Evolving Dark Energy // JAXA's Moon Rover for NASA // Eclipse Experience

new measurements show Dark Energy may be

evolving

Japan is joining Artemis with a pressurized lunar

rover

why the

moon

has two different faces and my

experience

with the total solar

eclipse

All this and more in this week's space stings astronomers They first measured Dark Energy in 1998 trying to measure the expansion rate of the universe, trying to find out if the universe will slow down and stop or if it will slow down for an infinite amount of time or even contract back in on itself, which which will lead to the great crisis, but they were surprised to discover that in fact the expansion of the universe is accelerating and that there is some kind of

energy

pushing outward that is intrinsic to the nature of space itself, the more space you get , the more

energy

is obtained.

Understanding that makes everything accelerate faster and faster. One of the questions that astronomers have had for a long time is whether

dark

energy is constant over time, so if you have this cubic meter of space and you have this

dark

energy pushing outward into this cubic meter. Was there more dark energy at the beginning of the universe or will there be less in the future or more in the future and one of the disturbing ideas that if dark energy is changing over time then maybe we could get to this thing called the Big Rip? where simply the expansion rate of the universe becomes faster and faster, which actually starts to tear apart galaxies, tear apart solar systems, tear apart planets, eventually even tear apart black holes, so this is something important to discover and right now astronomers still don't.

I really know how this is going to play out, but about a year ago a really important study was started called The Dark Energy Survey Instrument or Desi. It is conducting a large-scale survey of the cosmos every 20 minutes. Take another image containing 5,000 galaxies and quazars. and then it goes on and on, it keeps mapping the sky and it's mapping the universe in three dimensions up until about 11 billion years ago, so all the light that has been traveling towards us for 11 billion years now in the most nearby you are seeing a There are many galaxies, but after a while the galaxies are too faint and the only thing you can see are the quazars which, of course, actively feed the supermassive black holes.

So the plan is for Desi to continue this mapping operation for 5 years. but we just reached the first anniversary of the instrument and so astronomers published some preliminary results so that scientists can start working with what they already found and it's just an incredible study of the universe building this three-dimensional map and a really interesting find is that they were able to begin to map the large-scale structure of the universe and see the echoes of the Big Bang, so in the cosmic microwave background radiation there were overdensities and underdensities and these have been places that were somewhat dense amounts of gas in the early universe, but then those densities were maintained throughout the universe and then this became more stars and finally it became galaxies and finally it became galaxy clusters.

The term for this is bionic acoustic oscillations and So it's amazing that you can see these changes in the lairs at the beginning of the universe and that they continue throughout the entire universe and now when we look at the large scale structures of the universe, we are seeing what that there were once these little upper and lower densities in the early days of the universe, but one of the other findings and this is very provisional, so we will still have to wait a full 5 years to get the answer, but astronomers think they are seeing some variation, some evolution in dark energy. about the history of the universe this is really important this would help explain if we are going to lead to a big rupture in the future and it may also help explain the Hubble strain this difference in the expansion rate of the universe measured in the micro cosmic background and Now, if indeed dark energy is changing over time, that could explain why we see these different rates of expansion of the universe at different times, even taking dark energy into account, if dark energy is changing, then that provides an explanation of what is happening.

There are very preliminary results here, there's not enough Sigma to delve into this yet, but it's a really interesting glimpse of what's coming in the future. The Japanese are joining Artemis with a pressurized

rover

. Last week I talked about how NASA is planning to build a lunar rover without pressurization. rover and they chose three different companies, it was last week, it was two weeks, yes, okay, they have signed a contract with three different companies to design preliminary lunar rovers and then NASA will choose the one they like best and ask them to develop it further and they are not pressurized, so the astronauts will have to wear their spacesuits and will get into the Rover.

The vehicle can follow them and even explore on its own, but this week we learned that the Japanese space agency. will team up with NASA for emissions missions and provide a pressurized lunar rover and this will be pretty amazing. The plan is that it will allow two astronauts to be inside the vehicle and then they don't have to use their space, they can wear shirt sleeves and it should be able to keep them alive on the surface of the Moon for 30 days and so they can do an extended mission around the surface of the Moon exploring the South Pole. get in and out of the Rover put on their spacesuits work get back to the Rover live sleep eat inside the Rover and then continue doing their job and eventually return to the human landing system or eventually to some future lunar base and the Rover is designed to last 10 years, so you will participate in many missions.

The plan is for the rover to be part of Artemis 7 and did you know that NASA was planning all the way to emus 7 until now, but we don't know? I don't know the launch date for this mission, but it will be in the early 2030s and as part of this announcement, NASA also said that a Japanese astronaut will be joining them for one of those future broadcast missions, so than this Japanese citizen, whoever he is. He will become the first non-American to set foot on the

moon

. Now I'm going to talk a little bit more about the Japanese space agency at the end of this episode, so stick with it because the moon has two different halves now we just see. the near side of the Moon and when we look at the Moon it looks relatively smooth and you can see these darker regions, they are called the sea and they are the result of the ancient flow of volcanic lava across the surface of the Moon and when the Apollo astronauts they went to the moon, they were able to collect samples from the Moon and bring them home and they discovered that those samples were rich in titanium oxide.

We can't see the far side of the Moon now, but spacecraft can orbit the Moon and have been shown that, in fact, the far side of the Moon looks dramatically different from the near side of the Moon. You don't have these giant volcanic seas, you just have crater after crater after crater. The entire hidden face was hit by space rocks. Because? Are the two sides different? A little over 10 years ago NASA sent a mission to the Moon called the Grail and their job was to measure the Moon's gravity to determine the shape of the Moon's gravitational field and one of the things they found. was that this gravity field is lobster they decided that it is more massive and dense on the side of the moon that is facing away from the earth and so what is happening?

Why are the two sides of the moon so different? They discovered that this titanium oxide is part of the volcanic activity on the near side of the Moon and that there should not be those elements in such abundance on the near side of the Moon that they should have fallen and sunk into the Moon early in its history. , but some process caused it to weld back up to the surface of the Moon and so it really looks like the crust on the near side of the Moon is much thinner than on the far side of the Moon, so you have that volcanism and you have these heavier elements show up, how did the crust become so different on two sides of the Moon?

That's still an open question, but we actually reported that there was like a rewarming event, so I wonder if that's all related. Okay, try a piercing probe. an ice world we are fascinated by ice worlds here in the solar system we have oceans of liquid water the only problem is that they are protected under a thick layer of ice so the question is how do you get down through that ice and Try the water and find the European space whales. The best system people have come up with so far is a fusion probe, so take it like a nuclear reactor or a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, the kind of thing that fuels curiosity and perseverance.

It's really hot. and then you put it on the front end of a dart, it melts through the ice sheet on Europa and the meltwater builds up behind it and freezes as it continues to descend through the ice, but now researchers have proposed a further modification to the prototype drill system is called search for life using submersible head or slush, another acronym, so in addition to the fusion system, it also has a drill bit in the front of the probe so that the drill bit lift the ice in front and then the heat funnels the water back behind the probe so it can then continue descending closer and closer to reach the water below.

They tested the slush probe in an ice tower at their facility, but they actually took it to Devon Island, which is a place often used to recreate missions to Mars, and there they managed to lower it into the ice a couple of meters. , but the plan is expected to go down to about 100 m and prove that this technology works and So if you can go 100 m, maybe in the future you can go more than 50 kilometers through the ice to reach the European space oils. Every week we do a vote on our channel where you tell us what you thought was the best news. of the week and this week's winner was Vera Ruben's camera is ready and I agree with you 100% why this is not 100% now we put the vote on our channel every week within about 24 hours after posting space fragments , so if you're just scrolling through YouTube, you should watch it quickly, vote, you can go to the community tab to watch it, but the best chance is to make sure you're subscribed to the channel and click on the notifications.

Campana, an atmospheric rainbow on an exoplanet. Have you ever seen a rainbow around the Sun or Moon? They are called Su dogs or moon dogs and they are caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and then sunlight comes in through the ice crystals and produces this amazing halo around the Sun. and then there is another type of effect atmospheric called glory and this is similar to a rainbow, so you think about the way we see a rainbow, we are seeing sunlight reflecting off the inside of the water droplets and coming back to us with a glory.

We're actually getting an effect that comes from the interference of light waves and you can get this rainbow-like pattern that appears in the sky, we see it on Earth, we've seen it on Venus and now astronomers believe it. have seen on an exoplanet. For the first time, observations were made with the European space agency's keops mission, which characterizes known exoplanets, trying to understand their orbits, radius, learn much more about these existing planets that we already know, so astronomers were observing this exoplanet wasp 76b while it was transiting around its star for several years and they looked at each of those transits and what they found was that there was a strange glow that was occurring right between the day side and the night side that is called the Terminator of a planet and proposed that We are seeing one of these atmospheric glories, this strange rainbow on the surface of the exop planet matches very well with the geometry of the light from the star arriving and then coming towards us.

Now this is not an Earth-like world, the temperature of the clouds. they are 2500 Kelvin so they are not habitable and yet it is surprising that we can see these familiar features in the atmosphere of a completely alien planet, a neutron star collided with a light black hole, we have now learned about dozens of collisions between black holes in gravitational waves. and this is thanks to ligo and now we are in the fourth observation series of ligo, they have updated all the instruments, they have also updated the Virgo detector and now they have added the kagra detector, so now you have these three different gravitational wave observatories working together to image the sky in gravitational waves and are finding several black hole collisions every week, but recently astronomers detected something really strange: it looks like it's a neutron star with about1.2 times the mass of the Sun. collide with an extremely light black hole, something with, say, 2.5 to 4.5 solar masses, so this is an incredibly rare event and to be able to make this neutron star collide with such a low mass black hole it's completely new territory and yet this is the capability. from the enhanced ligo rise and the other gravitational wave observatories, the 2024 solar clipe now I mentioned last week that I was on my way to see the 2024 solar

eclipse

in Dallas, Texas, and the weather forecast looked terrible, I was going to there are thunderstorms.

On the day of the eclipse, the cloud cover didn't look good, but it was locked in. I had to attend a family event, so I had to do well. We were very lucky. The weather forecast kept getting better and better. At that time, the forecast said that the storms would not appear until 8 at night, while the total solar eclipse would occur around 2, so there are still a lot of clouds. In the sky it rained a little but we went to the place from where we were going to see the eclipse and about 30 minutes before the clouds parted and it was perfect the whole time and my wife said you were just looking at the eclipse. overall it's true, I just liked that as soon as the last ray of light from the sun disappeared, I was looking at the eclipse dumbfounded, it was amazing and fun because she was telling people what to prepare for and how, how amazing. event was and then they say okay, now I understand, how can I see more of them?

I want as many new people to become Eclipse Chasers, so I want to give you some suggestions about what's coming next in August 2026. There's going to be a clip that starts in Greenland, goes through Iceland and then crosses the North Atlantic and then goes through Portugal and Spain. It sounds great to be in Iceland to see an eclipse that sounds good and then in 2027 there will be an eclipse. that runs through North Africa so think Morocco to Egypt and then in 2028 there will be an eclipse in Australia so there you have it you have three upcoming eclipses to plan your future travels with.

Here's a quick series of images. of the eclipse seen from space from one of Go's satellites, so we see the eclipse, we see the Moon pass directly in front of the Sun, but from space you see the shadow of the Moon move across the Earth and it's so cool. image now first I want to share a couple of videos with you here is a video from the European Space Agency of a reaction wheel that is spinning and re-entering the Earth's atmosphere now it is not actually re-entering the Earth's atmosphere this is a simulation that They built a special chamber where they shot hot gases at this Reaction Wheel at several kilometers per second simulating what it is like for a spacecraft to return out of orbit and the reaction wheels are these large rotating wheels that allow the spacecraft to change its direction in space. .

They are the heaviest and densest parts of the spacecraft and are the ones that often survive through atmospheric ravages, so the question is: can a reaction wheel be built that tears apart as it enters the atmosphere of the Earth so that it doesn't survive that trip and it doesn't cause a risk to anyone on Earth, so they took this reaction wheel, put it in this chamber, spun it and then watched the hot gases tear it apart and then SpaceX recently shared the next video, is one of their Raptor engines, this is one of the ones that is set up for vacuum, so it has the much larger B and, about halfway through the video, when this engine starts to shut down, you see that these rings start to appear in the middle, it's cool. effect and you know that these tests are really important because with the vacuum engines, when you think about how they are going to have to be able to turn them off and on to make changes in the orbit to be able to land on the surface of the Moon. so there's still a lot of testing to be done with the vacuum motor, so it's great to see them sharing it with us every week.

I write an email newsletter that I send to 70,000 of my closest friends. Now I write every word in the newsletter there are no ads it's completely free and you know today we covered 30 to 40 stories in Universe and we talked about them in the newsletter so I just want to show you some of the interesting stories that didn't even appear in Bulletin. cut for space stings, for example, artificial intelligence explains the great silence in the universe, how much of Venus's atmosphere comes from volcanoes and the seven most interesting worlds to search for advanced civilizations in the cosmos, so you can subscribe to my newsletter weekly by email. go to the Universe today.com newsletter, okay I'm going to talk about

jaxa

savore, the Japanese space agency, but first I'd like to thank our sponsors, special thanks to Abe Kingston, Andre gross, Antonio lyara, David Gilton and Dennis alberty, douge stewart dustin. cable Jeremy M Jim Burke Jordan young Josh Schultz Mark anest Mode Paul robok Steven Kaki Steven fer Munley and glad chiplin who support us at the master of the universe level and all the other supporters on patreon earlier in this episode I talked about how

jaxa

the Agency Japanese space is supplying a pressurized lunar rover for an upcoming beam mission, one that will allow astronauts to explore the moon for 30 days and this reminds me how much I love jaxa.

I am a big fan of the Japanese space agency. We saw with the hausa one mission how they were able to recover a sample from an asteroid after it seemed like everything had failed in the mission, they were still able to get home and deliver just a few micrograms of asteroid to Earth with hioa 2, they did it. and they were able to bring a lot more sample home, they dropped several Rover Hoppers on the surface of the asteroid rugu, they shot it with an anti-tank gun to see what was under the surface of the regolith, really interesting innovative ideas and I think I'm very excited about the next exploration mission to the moons of Mars.

This is the spacecraft that will launch in 2026 and it will fly to Phobos and retrieve a sample from Phobos and bring it back to Earth and you can't just go in. orbiting around Phobos because it's so close to Mars it's really tricky, so you have to do an orbit that gets you closer and further away from Phobos, but you're still orbiting around Mars, so they're going to take a few tries. They will collect one sample, they could collect two samples from the surface of Phobos, they will be equipped with an 8K camera that will record videos and images of the surface of Phobos and then on a regular basis they will send back images.

At home, they partnered with Japan's National Broadcasting Service NHK to produce this camera, so people always ask why we can't see some 4K 8K images coming from other places and you know you hardly need bandwidth to can. send video home, but we could get regular images coming from Phobos. It will also take a French-made German rover to Phobos. It is going to deploy this rover on the surface of the Moon so that it can continue exploring on its own. Well, there are so many innovative ideas coming out of the Japanese space agency and I really feel like they strike this balance between carrying out missions but also being willing to experiment and try new ideas and push the boundaries with their missions and That's how I could talk about it all. kind of things.

You know they had the first interplanetary solar sale. They went and studied the atmosphere of Venus. There are a lot of really interesting missions, so congratulations to everyone at the Japanese Space Agency for what's happening with Artemis. missions, as well as the Phobos mission, as well as all the other cool things that are in the works. I hope you become as much of a fan of Jackson's work as I am. Okay, that's all for this week, see you next week.