HercuList Secrets

James Webb Space Telescope nails secondary mirror deployment

The James Webb Space Telescope achieved another major milestone today, successfully extending its secondary mirror as it continues to sail seamlessly through its never-before-conducted deployment sequence on the way to its destination.

What is the Planck time?

The Planck time is an incredibly small interval of time that emerges naturally from a few basic quantities in theoretical physics. When it was discovered by Max Planck at the end of the 19th century, it seemed to be no more than a scientific curiosity.

What existed before the Big Bang?

This may sound like a mathematical quirk rather than real physics, but such particles have been spotted in countless experiments. The spacetime vacuum state is seething with particles constantly being created and destroyed, apparently "out of nothing".

'Orion's Fireplace': Flame Nebula is ablaze with color in stunning new image

The Flame Nebula rings in the New Year from the constellation Orion in a blazing new photo from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). In the new telescope view, the nebula, nicknamed "Orion's fireplace," looks like an inferno, but it's actually a ...

Giant hunk of Russian space junk crashes to Earth

The space junk population just got a tiny bit smaller. The Persei upper stage of a Russian Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket crashed back to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion today (Jan. 5), hitting the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean at 4:08 p.m. EST (2108 ...

Astronaut snaps spectacular shot of crescent moon glowing over stunning sunset

The image was taken using a digital camera as the ISS passed over the Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand at an altitude of around 262 miles (422 kilometers). NASA's Earth Observatory released ...

Physicists watch as ultracold atoms form a crystal of quantum tornadoes

Phys.Org

Phys.Org

The world we experience is governed by classical physics. How we move, where we are, and how fast we're going are all determined by the classical assumption that we can only exist in one place at any one moment in time. But in the quantum world, ...

Mars helicopter Ingenuity gearing up for 19th Red Planet flight on Friday

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity is poised to make its first flight of 2022. The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity's next Red Planet sortie — its 19th overall — will take place as early as Friday (Jan. 7), mission team members said in a blog post on ...

Astronomers Report a Monstrous Eruption from a Supermagnetic Star

Scientific American

Scientific American

A dense, magnetic star violently erupted and spat out as much energy as a billion suns — and it happened in a fraction of a second, scientists recently reported. This type of star, known as a magnetar, is a neutron star with an exceptionally strong ...

James Webb Space Telescope extends secondary mirror

Mission controllers are ticking off the final major deployments needed to set up the new James Webb Space Telescope. Wednesday saw the observatory's secondary mirror locked into position on the end of three 8m-long booms.