Here are today’s most important updates from the realm of Science and Space.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has recently captured a barred spiral galaxy named NGC 1672. It is situated at least 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. Interestingly, this galaxy showed an impressive array of various celestial lights. Along its two massive arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas shine in a striking red light fueled by radiation from infant stars shrouded within. Near to the center of the galaxy, some spectacular stars are embedded within a ring of hot gas. These newly formed and extremely hot stars emit powerful X-rays making NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy.
Several regions of the Atlantic Ocean, South America, and Africa witnessed a shortwave radio blackout on November 6 due to a strong solar flare, as per NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). This flare is categorised as an X2.3 class flare. Such strong solar flares, originally the powerful bursts of energy, are capable of disrupting global navigation systems, electrical power grids, as well as radio transmissions. High radiation exposure also pose threats to spacecraft, high-altitude aircraft, and astronauts. Meanwhile, NASA's SDO watches the Sun constantly since 2010 which help in understanding the space weather, specifically solar phenomena like solar flares, sunspots, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
If you have a dog, you've probably witnessed immediate shaking of heads after bathing. Dogs tend to shake head at the same frequency and with a similar pattern of turns; generally three back-and-forth shakes at a time. After lot of research, scientists have figured out the reasons of such behaviour. As per new study, the "wet dog shake" is the fault of a receptor in mammal skin called C-LTMR, which causes them to perform a surprisingly consistent shake when stimulated by droplets of liquid on the back of the neck. C-LTMRs create ticklish sensations in animals
A new research led by Penn State scientists revealed that microplastics in the atmosphere could be affecting both weather and climate. Microplastics or plastic smaller than 5 millimeters, act as ice nucleating particles or microscopic aerosols facilitating the formation of ice crystals in the clouds. This indicates that microplastics could possibly impact precipitation patterns, weather, climate change as well as aviation safety. Freedman from Penn State’s Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science warned: “In a polluted environment with many more aerosol particles, like microplastics, you are distributing the available water among many more aerosol particles, forming smaller droplets around each of those particles. When you have more droplets, you get less rain, but because droplets only rain once they get large enough, you collect more total water in the cloud before the droplets are large enough to fall and, as a result, you get heavier rainfall when it comes.”
