James

Hubble made us believe that this exoplanet was impossible. James Webb just explained why we were wrong

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In 2014, the exoplanet WASP-94A b was discovered, a hot Jupiter with an anomalous amount of oxygen and carbon in its atmosphere. The first observations pointed to hundreds of times more of these two gases than in the atmosphere of the Solar System’s Jupiter. This did not fit with standard models of planetary formation. It could be that there is some error in the models. However, according to what has just been verified with the James Webb Space Telescope, the problem was rather that the right telescope was not being used. Closer observation has shown that oxygen and carbon levels are actually much lower, consistent with known physics. Also, as a tip, something very curious has been discovered: that the planet has rocky clouds during the day that disappear when sunset arrives. A very useful transit. The authors of a study recently published in Science They took advantage of a transit of the planet in front of its star to study its atmosphere with the James Webb telescope. Previously, observations were made with the Hubble telescope. With it, the light spectra coming from the atmosphere could be analyzed and, with them, their composition could be established. However, since it was not a telescope capable of distinguish clouds from the rest of the atmospherethe calculations were an average of the gases of everything together. Said by one of the authors of the studywith Hubble the result was something like looking through a foggy window. Now, after giving the window glass a good look, they have been able to see exactly the composition of both the atmosphere and the clouds. Tidal lock. This exoplanet is tidally locked. This means which takes the same time to orbit its star as it does around itself. The result is that it always has the same face facing the star, so on half the planet it is always day and on the other half it is always night. It’s something like what happens to us on Earth with the Moon, which always has a hidden side for us. Despite having perpetual days and nights on each face, on this type of planets you can distinguish between sunrise and sunset, depending on the flow of gases in the atmosphere. The limit at which cold gases from the night side pass to the day side is considered the dawn of the planet, while the limb in which the opposite occurs is sunset. Different compositions. When observing the planet in full transit, the day side could not be seen, since it was looking towards the star. On the other hand, the James Webb has been able to capture the emissions from the two limits with the night side, considered sunrise and sunset. In this way, he has been able to verify two important pieces of information. On the one hand, what we mentioned: the levels of carbon and oxygen in the atmosphere are only five times higher than those of Jupiter. It is something that corresponds to other hot Jupiters and does not defy known physics. On the other hand, it has been seen that on the sunrise side there are clouds composed of silicates. That is, rocky clouds. However, these dissipate until they disappear on the evening side. Thanks to this duality, it has been possible to explore the pure atmosphere, with hardly any clouds, in the area of ​​the planet close to sunset. Unknown causes. The authors of the study do not know what causes this strange behavior of the clouds. However, they have two hypotheses. The first would be something similar to the process that gives rise to fog on Earth. The clouds would form in the darkness on the night side, then enter the intense heat of more than 1,000 degrees on the day side. The substances that make up the clouds would boil and the clouds would vaporize throughout the day, disappearing completely at night. Then, on the night side, the process begins again. The other hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that there may be intense winds on the planet that are dragging the clouds into the interior of the planet and taking them out of sight by sunset. And now what? These scientists are already studying other hot Jupiters. At the moment, they have already detected two others with the same distinctive cloud cycle: WASP-39 by WASP-17 b. There is nothing like a good sample to properly study any scientific phenomenon. The more planets that are detected with the same circumstances, the better the reasons can be clarified. Image| John Hopkins In Xataka | The James Webb has broken another historical record: a supermassive black hole older than expected

James Webb just broke what we thought was the established order of the Universe

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Even an instrument as powerful as the James Webb Space Telescope can detect puzzling phenomena at times. It is the case of the multiple red dots that has been found throughout the Universe in recent years. Many of them are a mystery that is difficult to decipher with the technology available. However, thanks to a very propitious physics phenomenon, James Webb himself has managed to enter on one of these little red dots, to find something fascinating. A black hole that goes against known physics, for having formed before the galaxy that houses it. The data. The black hole in question is enormous, with a mass 50 million times that of the Sun. It is located within a tiny galaxy, called Abell 2744-QSO1, with a diameter of 1,300 light years. To give us an idea, our Milky Way has a diameter of more than 100,000 light years. It is estimated that this galaxy formed 700 million years after the Big Bang, making it very old. However, according to the calculations According to a team of scientists from the Universities of Cambridge and Florence, the black hole could have formed one second after the explosion that gave rise to the Universe. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If we change the chicken and the egg for the galaxy and the black hole, the answer until now was more or less clear. Not all galaxies have a black hole at their center, but most of them do. Traditionally it has been thought that the black hole was formed when some of the galaxy’s stars ran out of fuel and collapsed. Such a concentration of mass was formed that its gravity began to attract everything that was at a specific distance (the one within its event horizon) and, thus, it fed itself, becoming larger and larger. That is what was believed, but it is a hypothesis that sometimes does not completely add up. A little red dot with a trick. The system formed by a tiny galaxy and an immense black hole inside makes up one of the red dots detected by James Webb. Most of them are very difficult to analyze, but this one has an advantage that makes it easier to observe. And, between the galaxy and James Webb, there is a galaxy cluster called Abell 2744 (Pandora cluster) that acts as a lens. It is so massive that it bends space-time around it and forms a kind of lens which allows us to see the QSO1 galaxy in a larger size. In very simplified terms, it acts like a magnifying glass. Furthermore, thanks to this same effect, a triplicate image is formed that can be analyzed in more detail. Primitive black holes. By being able to see these images with a magnifying glass, a tiny galaxy and a huge black hole have been observed, both very old. Generally, the mass of black holes cannot be measured. The calculations are made using assumptions extrapolated from what we know about black holes in the local Universe. Thus, it was calculated that the QSO1 black hole had a mass equivalent to 40 million times that of the Sun. But it did not add up much for such a small galaxy. How could it have become so large by “feeding” only on material from the galaxy itself? All this has been able to be answered, again, thanks to James Webb. Beyond the magnifying glass. In order to better measure this black hole, the Integral Field Unit (IFU) of the James Webb near-infrared spectrograph. This instrument, instead of focusing on a single point, has the ability to make a 2D map of a region of the sky. Thus, you can track the effects of gravity on the gas that occupies that specific region and even analyze the distribution of different elements in that same gas. With all this, something interesting has been seen. That the gas rotates around a center in a similar way to how the planets do around the Sun. According to Kepler’s laws, the further away from the center an object orbits, the slower it does so. This is true with the planets, but also with gas. Therefore, the black hole must be very very massive. So far so good. We had already assumed that, but what is its mass? The calculations of truth. By knowing how fast a gas orbits at a certain distance, you can know the mass of its center. Since the center was the black hole, these scientists only had to do the calculations to know that its mass is equivalent to 50 million suns. Guesses pointed to 40 million, so they were relatively close in astronomical terms. But it is strange, since its mass is equal to two thirds that of the galaxy. It’s too big for that galaxy. Another interesting fact. Since this James Webb instrument also allows the composition of the gas to be determined, it has been seen that the black hole consists mainly of hydrogen and helium. There is very little oxygen, as would be expected if it had formed solely from the stars of its galaxy. In fact, its metallicity is less than 0.5% that of the Sun. All this data does not fit with a black hole that formed from its galaxy. He had to train before. The hypotheses. All this points to the fact that the black hole was formed by a direct collapse. But when? That is not so clear, although there are two hypotheses. For one thing, it could have been formed by a heavy seed that originated in the first second of the Big Bang. Or perhaps it was formed a little later, by the collapse of a gas cloud. Either way, this is a great find, since it is about of the first direct measurement of the mass of a black hole within the first billion years after the Big Bang. And the good thing is that it agrees with the assumptions that … Read more

Benicio del Toro and James Cameron have been obsessed with adapting a “cursed” work for decades: ‘Prometheus’

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In March 2011, Guillermo del Toro resigned. He sent an email to his team announcing that the project to which they had dedicated years of work was definitively cancelled. Behind them were more than three hundred pieces of conceptual art, a script they had worked on for almost a decade, James Cameron as producer and Tom Cruise as star. The novel that inspired it, a classic of literary horror, is still waiting to be adapted ninety years after its original publication. Foundational text. HP Lovecraft He published ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ in 1936 in installments in the magazine ‘Weird Tales’. The story follows a team of researchers who travel to Antarctica and discover, within a colossal mountain system, the remains of a civilization that predated humanity. Its builders, known as “the Ancients” are organisms whose existence makes it clear that humanity does not occupy any special place in the universe, as happens in so many other stories by the author. It is a scheme that laid the foundations (after multiple experiments in the form of stories) of the cosmic horrorand its influence on cinema is obvious in movies like ‘Alien’ or ‘The Thing’. Marked at eleven years old. Guillermo del Toro discovered the short novel as a child in Mexico and it became an obsession that stayed with him for decades. In 2002 he began working on an adaptation with Matthew Robbins, screenwriter and frequent collaborator of the director on projects such as ‘Mimic’ or ‘Pinocchio’. They completed a script but difficulties began when they tried to finance it: Warner Bros. rejected the project, and Del Toro chained films while the project returned again and again to the drawer: ‘Hellboy’, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘The Hobbit’… Ready. In 2010 the project took a little more shape, for the first time in its eventful career. James Cameron, fresh off the success of ‘Avatar‘, came in as a producer and Tom Cruise began talks to play the protagonist. The film would be shot in native 3D and distributed by Universal. In 2011, Del Toro was hurriedly working on a new version of the script to shoot that summer, but before that, in March, Universal archived the project. The reason was, mainly, the exorbitant budget of 150 million for a horror film for adults in which Del Toro did not want to reduce the violence. Curiously, Universal next financed ‘Pacific Rim’, which cost $190 million but, yes, had much less exaggerated violence. The coup de grace: ‘Prometheus’. In April 2012, del Toro published in the forums of their official website a text that related ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ with ‘Prometheus’, the feature film by Ridley Scott. According to the director, they had an identical premise, very similar scenes and an absolutely parallel final revelation. That is: explorers of unknown places discover an ancient alien civilization and realize something devastating about their own origins. More attempts. Despite the disappointment of ‘Prometheus’, Del Toro did not completely abandon the project. When he joined Legendary Pictures, he considered the possibility of making a PG-13 film, that is, with less violence. When he later signed a contract with Netflix in 2020, he submitted the project to the platform, but it was not accepted. In November 2022posted on Instagram 25 seconds of CGI footage prepared by Industrial Light & Magic for the 2011 version. The clip showed the Ancients in spectacular fidelity to Lovecraft’s description. Later would recognize than a feature film stop motion could be a viable format for the project. At the end of 2025, del Toro released ‘Frankenstein’ on Netflix, another project he had been wanting to do for decades. The film was a success in the awards season (nominated for nine Oscars and won three), with audiences and critics. Perhaps it is also, without us knowing it, an open door for one of the most deservedly legendary projects of modern fantasy cinema. In Xataka | HP Lovecraft wrote 75,000 letters in his entire life. And they give a definitive insight into all its secrets

This is how James Webb uses eclipses to “read” the soil of other planets

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Most telescopes specialized in the analysis of exoplanets are capable of study its atmosphere. However, James Webb has just gone further, directly analyzing the heat emitted by the surface of a planet located outside the solar system. This is very informative data, which until now had never been detected and marks a new study method for the future. LHS 3844b. The exoplanet that has analyzed the James Webb is LHS 3844b. Its size is 30% larger than that of our planet and it is located at a distance of 50 light years. According to the analysis of this space telescope, it is a dark, hot, arid rocky world without an atmosphere, quite similar to Mercury. Ideal for James Webb. This exoplanet is also characterized by being tidally locked. That is to say, It takes exactly the same time to orbit its star as it does to rotate around itself.. As a consequence, he always shows the same side to his star. Like the Moon to the Earth. Planets that always have the same side facing their star have one side where it is always day and another where it is always night. The first, in addition, usually has very high temperatures. But the best thing is that They are cannon fodder for MIRIone of James Webb’s star instruments. This has a great capacity to detect infrared emissions, such as those emitted by a hot object. In other words, the analysis of a body’s infrared emissions can give us an idea of ​​the heat it emits. eclipse chasers. On planets like this, with one side always exposed to its star, there is a problem. When analyzing the heat emitted by its surface, it can be confused with that of its star. Therefore, eclipses are ideal for MIRI to do its work. When this happens, the planet hides behind the starso the only light that reaches the Space Telescope is from this one. Thus, the data is obtained that must then be subtracted from the set that is normally measured to know exactly what the infrared contribution generated by the planet alone is. Geology enters the chat. In reality, the radiation measured by MIRI does not only provide us with information about heat. The different elements that can be present on a planet have a different emission spectrum. They reflect more or less radiation. Therefore, it is possible to know approximately what the composition of the atmosphere and surface of the planet is. This exoplanet does not have an atmosphere, so we can basically know data about its surface and even its geology. The infrared spectrum of the hot dayside of LHS 3844 b is derived from the brightness contrast with its host star in ppm (parts per million = 0.0001%) at different wavelengths. Observational data obtained from the James Webb and Spitzer space telescopes (circles and squares) are consistent with mantle (solid orange line) or volcanic rock (dashed blue line), while ruling out an Earth-like crust (green dashed dotted line). Credit: Sebastian Zieba et al./MPIA two eclipses. In 2023 and 2024, two eclipses were detected on this exoplanet that allowed James Webb to analyze its infrared emissions. The signal obtained was compared with that of planets and well-known objects, such as Earth, Mars and the Moon. It had nothing to do with Earth, so it is assumed that the surface of both planets must be very different. Possibly with very little water in the case of the exoplanet. On the other hand, there were quite a few similarities with the Moon. That would lead one to think that the planet could be covered in basalt, a very common volcanic rock on our satellite. Something doesn’t add up. The initial hypothesis Given these signs, the planet could be young and covered in fresh lava. However, with this volcanic activity, gases such as carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide are released, which were not detected by the James Webb. That’s why, another hypothesis has been raised. The planet is likely covered in a thick layer of dark, fine-grained material formed over long periods by radiation and meteorite impacts. It is something similar to what happens on Mercury or the Moon. Planets without an atmosphere are especially susceptible to this phenomenon, known as space weathering, so it would be plausible. We will have to check it. It is hoped that James Webb will be able to obtain even more data to confirm whether this last hypothesis is correct. Be that as it may, only with what he has already been able to measure he has overcome many barriers. The achievements of this telescope seem to have no end. Images | NASA | Sebastian Zieba et al./MPIA In Xataka | The James Webb has broken another historical record: a supermassive black hole older than expected

James Webb has discovered that carbon “soccerballs” form megastructures in a vacuum

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In 1985, fullerenes were synthesized for the first time, spherical molecules that can have multiple functions in fields such as nanotechnology or superconductivity. Later, in 2010, was discovered that one type of fullerenes, buckyballs, form naturally in space. Now, a team of Canadian scientists has gone much further, deciphering many of the secrets of these curious structures, thanks to the great help of the James Webb Space Telescope. Small balls that make up a huge ball. Buckyballs are spherical structures, made of 60 carbons, with a conformation of hexagons and pentagons similar to that of a soccer ball. In 2010 they were discovered around a nebula called Tc1. Now, that same nebula has been the goal of James Webb, capable of going much further than they were then. To begin with, delicate rays, ethereal filaments and bright layers of gas along the edge have been detected in the nebula. On the other hand, in the heart of the nebula, a curious structure shaped like an inverted question mark has been detected, whose function is a mystery. But if all that were not enough, it has been seen that those buckyballs that were discovered in 2010 are perfectly organized, forming another hollow sphere, much larger. Chronicle of a death foretold. The stars remain lit thanks to nuclear fusion processes that take place on its surface. This is a very long process, but not eternal. There comes a time when they run out of the elements they use as fuel. When that happens, its outermost layers can break off in the form of gas and dust, giving rise to a nebula, like Tc1. The center, however, becomes a white dwarfa type of cold and dense star. The buckyballs are also possibly remnants of material ejected during the star’s last death throes. James Webb sees what others can’t. James Webb has taken the most precise photo ever taken around Tc1. But, also, thanks to his spectroscopic skillshas studied the composition of all that material ejected by the dying star, including buckyballs. The result, as explained in a statement the authors of the study themselves, is an open window to stellar evolution. Many half-baked studies. There are currently several studies underway aimed at explaining all the new findings around the Tc1 nebula. For now, this discovery has led to tracing the chemistry of carbon, explaining mysterious signals and understanding how organic materials change in extreme environments. In addition, it is a discovery that has challenged traditional views on space chemistry and offered clues about how life may have begun. Turning to the amateur eye. Something curious about the photo that has just been published is that it has not been processed by the scientists who took the images. The lead author of the research, Jan Cami, contacted Katelyn Beecroft, a high school teacher who frequently took her students on field trips to the observatory at the University of Western Ontario. I knew that the teacher is a great fan of astronomy and astrophotography and that she was really good at processing raw images taken by telescopes and enhancing even the most subtle structures that appear in them. He was certainly not wrong to ask for help, as Beercroft’s work has been commendable. Now we just have to understand the reasons for all these new findings. We already have the question, literally. We are missing the answers. Image | Katelyn Beecroft/NASA / ESA / CSA / Western University, J. Cami In Xataka | We have been studying the planets of TRAPPIST-1 for years with great hope. James Webb just knocked it down

James Webb has had to investigate whether he was born “from the top down” or “from the bottom up”

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29 Cygni b is a huge celestial object, with a mass equal to 15 times the mass of Jupiter. Apparently it is a planet, but that mass could place it as a star. For example, a brown dwarf. Therefore, a team of astronomers has used the James Webb to analyze its origin, further refining the concept of the formation of stars and planets. A question of metals. The authors of the study, who it was just publishedhave used the NIRCam camera on the James Webb Space Telescope to take photographs of this planet. This instrument allows high-resolution images and spectroscopy measurements to be taken, with which the composition of the atmospheres of stars and planets can be studied, taking into account how they reflect light. Thanks to this, it has been seen that 29 Cygni b is very enriched in metals compared to the star around which it is located. Specifically, it has an amount of metals equivalent to 150 Earths. This is compatible with the accretion of a large amount of metal-laden solids into a protoplanetary disk. It is then confirmed that it is a planet, but a planet very unusual. Planet or star? That’s the question. Planet formation takes place in a bottom-up process. In a disk of gas and dust, known as a protoplanetary disk, dust particles collide to form small fragments of rock and ice, which continue to clump together and grow until they form a planet. It is a process called accretion. The largest ones, in addition, in this process capture gas, which is why they later become gas giants. On the other hand, stars form from top to bottom. A gas cloud fragments and each fragment collapses under its own gravity, becoming smaller and denser. From paradox to paradox. This definition could lead us to think that planets are larger than stars. After all, planets go from less to more and stars from more to less. However, that is not true. Stars form when huge clouds of gas collapse, so they are still very massive. So much so that nuclear fusion can occur in them due to the high conditions of pressure and temperature. On the planets, although there is a growth from less to more, it is not so great. The problem is that with planets as immense as 29 Cygni b there are doubts about the formation from less to more. It would seem that they were also formed by a fragmentation process in protoplanetary disks. As explained by the European Space Agency in a statementis something that “could explain why some very massive objects are found billions of kilometers from their host stars, in regions where the protoplanetary disk should have been too weak for accretion to occur.” That’s just what happens with 29 Cyni b. It has an enormous mass and is 2,400 kilometers from its star. What James Webb teaches us. The fact that 29 Cygni b is so rich in metals indicates that it must have been formed by an accretion process, in which it accumulated more and more. In fact, heIt is normal for a planet to have many metals in proportion to its starwhich happens in the system in which 29 Cygni b is located. In short, it is shown that much larger planets than we thought can be formed by accretion, without having to resort to a top-down process. And now what? 29 Cygni b has been the first of the four objects that will be studied by James Webb. All of them have a mass between 1 and 15 times that of Jupiter and are at least 1.5 billion kilometers from their star. This indicates that they are all in that dilemma of being huge planets or another star. Cataloging them into one of the two groups can help us understand much better the process by which the largest planets are formed. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI) In Xataka | Since we were children we have been told that Jupiter is enormous, colossal, exaggeratedly large. It is 8 km smaller and that changes everything

James Webb has bad news for the largest natural laboratory for rocky planets, but there is still some hope

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The star TRAPPIST-1 and the seven known planets that surround it are a natural laboratory in which the evolution of rocky planets can be studied. This has led many scientists to focus their attention on them, in search of a possible habitable planet. However, observations made by an international team of astronomers with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope They are not very encouraging. Planets without atmosphere. The James Webb Space Telescope has a very powerful infrared radiation analysis instrument, with which it can analyze the temperature of the planets it observes. These emit infrared radiation whose intensity is proportional to their temperature, so a thermal map can be made. That’s what these astronomers have done. They have initially focused on two of the planets that orbit TRAPPIST-1: TRAPPIST-1a and TRAPPIST-1b. The resulting heat map shows that neither planet has an atmosphere. They may have had it one day, but possibly TRAPPIST-1 itself destroyed it. It is a very uninspiring result for the search for habitable planets in this system. Lights and shadows of TRAPPIST-1. So far seven exoplanets have been discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1. They are all very close together. In fact, its seven orbits are concentrated in the distance between Mercury and the Sun. What happens is that this red dwarf is less energetic than our Sun, so the temperature would not be as suffocating. All of these planets are rocky, like Earth, and in fact, some are very similar in size. There could be an exoplanet with conditions similar to ours. The problem is that red dwarfs They emit a lot of radiation and energetic flows of particles that could destroy their atmosphere.. And of course, without atmosphere, there is no life. Tidal lock. All planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are tidally locked. This means that its rotation and translation period around the red dwarf they are synchronized. As a result, there is one side continuously exposed to the star and another on the opposite side. On one side it is always day and on the other it is always night. NASA/JPL-Caltech Extreme temperatures. When a planet is tidally locked, there can be two situations, depending on whether it has an atmosphere or not. When there is an atmosphere, heat flows from the light side to the dark side, so that the entire planet has a stable average temperature. On the other hand, if there is no atmosphere, the dark side can be frozen and the illuminated side can be scorched. In the two exoplanets analyzed by James Webb, it has been seen that temperatures are around 100ºC-200ºC on the illuminated side and -200ºC on the dark side. Therefore, it is confirmed that there is no atmosphere. And now what? Despite this hard blow, there is still hope. The two exoplanets that have been analyzed are not in the star’s habitable zone. This is the distance from it at which the temperature is adequate for the water, if any, to remain in a liquid state. At that exact point there are only TRAPPIST-1e, TRAPPIST-1f and TRAPPIST-1g. Furthermore, the former has a density and size very similar to those of Earth. James Webb has all his attention on this exoplanet right now, to repeat the process. If there were an atmosphere on it, it could still remain on the list of possible habitable planets. It’s still interesting. Despite the first blow, TRAPPIST-1 remains a very interesting system for understand the evolution of rocky planets. The Earth was lucky not to lose its atmosphere; but, beyond those, the evolutions can be similar. Furthermore, we have not yet ruled out that TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere. Let’s go step by step. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) In Xataka | There is only one chance in 11,000 years to reach the planet Sedna. Some Italians want to use this nuclear engine

The James Webb Telescope has finally discovered Saturn’s best kept secret

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Saturn has become a headache for scientists since the Cassini probe in 2004 took action of its rotation speed that did not coincide with the figures accepted in the scientific community. Little by little, new data has been discovered that helps explain this inconsistency, but it has been necessary for the James Webb Space Telescope to come into play to find the definitive answer. Cassini’s incoherence. In 2004, the Cassini probe took advantage of its visit to Saturn to measure some important dataas its rotation speed. Normally this is calculated by analyzing parameters that occur periodically, such as radio emission pulses. It is a very consolidated method, which has been used to calculate the rotation rate of many planets. With Cassini, it was expected to obtain a figure that would coincide with what the Voyager 2 probe had previously taken in 1981. However, to the surprise of the scientists who studied the data, the numbers didn’t add up. A mysterious push. A planet cannot speed up or slow down without an external force driving it. There should be something driving those changes in rotation speed. Or, at the very least, some unknown factor that was falsifying the results. All this was a mystery until 2021, when a team of scientists from the University of Leicester published a study in which new clues were provided. The auroras enter the scene. For a month, scientists at the University of Leicester measured infrared emissions in Saturn’s upper atmosphere. This allowed them to map a series of variable fluxes of activity in the ionosphere, the layer of the atmosphere in which ionized particles are abundant. That is, atoms that have gained or lost electrons and have acquired a negative or positive charge, respectively. These flows were related to the formation of auroras. However, there was something strange. Unlike on other planets, including Earth, a good part of these auroras were produced by the action of rotating winds within Saturn’s own atmosphere, not only by the influence of the magnetosphere. A reminder about the auroras. The auroras are formed when charged particles interact with the atoms that make up a planet’s atmosphere, exciting them and causing the emission of light. Normally, these charged particles come from solar activity, as happens on Earth, or from volcanic eruptions on nearby moons, as happens on Jupiter. Be that as it may, they are concentrated in a region external to the planets, known as the magnetosphere. In the case of Saturn, the 2021 study showed that auroras were also forming within the planet’s own atmosphere. On Earth, auroras are formed by solar activity A puzzle still incomplete. The interaction of molecules and atoms in the atmosphere with charged particles does not only cause the emission of light. It also causes the emission of radiation in other regions of the spectrum. For example, radio pulses. Let us remember that these pulses are the ones that were used to measure the rotation of Saturn. The auroras could be falsifying them. These auroras, as we have seen so far, are produced by the action of rotating winds in Saturn’s own atmosphere. But where do those winds come from? The rock star arrives. The James Webb Space Telescope is the rock star of space telescopes. A state-of-the-art instrument, capable of reaching where other telescopes could not. Therefore, thanks to him, the necessary measurements could be taken to find the origin of Saturn’s winds. Specifically, it has captured the glow caused in the infrared by a molecule in Saturn’s upper atmosphere, called trihydrogen cation. This is very useful, because it acts as a kind of thermometer. It is very susceptible to environmental conditions, so its ionization state helps to know the surrounding temperature. By carefully analyzing its state in different regions of Saturn’s northern hemisphere, it has been possible to make a map of both temperatures and particle density. The missing piece. The temperature and particle density patterns match those predicted in a series of computer models 10 years ago. In these models, these patterns originated when the auroras themselves acted as a heat source. The endless cycle. What happens is this: the auroras, with all their display of light and radiation, heat the atmosphere at a specific point. This heating causes the movement of particles between points at different temperatures, generating a wind charged with electricity. This wind, in turn, propels electrically charged particles, which cause more auroras to form. It’s a vicious circle or, as the authors of the study explaina planetary heat pump. A perfect system that feeds itself. And, of course, the mysterious external factor that upset scientists trying to measure Saturn’s rotation. Image | NASA | Bruce Waters (Wikimedia Commons) | Vincent Guth (Unsplash) In Xataka | James Webb has been detecting red dots in the universe for years: the only problem is that we don’t know what they are

The chemical composition of galaxies has always been full of unknowns. James Webb has taken a huge step to solve it

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The James Webb Space Telescope sees where others can’t: its infrared vision pierces clouds of cosmic dust and reaches galaxies so far away that it took billions of years for its light to reach us. Looking far into space is, in that sense, looking back in time. However, what James Webb has seen in these galaxies differs from what was expected: these early galaxies seem to have too much nitrogen, much more than expected. Among the exotic possible explanations of science, hypotheses such as gigantic stars never seen before, black holes functioning as catalysts for galactic chemistry or large quantities of stars have passed. In fact, that was the topic of conversation in the middle of a phone call while Mexican astrophysicist José Eduardo Méndez-Delgado waited in line for the doctor. On the other end of the line, his colleague Karla Arellano-Córdova, who was in Edinburgh. In that informal talk they decided to change the prism: perhaps the problem was not the galaxies, but how we measure them. The discovery. The proposal from this international team is to analyze three light signals from the same oxygen ion to calculate temperature and density at the same time, without starting from one to calculate the other (the original source of error). The result: the gas was a hundred or a thousand times denser than was assumed in those galaxies. With that correction, the galaxies turned out to be richer in metals than they appeared and the excess nitrogen was drastically reduced. Why it is important. First, because the metallicity of a galaxy is directly related to its history: the more metals there are in its composition, the more stars have been born and died within it. Until now we were underestimating this figure, which made those early galaxies appear very different from our own and suggested a sharp and discontinuous evolution. Now they look more like what we know. But the elements essential for life, such as carbon, oxygen or nitrogen, did not exist when the universe was born: they were manufactured by the stars inside and expanded when they died. Hence the interest in knowing the chemistry of galaxies: it helps to understand when the universe had the necessary ingredients for life. With the wrong measurements, we don’t know if those ingredients were there earlier and in more places than we thought. Context. The standard method to know the composition of a distant galaxy is to analyze the spectral lines of its light based on the density of the gas and its temperature. The problem is that in these primitive galaxies the gas is much denser than expected, so its application as a thermometer works poorly. And from here on, everything failed. The nitrogen anomalies appeared in the first scientific data from the James Webb Space Telescope, as this either this. Since the results did not fit the models, the scientific community threw itself into trying to find explanations. This paper proposes to take a step back: before interpreting stellar physics, check that the measurements are correct. Besides, the Webb now allows it: simultaneously detects oxygen lines in the ultraviolet and in the optical in such distant galaxies. How they do it. In essence, the trick is choosing the right signals. One of the oxygen light lines, visible in ultraviolet, has a special property: it does not distort even if the gas is very dense, something that happened with the lines they were using previously. By combining it with two other signals from the same atom, the research team can calculate temperature and density at the same time, as if they were solving two simultaneous and independent equations. Using statistical simulations, the team found that the results were consistent with other independent measurements of the same galaxies. Yes, but. As the team explains in the work, their method corrects the density error, but not other possible errors that are equally important: the gas of these galaxies also has internal temperature variations, and that can bias the results in ways that this study does not resolve. Furthermore, the method only works well when all three light signals from oxygen are clearly detected. In three of the six galaxies analyzed this was not possible, and the results are less precise. Nitrogen remains a problem. The overabundances come almost entirely from a particular ion whose emission is extraordinarily sensitive to temperature: a variation of just ten percent in that parameter would reduce the calculated nitrogen by half. No one has yet measured that temperature directly. However, it points out a path to follow before looking for “exotic” explanations: verify that the measurement tools are up to par. In Xataka | For a time it was one of the asteroids most watched by astronomers: the Webb has just resolved a key doubt In Xataka | James Webb has been detecting red dots in the universe for years: the only problem is that we don’t know what they are Cover | Oleg Moroz

He has achieved it by combining James Webb and Hubble

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There are images that do not need context to impose themselves. Saturn is one of them. It is enough to see it to understand why it continues to be one of the great protagonists of the solar system: for its shape, for its rings and for that mixture of apparent simplicity and complexity that it hides. The same thing happens to many of us, we stop at any new photograph as if it were the first. And that is somewhat logical, because we do not always have the opportunity to observe it with a such a rich comparison between visible and infrared light nor to get closer, even through an image, to what really happens in its atmosphere. On this occasion, what NASA has shown It is not simply a new photograph, but a different way of observing the same planet. In a single comparative image (Click to download the image in high definition), the agency has put together an observation from Hubble taken on August 22, 2024 and another from James Webb captured on November 29 of the same year, 14 weeks apart. The result is a double view that seeks not so much to impress as to explain how what we see changes when we observe at different wavelengths. What are we really seeing in this image? If we stop at the image, the difference is obvious from the first moment. On the left, the James Webb shows a Saturn with darker, more contrasting tones, where the rings shine brightly because they are made of highly reflective water ice. On the right, Hubble offers a view much closer to how we would perceive it with the naked eye, with soft colors and more subtle bands. According to NASA, both telescopes are observing sunlight reflected by the clouds and mists of the planetbut each one does so in different ranges, which radically changes the information they provide. On the left, the image of Saturn captured by the James Webb Space Telescope; On the right, the one obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope: two views that reveal its active atmosphere, its moons and its bright rings Beyond the visual contrast, this comparison allows us to peek into what happens inside Saturn’s atmosphere. The agency explains that by combining both observations, scientists can study the planet at different altitudes, from the deepest clouds to the highest and most diffuse regions. In the Webb image, for example, a long-lasting jet stream known as a “ribbon wave” appears and also a persistent remnant of the great spring storm of 2010 to 2012. Hubble, for its part, provides continuity in monitoring the bands and the general evolution of the planet. At this point, it is worth clarifying something important: we are not looking at two photographs that reproduce Saturn in the same way. The difference is in how the light is collected and interpreted. Hubble works in the visible spectrum, the same one our eyes perceive, which is why its image is more familiar. James Webb, in this case, observes in the infrared, a radiation invisible to us which allows detecting clouds and compounds at different depths in the atmosphere. In order to display this data, scientists translate these signals into visible colors, and from there come the unnatural tones that appear in your image. If we move all this to a closer scene, the most reliable reference would be the Hubble image. That is the closest thing to how we would perceive Saturn, with soft tones, not very marked bands and bright but natural rings. But the interesting thing is not to choose between one or the other, but to understand what each look contributes. Webb’s allows us to go beyond the visible and detect processes that would otherwise remain hidden. And it is precisely in that combination where this image gains all its meaning. Images | POT In Xataka | Artemis II will take NASA to the Moon half a century later. He will do it with the help of the University of Seville

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