The Parker Solar Probe is on a mission toward the sun. The spacecraft has been exposed to scorching temperatures and intense sunlight as it draws closer with every loop around. Eventually, Parker will glide through the star's outer atmosphere and feel the toastiness of nearly 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (more than 1 million degrees Celsius).
To ponder the unknowns feels like sitting with an inquisitive toddler. Why is the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, so hot? Where does the solar wind come from? Why does it shoot out of the corona like that? What makes the sun flare up sometimes, shooting even more excited particles out into space? These are some of the questions that scientists hope Parker can answer before its mission ends in 2025, with a fiery plunge right into the sun.
Not to change the topic here:
An alien comet is soaring through our solar system | News | nny360.com
The path of comet 21/Borisov through our Solar System. The panel at left shows the comet's straight path across interstellar space slightly deflected by the sun's gravitational pull. The panel at right shows the comet's position relative to Earth when the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed it on Oct. 12, when it was almost 261 million miles (420 million kilometers) from Earth. NASA, ESA, J. Olmsted, F. Summers
Astronomer Doug Durig waits in darkness for images of the celestial object 2I/Borisov, a comet from another star, on Oct. 3 in Sewanee, Tenn. Sarah Kaplan/ Washington Post
Foust Forward | Voyager's stellar achievement: A one-in-many-generations mission beyond the
Nov. 5 marked the first anniversary of Voyager 2's great escape from the solar system. It was on that day in 2018 when the spacecraft passed through the heliopause, the boundary between the part of space surrounding the sun dominated by the solar wind and interstellar space, some 18 billion kilometers from Earth.
Given a taste of interstellar space, scientists are looking for ways to follow up on the Voyagers. In 2014, a study by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies examined the feasibility of sending a mission directly into interstellar space and the scientific benefits of doing so.
This Exoplanet-Shredding White Dwarf May Foretell the End of Our Solar System
Perhaps this exoplanet-eating white dwarf system is how our own solar system will look in the future: The progenitor red dwarf expands, swallowing up the inner planets and leaving just the ice giant outer planets behind. But from what we know about this exoplanet, it should have been too close to its star to have survived the initial expansion.
And, of course, this is an indirect detection. Gänsicke told Gizmodo that his team has applied for time on the Hubble Space Telescope to look for further evidence of a planet orbiting this white dwarf. And perhaps the planet has a detectable comet-like tail, he said.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Why astrophysicists think there's a black hole in our solar system | Business Insider India
Konstantin Batygin: Imagine the plane of the solar system as being your table. These orbits are stacked like books. Narrator: They concluded that this could mean only one thing. Batygin: In order to generate this population of highly inclined, perpendicular orbits, you need some distant gravitational pull.
Narrator: By their calculation, that gravitational pull is five times greater than Earth's. So they reasoned that this "something" was as large as a planet orbiting our sun. In fact, they even went so far to give it a name, Planet 9. Now, of course, if they were to confirm this discovery, it would be groundbreaking. The first new planet in our solar system since the discovery of Neptune in 1846.
Carlson Electric will install 100-kW solar system at Wisconsin horseradish farm
Huntsinger Farms, the world's largest grower and processor of horseradish and the parent company of Silver Spring Foods, has won a $28,902.60 Focus on Energy grant to subsidize a new solar power installation on its Eau Claire, Wisconsin farm. Carlson Electric of Hudson will install the solar farm in Spring 2020.
The Huntsinger Farm solar project will be one of the first farm solar installations in Wisconsin. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, less than 2% of energy in Wisconsin is generated by solar power today.
Create a Solar System Scale Model With Spreadsheets Activity | NASA/JPL Edu
Giant planet around white dwarf gives glimpse into solar system's future
Illustration of the white dwarf WDJ0914+1914 and its Neptune-like exoplanet. Image: ESO/M Kornmesser
The first discovery of a giant planet orbiting a white dwarf star has given astronomers a glimpse of our solar system's future.
Evidence of a giant planet orbiting a dead white dwarf star has been found for the first time. Astronomers said the evidence for the distant planet comes in the form of a disc of gas created from its evaporating atmosphere. The Neptune-like planet is thought to be more than four times the size of the Earth-sized white dwarf.
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