference, one of many held in the world to present the first EHT results. A project that for two years engaged a series of radio telescopes from around the world to combine their observations had the aim of peering directly into the environment surrounding a black hole and in particular the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A*, and the one at the center of the Virgo A galaxy.

Artist's concept of a planetesimal orbiting the white dwarf SDSS J122859.93+104032.9 (Image courtesy University of Warwick/Mark Garlick)

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports the discovery of what’s probably a fragment of a planet that orbits a white dwarf. A team of researchers led by the British University of Warwick used the Gran Telescopio Canarias of La Palma to study the debris disk that surrounds the white dwarf cataloged as SDSS J122859.93+104032.9 detecting anomalies in the emission lines that have been interpreted as the result of the presence of what has been called a planetesimal orbiting the star in about two hours.

A solution to the mystery of the origin of long gamma-ray bursts

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An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” offers a solution to the problem of the origin of photons that make up a long duration gamma-ray burst. A team of researchers coordinated by the Riken Cluster for Pioneering Research in Japan created a series of simulations based on the Yonetoku relation, an equation devised by Daisuke Yonetoku, one of the authors of the research, which links the peaks of energy and brightness in gamma-ray bursts concluding that their photons originate in the photosphere, the area of ​​a star in which normal light is emitted.

The Hayabusa 2 space probe generated a crater on asteroid Ryugu

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A few hours ago the Japanese space probe Hayabusa 2 generated a crater on asteroid Ryugu, an operation that aims to remove materials from its surface to be able to take samples of subsoil materials that weren’t altered by exposure to space weather. The system called Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) launched a 2.5 kg copper bullet that was fired into the surface by an explosive system. In a couple of weeks, Hayabusa 2 is scheduled to return to the site to take debris samples.