Space

The recent discovery of an object with the features of a planet, but ultra-high surface temperature, suggests that people still know too little about how the universe works. The planet is located at a distance of about 1400 light years from Earth, and its peculiarity lies in the correspondence of part of the parameters to the characteristics of the star. It is a so-called ‘brown dwarf’ orbiting the star in a close orbit with a period of only 2.3 hours.

Because of this, its temperature reaches 7727 °C, which is higher than the temperature of the Sun. The object WD0032-317B has been named a temperature record holder by scientists, making it the hottest among its kind. Brown dwarfs tend to be cooler than the coldest stars, but that rule doesn’t apply here. His discovery should help clarify the points about gas giants like Jupiter orbiting massive and hot stars.

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A training and qualifying round was held in spring, during which different teams of hackers tried to hack the satellite, but not in space, but on Earth. Out of 380 teams, only 8 made it to the finals. The Moonlighter satellite was built especially for the contest and will be launched into orbit in August. The contestants will have 72 hours to interact with the satellite, with no set end goals – they have complete freedom of action.

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SpaceX’s willingness to cooperate with scientists was not enough – even after the modernisation of the Starlink satellites, they still cause many problems. Astronomers specially allocated in the programme of radio telescope LOFAR time to analyse the radiation coming from a group of 68 satellites Starlink. And it quickly became clear that in addition to signals from communication systems, they emit an impressive amount of radiation from on-board electronics.

The 47 satellites in the constellation have been shown to radiate chaotically between 110 and 188 MHz. And that’s a problem, because the window between 150.05 and 153 MHz was specifically allocated for radio astronomy, but now it’s full of interference from Starlink satellites. The trouble is that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) guidelines only apply to intentional emissions, so technically Starlink is not violating anything – the satellites’ active systems operate on other frequencies.

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Only at first glance, a day seems to be a stable value. In fact, it varied from 10 hours during the formation of the Moon to 23.5 hours at the end of the dinosaur age. It is generally accepted that a day increases by about 1.8 milliseconds per 100 years. If this rate had been historically maintained, the length of a day would now reach a fantastic 60 hours. However, researchers have put forward a theory to explain why this has never happened.

The Moon is gradually moving away from the Earth, and its gravitational force affects our planet, slowing its rotation and making the day longer. The Moon’s gravitational influence is manifested in the Earth’s tides.

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And it’s not a joke at all. The joint project has been in development since 2020, and last year the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) joined in, taking it upon itself to send samples of three types of wood to the ISS, where they were placed in the Kibo module for almost 10 months.

Last week, the samples were retrieved for research, and already the first results have shown – the wood has stood up well to the tests of open space.

The best of the three was magnolia. Thanks to its natural elasticity, it was virtually unaffected by deformation, decay, cracking and other defects, and its weight was almost unchanged.

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