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Galaxy Merger Scars, Microlensing Planet & ISS Succession Plan
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
JWST reveals merger scars in 120 ancient quenched galaxies, while TESS detects a Jupiter-mass planet 40,000 light-years away via gravitational microlensing. Plus NASA's commercial space station solicitation and the latest lunar self-sufficiency breakthroughs.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Webb has found merger scars in ancient galaxies that stopped forming stars nine billion years ago, and the detail in those images is changing what we thought we understood about how galaxies die. The JWST PRIMER survey examined a hundred and twenty compact galaxies that abruptly shut down star formation at a time astronomers call cosmic noon, a period between nine and eleven billion years ago when the universe was building stars at a pace it's never matched since.
The same instrument is doing comparable work closer to home. Webb's infrared observations of Centaurus A have cut through the dust lanes that previously blocked our view, revealing hidden stars and an S-shaped structure that traces the aftermath of a collision two billion years ago.
On the exoplanet side, there's a result worth pausing on. TESS has detected a Jupiter-mass planet called Gaia twenty-three bra b at forty thousand light-years, using gravitational microlensing.
NASA released a draft solicitation on July sixth for commercial companies to design and operate a successor to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit. An industry briefing followed on July ninth.
On lunar self-sufficiency, three developments are converging. A team from Tohoku University and JAXA has built a hand-held plasma device that converts atmospheric nitrogen into nitrate fertilizer at thirty times the efficiency of previous methods.
The two watchpoints that matter most from this cycle are the commercial station feedback deadline on July twenty-seventh, which will tell us how seriously industry is engaging with that solicitation, and the continued PRIMER survey results from Webb. Every new post-starburst galaxy they image with residual asymmetry tightens the case for mergers as the mechanism behind quenching.
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