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Extreme Pressure Diamond Anvil Structures and properties of materials at extremely high pressures and temperatures are still largely “terra incognita”. Prof. Leonid Dubrovinsky and his research partners use a laser-heated two-stage diamond anvil cell they constructed for the synthesis of materials in the terapascal range (1000 gigapascals). In situ single crystal X-ray diffraction is used for the simultaneous structural characterization of the materials. Credit: Timofey Fedotenko ****************************************************************** New method enables materials synthesis research and study in the terapascal range for the first time. Jules Verne could not have dreamed of this: A research team from the University of Bayreuth, together...

Visitors to Russia's first museum of LGBT culture, which opened in St. Petersburg on November 27, are greeted by a portrait of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.Tchaikovsky – the 19th century composer of the Nutcracker, among other works – is arguably one of the most famous gay Russians.Pyotr Voskresensky – a more contemporary gay Russian – got the idea to open the museum after a visit to Tchaikovsky's house in Klin. "The estate and the house interiors were completely scrubbed," Voskresensky told Radio Free Europe. "There was no hint of the composer's personal life.""The context of the opening of this museum is...

Explanation: On November 8 the Full Moon turned blood red as it slid through Earth's shadow in a beautiful total lunar eclipse. During totality it also passed in front of, or occulted, outer planet Uranus for eclipse viewers located in parts of northern America and Asia. For a close-up and wider view these two images were taken just before the occultation began, captured with different telescopes and cameras from the same roof top in Shanghai, China. Normally very faint compared to a Full Moon, the tiny, pale, greenish disk of the distant ice giant is just to the left of...

University of Arizona scientists have uncovered a curious case of missing asteroids. The main asteroid belt is a zone containing millions of rocky objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientists find that there ought to be more asteroids there than researchers observe. The missing asteroids may be evidence of an event that took place about 4 billion years ago, when the solar system's giant planets migrated to their present locations. UA planetary sciences graduate student David A. Minton and UA planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra say missing asteroids is an important piece of evidence to support an...

This is an artist's concept of a hypothetical 10-million-year-old star system. The bright blur at the center is a star much like our sun. The other orb in the image is a gas-giant planet like Jupiter. Wisps of white throughout the image represent traces of gas. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found evidence showing that gas-giant planets either form within the first 10 million years of a sun-like star's life, or not at all. The lifespan for sun-like stars is about 10 billion years. The scientists came to this conclusion after searching for traces of gas around...

Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, might have gained its dominant position after swallowing up a smaller planet, scientists believe. Studies on Jupiter have revealed that the giant planet, which is more than 120 times bigger than the Earth, has an extremely small core that weighs just two to 10 Earth masses. Now scientists have claimed that Jupiter's core might have been vaporised in huge collision with a planet up to ten times the size of Earth, the New Scientist reported. Researchers led by by Shu Lin Li of Peking University in China have modelled what might have...

an image of uranus taken using the keck observatory. The planet appears to glow blue against the darkness, with thin, gossamer rings wrapped vertically around its middle Uranus as imaged by the Keck Observatory. (Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory) Uranus marches to the beat of its own weird little drum. Although it shares many similarities with our Solar System's other ice giant, Neptune, it has a bunch of quirks that are all its own. And one of these is impossible to miss: Its rotational axis is so skewed it may as well be lying down. That's a whopping...

The mission will be named Tianwen 4 and will see a larger probe destined for Jupiter and smaller spacecraft to be sent to make a flyby of distant Uranus. The pair will launch on a Long March 5 rocket and use a Venus flyby and two Earth flybys to fling the spacecraft on a trajectory for the outer solar system before separating and setting course for their respective targets. The main spacecraft will be dedicated to investigate the Jupiter system and will eventually enter orbit around the moon Callisto for a detailed investigation of the outermost of the Galilean moons....

ExploreIGO, a Twitter fan account devoted to icy worlds, asked its community yesterday what to call a spacecraft visiting the big blue world. Embedded with the tweet is a 2021 proposal by three scientists led by Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The group told the U.S. decadal survey of planetary science that a spacecraft to Uranus is a "journey whose time has come." Uranus was voted the top destination by the community in April after this proposal process, which was led by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The decadal committee called...

We still have so much to learn about our cosmic neighborhood.There's no doubt that we've learned a lot about our solar system over the past six and a half decades of spaceflight, but there are still mysteries lurking around every corner. One of the biggest ones is the planet Uranus. Other than a brief flyby by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, we haven't visited the planet at all.But that's soon going to change. According to this year's decadal survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a flagship orbiter and probe mission to Uranus should be NASA's...

This image, taken by the Voyager 2 space probe in 1986, shows the blue-green appearance of Uranus. Photo courtesy NASA/Voyager 2 . . . . Aug. 24 (UPI) -- As part of a cosmic phenomenon called retrograde motion, Uranus -- the second-to-last planet in our solar system -- will reverse its eastward course on Wednesday and begin moving west in the sky for a few months. Retrograde motion occurs as the Earth moves around the sun and the stellar views at night change little by little. The orbit, in turn, makes objects like planets in our solar system move horizontally...

One of Jupiter's tenuous rings can be seen in this infrared image. (NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Judy Schmidt) Given its similarities to its neighbor, Saturn, it seems natural to ask why Jupiter doesn't also have a magnificent, extensive system of visible rings. Alas, it's not the reality. While Jupiter does have rings, they're thin, tenuous, flimsy things of dust, visible only when back-lit by the Sun. According to new research, these discount rings lack bling because Jupiter's posse of chonky Galilean moons keep discs of rock and dust from accumulating the way they do around Saturn. "It's long bothered me why Jupiter doesn't have...

The most distant planets from the sun in our solar system, Neptune and Uranus have similar sizes, masses and atmospheric conditions. Looking at the the two planets side by side, which was made possible after NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by them in the 1980s, Neptune has a bright blue appearance. Uranus is a paler shade of cyan blue. Astronomers used the Gemini North telescope and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, both in Hawaii, and the Hubble Space Telescope to create a model that could match up observations of Neptune and Uranus. The scientists determined that an excess of haze builds...

A new decadal survey outlines planetary defense and science goals through 2032. Top of the list: sending spacecraft to Uranus. Uranus in 1986. Uranus, as seen by Voyager 2 in January 1986.Image: NASA/JPL ================================================================== A new report covering the next 10 years of American planetary science and astrobiology concludes that a Uranus Orbiter and Probe should be “the highest priority large mission.” This decadal survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is intended to shape funding and research efforts through 2032. It calls for a spacecraft that will orbit Uranus and map its gravitational and magnetic fields....

Explanation: What's that moving across the sky? A planet just a bit too faint to see with the unaided eye: Uranus. The gas giant out past Saturn was tracked earlier this month near opposition -- when it was closest to Earth and at its brightest. The featured video captured by the Bayfordbury Observatory in Hertfordshire, UK is a four-hour time-lapse showing Uranus with its four largest moons in tow: Titania, Oberon, Umbriel and Ariel. Uranus' apparent motion past background stars is really dominated by Earth's own orbital motion around our Sun. The cross seen centered on Uranus is called a...

Composite image of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter. Credit: Jupiter from Juno: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran; Saturn from Cassini: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute; Uranus and Neptune from HST: NASA/ESA/A. Simon (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), and M.H. Wong and A. Hsu (University of California, Berkeley). ========================================================================================== Mushballs – giant, slushy hailstones made from a mixture of ammonia and water – may be responsible for an atmospheric anomaly at Neptune and Uranus that has been puzzling scientists. A study presented by Tristan Guillot at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2021 shows that mushballs could be highly effective at carrying ammonia deep into the...

“If any extraterrestrial astronomers sent an exploratory spacecraft to our solar system, then the Lagrange points are all possible destinations to send such a spacecraft,” Haqq-Misra told The Debrief. Lagrange points are so stable, spacecraft that need to remain in position use them to reduce fuel consumption. Things that go there tend to stay there due to the gravitational pull, according to NASA. Lagrange points aren’t always used on purpose to save on gas; a guest floating through could get stuck there too. “An extraterrestrial spacecraft in the solar system might also be defunct and broken, having completed its primary...

The mayor of a US town named Uranus has unveiled a new neon mural wall celebrating its location on Route 66. Located in Missouri, the unincorporated town has a population of 25. The neon light installation measures 6m high and 16m wide. It features icons from towns also located on Route 66 including the Blue Swallow Motel in New Mexico, Cadillac Ranch in Texas and the Blue Whale of Catoosa in Oklahoma.... Other popular attractions in the town include the Fudge Factory and the General Store, but Mayor Baker said there's more work to be done and the town will...

Researchers believe that mushy blobs on Uranus are hiding lots of gas. More specifically, scientists have discovered that “mushballs,” large slushy hailstones made of ammonia and water, might be causing an odd atmospheric phenomenon on Uranus, according to a press release about the research. The mushballs, which are also present on Neptune, might be carrying ammonia into the two planets’ atmosphere and hiding the gas from detection. The balls might actually be the secret behind why scientists can’t detect ammonia in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune — which is odd because it’s abundant with other gasses like methane.

A team of Stanford University scientists announced they have designed a "smart toilet" that identifies the user by the shape of their backside and monitors the health of their waste. Lead researcher Sanjiv Gambhir said he and his team developed the Precision Health smart toilet to recognize users and use algorithms to analyze the health of their urination and bowel movements. Gambhir said the toilet uses cameras and motion sensors to identify "a range of disease markers in stool and urine," including warning signs of various types of cancer. The researchers said the toilet identifies users by reading their fingerprints...