Space

ʻOumuamua

Figure 1. Artist’s impression of ʻOumuamua [image: ESO/M. Kornmesser]

ʻOumuamua is the first ever interstellar body that was observed while it passed through our solar system, which makes it a really cool object. Hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets have been observed, but all of them originated from within our own solar system. It was known that…

Tags

Submitted on 23 December 2017

Gravitational Waves, a New Observational Window on the Universe

Simulation of two merging black holes [image: SXS, the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) project]

Not that I am going to try, but it is difficult to underestimate the importance of the first detection of gravitational waves for physics. Apart from the fact that it is another gloriously successful test for general relativity, it actually opens up a new observational window on the universe…

Tags

Submitted on 24 April 2016

The Spectacular Landing of Curiosity

Curiosity descent [image: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Quite a while ago, I briefly reported on the spectacular Mars Science Laboratory mission that is currently under way. As you are probably aware, the Curiosity rover has now safely landed, and is already exploring the Red Planet. In this article, I want to tell you about the spectacular way in which the rover was put down on the surface. For previous Mars rovers like…

Tags

Submitted on 17 September 2012