Young Stars Dim Quicker, Surprising Solar Winds, and Dream Chaser's Milestone

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode forty eight, for broadcast on the twenty second of April twenty twenty six. Coming up on space Time, discovery that young sun like stars dim quickly good news for the possibility of life, a surprisingly speedy solar wind discovered in the inner corona, and the dream chase of space plane passes another critical milestone. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stewart Gary. A new study has discovered that young sun like stars tend to settle down and start to dim much more quickly than previously thought, and that could potentially benefit any orbiting planets and the prospects of life developing there. The findings, reported in the Astrophysical Journal are based on new observations by NASA's Earth Orbiting Chandra X ray space telescope. Astronomers use Chander and other telescopes to monitor how powerful radiation from young stars, often in the form of dangerous X rays, can pummel any planets orbiting around them. However, they didn't know how long this high energy barrage would last. That's where the new observations come in. Astronomers studied eight clusters of stars between forty five and seven hundred and fifty million years old. The authors found that sun like stars in these clusters unleashed only about a quarter to a third of the X rays they're expecting. The studies lead author Constantine Gatman from Penn State University says the observations reveal a natural quietening of young sun like stars in X rays, possibly because their internal generation of magnetic fields becomes less efficient, and Gatman believes this karmi could have been a boom for the formation of life on planets around stars that are younger versions of our own four point six billion year olds. That's because large amounts of X rays can erode a planet's atmosphere, preventing the formation of molecules necessary for organic life as we know it. On average, three million year old stars with a mass equal to that of the Sun produced around one thousand times more X rays than our Sun does today. Meanwhile, one hundred million year old solar mass stars are about forty times brighter in X rays than the present day Sun, and it's possible that we owe our own existence to our Sun doing the same thing several billion years ago. The authors found that stars with about the same mass as the Sun widened down relatively rapidly after just a few hundred million years, while those with less mass kept up their high level of X ray emissions for much longer. Combined with the decrease in the energy of the X rays and the disappearance of energetic particles, the Sun size stars are apparently better suited to host planets with robust atmospheres and possibly blossoming life than previously thought. Yetman and colleagues also used data from the Europeans Space Agencies Gaya satellite and the ROSAT mission. This allowed them to identify stars that were members of clusters rather than either foreground of background stars. To measure the X ray outputs from the stars, the authors made new Chandra observations of five clusters with ages between forty five million and one hundred million years. In addition to using Chandra and ROSAT data from archives, the study three older stellar clusters with ages between two hundred and twenty and seven hundred and fifty million years. Astronomers hadn't previously been able to study the exact X ray output of stars in this age range. Most have relied on sparse data and a relationship from previous work between the X ray missions produced by young stars and their ages and spin rates. All the more slowly rotating stars are usually fainter in X rays, but the authors found that X ray output drops off about fifteen times more rapidly than the relationship predicts during the specific adolescent phase. While they're still investigating the cause of this slower than expected activity, a strong us think the processes that generate magnetic fields in these stars may become less efficient, and that would lead to the stars becoming quieter inn X rays more quickly as they age. This is space time still to come. A surprisingly speedy solar wind found in the Sun's inner corona, and this Ierra space dream Chaser space playing tenacity passes another critical milestone or that and more still to come on space time. A new study has found that the solar wind is traveling up to four times faster than expected in the Sun's inner corona. The solar wind is a constant stream of church particles flowing out from the Sun. The new findings, reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides fresh details about the inner workings of our local star. The discovery marks the first result from the European Space Agency's pro three mission. PROBA three comprises two spacecraft flying in millimeter precise formation. The exacting nature of their orbit allows one of the vehicles to directly a cult or block out Sun from the other in a process creating an artificial solar eclipse. This allows astronomers to study the Sun's faint, wispy corona that's the atmosphere of the Sun normally obscured by the Sun's glare. The PROBA three mission, launched last year and at so far created fifty seven artificial solar eclipses, collecting more than two hundred and fifty hours of high resolution videos of the Sun's atmosphere. Before PROB three, a solar eclipse seen from Earth was the best way to see the suns in a corona. See when the Moon blocks out the Sun's direct light, scientists can capture details in the solar atmosphere around the Sun. The problem is total solar eclipses only happen on average once every eighteen months or so, and when they do happen totality, that's when the Moon totally blocks out the Sun usually only lasts for a few minutes at most, so the observations by PROBA three amounts to the same amount of observing time as five thousand solar eclipse campaigns on Earth. This is the first time astronomers have been able to carefully track how material from the Sun moves through the inner corona, where space weather is born. For around five hours at a time, the occulta spacecraft acts like an artificial moon, blocking out the Sun's direct light, so the other space graft the chronograph, can see the Sun's corona, and PROBA three's chronograph instrument can see down to seventy thousand kilometers above the Sun's surface. That's one tenth of the Sun's radius. No other space based chronograph can observe the light scattering off particles in the Sun's corona this close to the solar surface. The instrument takes one or two images a minute. These are then combined into videos that reveal never before seen movement in the hard to observe in a corona. Is this pro three project scientist Joe Zender says these sorts of intricate movements have never previously been observed in optical wavelengths so low that the Sun's in a corona. Sender says PROBA three can track how the solar wind speeds up through the Sun, showing speeds in accelerations that are surprising scientists. Just like wind here on Earth, the solar wind can be fast or slow, smooth or gusty. A fast solar wind usually flows in smooth currents from magnetic structures called coronal holes. In contrast, slow solar winds are variable and gusty, making understanding how it all works more difficult. Scientists think the slow solar wind is generated by the Sun's magnetic field lines changing how they connect, merge, and separate. This process pushes out blobs of plasma in large bright raising the corona, called streamers. In the inner corona, a region difficult to observe, astronomers saw slow solar wind gusts moving three or four times faster than expected. Previously, scientists had found that close to the Sun's surface, the solar wind should have been traveling at speeds of around one hundred kilometers per second, but instead they track some of these blobs of plasma, moving it between two hundred and fifty and five hundred kilometas a second. Overall, the wide range of speeds, accelerations and movement directions in the data explain why the slow solar wind is so hard to understand. It's naturally not uniform, involving lots of small scale structures in the Sun's magnetic field, which astronomers can now see thanks to PROBA three. The discovery comes just weeks after contact was re established with one of the spacecraft, which had suddenly gone silent following an onboard glitch, the cause of which is still being investigated. Zender says this first data set is just the beginning of a much longer journey to fully understand what's happening in the Sun. Most of the data collected by PROBA three so far is yet to be analyzed. Key open questions yet to be answered include funny out exactly what accelerates the solar wind, how the Sun flings out material in coronal mass ejections, and why the sun solar corona is so much hotter the surface of the Sun. After all, things are supposed to get cooler the further away you get from the het source this report, and the brilliance of the pro three emission from a TV. During a solar eclipse, the Earth is plunged into darkness and the Sun's ghostly atmosphere becomes visible. But what exactly causes solar eclipses? And how do scientists create their own artificial solar eclipses? And how will our mission PROBA three generate artificial solar eclipses on demand? Let's find out. So how do solar eclipses happen? The answer is simple. It's when the Sun, Moon, and Earth of the perfectly aligned, and the Moon covers the entire disk of the Sun. The fact that solar eclipses happen at all is a cosmic coincidence. It just so happens that the Sun is four hundred times bigger than our Moon, but also four hundred times further away, so the two bodies look the same size in our sky. Solar eclipses are extremely valuable because they allow scientists to study the Sun's atmosphere, also known as the solar corona. Scientists are particularly interested in this region of the Sun because it's the source of solar wind and space weather, which can impact satellites and Earth. These effects are especially noticeable during coronal mass ejections, enormous bubbles of superheated gas ejected from the Sun. The solar corona is a million times fainter than the Sun's surface, so the light from the solar disc needs to be blocked in order to see it. This is why eclipses are ideal for studying this region, and scientists trek all over the world to see them. Unfortunately, though, solar eclipses are a rare phenomenon, occurring only for a few minutes every eighteen months or so. But how do we know anything about the solar corona given the eclipses occur so rarely. Scientists use corona graphs, special telescopes that use a disc to block the Sun's bright surface. Other words, a coronagraph produces an artificial solar eclipse bar who. Coronagraphs are not only used on the ground, but also in space. Previous sun observing missions, such as SOHO incorporate coronagraphs to study the corona, but their effectiveness is limited. Mimicking a real solar eclipse is difficult. When using a coronagraph, light spills around the edge of the disc, distorting the view we get. The best way to minimize this spill over stray light is to move the disc further away from the telescope lens. But how much further away approximately one hundred and fifty meters the length of one and a half football pitches, and sending something that big into space is just not a practical idea. So how can we create a perfect artificial solar eclipse in space? This is where our Robo three mission comes in. Instead of relying on a single in practically long coronagraph, Probo three consist of two spacecraft, a camera satellite and a disk satellite. They fly together so precisely that they operate like a single corona graph around one hundred and fifty meters long. One spacecraft blocked the Sun, creating an artificial eclipse, while the other observed the Sun. To make this possible, the two spacecraft have to stay positioned with millimeter scale accuracy to create artificial solar eclipses on demand, significantly advancing our understanding of this mysterious region. This is space time. Still the CAM the Dream Chase of Spaceplate Tenacity completes a major acoustic test Master and FINESSA and later in the science report, engineers and ciders looking at ways to save Venus from the threat of rising sea levels or there and more. Still the CAM on space Time, the Serra Space Dream Chaser space plane Tenacity has just completed launch acoustic testing at NASA's Space Systems Processing facility. The key milestone event validates the vehicle's ability to withstand the intense vibrations produced during launch. The test and a specially designed hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, uses an array of ninety stack Giant speakers to simulate the sounds and vibrations experienced during blast off. The dream Chaser spaceplane was positioned at the center of the test set up with its wing stowed, mirroring the configuration you would have when it's mounted inside the five meter payload fairing during an actual launch. The successful test validated the durability of dream Chaser's critical electronics systems and confirm the structural integrity of the spacecraft. So Dream Chaser has now achieved several key milestones, including EMI and AMC testing, high speed tow testing, and post landing recovery rehearsals. It's also demonstrated command and telemetry capabilities with mission control using NASA's tracking and data relay satellite system. With the acoustic testing now completing Forloridda, Dream Chase has been transported back to Colorado for final modifications and mission specific upgrades. Serra's space dream Chaser program manager Dan Pollis says it's a key step in getting the spacecraft ready for flight. Now NASA's slated Dream Chas's tenacity for initial six missions. It's first possibly later this year. That forty five day flight won't visit the International Space Station, but instead undertake low Earth orbit testing. Although originally designed to carry crews of up to seven to the International Space Station, the reusable wing space plane will only be used by NASA to transport cargo and supplies to and from the orbiting outpost as part of NASA's commercial resupply Services to contract. Dream Chase is capable of carrying five thousand kilogram of pressurized five hundred kilograms of unpressurized cargo during the ascent phase. On its uphill climb to the space station, and on its return to Earth. It can carry up to one seven and fifty kilograms of cargo and returned experiments. But the spacecraft is designed to be fitted with an expendable pressurized cargo module called Shooting Star attached SAFT that'll increase its cargo capacity by an additional four thousand five hundred kilograms right now. Dream Chase is designed to fly aboorder United launch a lines of Vulcan cent or rocket. After docking with the orbiting our post and completing its mission, it will then return to Earth, gliding to a soft landing on the former Space Shuttle runway at the Kennedy Space Center, with Tenacity, completing the final stages of its development before being handed over to NASA. See A. Space are now building a second dream Chaser, this one named Reverence, and there are plans for a specialized third dream Chaser as well, but that'll be part of a classified national security contract so no details are being released. There's even the possibility of a four fath Dreamchaser, this one for the European Space Agency, specifically modified for launch aboard an ARIANE six rocket. Exciting times ahead this Space time and time that to take another brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week. With a science report, scientists say long term HIV remission has been achieved in a patient following a stem cell transplant from a sibling carrying a specific genetic mutation. A report in the journal Nature says the sixty three year old man was diagnosed with HIV one subtype B back in two thousand and six when he was aged forty four. In twenty twenty, he received a stem cell transplant from a sibling with a CCR five delta thirty two mutation to treat a type of blood cancer. Over time, the donus cells who were found to replace the patient's own immune cells in blood, burn, marrow, and gut tissues. Analysis of biopsies taken teas after the transplant showed no HIV genetic material integrated into the DNA of the man's infected cells in blood or gut samples, and further analysis than man cells showed no virus capable multiplying. The Human immune deficiency virus HIV attacks the immune system, causing acquired immune efficiency syndrome or AIDS, which allows opportunistic diseases normally easily combated by the body to take hold and eventually kill the patient. The World Health Organization says, since first being identified back in nineteen eighty one, AIDS is killed over forty four million people globally and infected up to one hundred and fifteen million others, with one point three million new infections occurring annually. HIV is transmitted through body fluids. Although there is no cure, it can be controlled using a combination of complex cocktails. Engineers and scientists have selected four potential strategies for trying to save the city of Venice from rising sea levels. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked at movable barriers, ring dikes, closing the Venetian Lagoon, or relocating the entire city as potential strategies. The authors say adding additional measures to the current movable barrier system could be effective against sea level rises up to one point two five metres. They use localized sea level rise projections over the next three hundred years based on the IPCC sixth Assessment Report to examine both the existing and potential new adaption strategies for saving Venice. They investigated protecting the center of Venice with dikes that would separate it from the rest of the lagoon, closing the entire lagoon with a super levee, or relocating the city, its residents and historic landmarks inland. According to the authors, relocation of the entire city could be necessary under the very high emission setes area with four point five meter sea level rise, which is projected to occur after the year twenty three hundred. A new study has warned that half of all health and medical questions supplied by five artificial intelligence chatbots are problematic. The findings, reported in the British Medical Journal, follow a test in which Gemini, Deep Seek, Meta AI, chat GPT, and GROC were challenged to answer ten open and enclosed questions in each of five categories cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition, and athletic performance. The prompts were designed to be similar to common information seeking, health and medical queries and misinformation tropes, and the authors found half of the responses were problematic, thirty percent somewhat and twenty percent highly concerning. They found the quality of the responses didn't differ among chatbots, but GROK generated more highly problematic responses than expected, while Gemini generated the fewest. The chatbots appeared to perform best in areas of VAXXI scenes in cancer and worse in areas of stem cells, athletic performance and nutrition. Well there's growing talking technology circles about the next big revolution in communications, the six G network. Six G, the upcoming sixth generations cullly on a network technology is expected to launch commercially by around twenty thirty, promising speeds of up to a terabi per second, which is one hundred times faster than five G and one thousand times faster than most current home internet systems, along with near zero latency. Six G will focus on integrating artificial intelligence, native technology, advanced sensing, and expanded connectivity to include satellite networks, enabling applications like holographic communications, precise digital twins, and autonomous drone fleets. With the details, we're joined by technology editor Alex Saharovrout from Tech Advice Start Life. This is still at least a good couple of years away from being launched. Normally is ten years between each generation and the twenty twenty one men to be when five G started, but we had five DIF from about twenty eighteen because it was in time for the Olympics in South Korea at the time. The Olympics is great for NewTV sales, and obviously with being able to transmit high amounts of data then from fas flung places. Now we take all this for granted these days, but when five G was first being announced, there were lots of promises that you would have much better connectivity at the edge and we have faster speeds. And I noticed that five G had a dirty little secret, which was that four G could be faster of many times than five G. And I was always amazed that, you know, I could connect to the FORURG network and do a speed test and get faster speeds. But part of the appeal of six G is that it's going to be better than five G. So what does that mean exactly? Well, in this case, you've got artificial intelligence being integrated into the network core, so you're going to have what they're called native wireless sensing capabilities for environment mapping, and they're going to be using higher frequency bands. When they use high frequency bands, so you can get much faster data speeds, so you can really send huge amounts of data. And we had this with five G. With millimeter waves, you had to be effectively right next to the tower to be able to get those speeds, and the signal could be stopped by the glass in your window. So there's still a lot of work to do to make sure that those higher bandwidths can be widely propagated. And given the fact that there at these higher frequencies, that's a problem. You know, part of The good thing about three G was that it could operate on seven hundred and fifty megahertz of bandwidth, and that's the same sort of frequency that TV and tennis signals come through to your house. They have to go through the house if you have one of the Rabbity antennas. And so there's a lot of talk about sixty at the moment. I mean, the standard hasn't finally been finished enough. The debarcle of five G not really being much better than four G bit of an over promising and undelivering sort of situation, and with plenty of places still not rolling out five G networks as big as the four G networks. I mean, we have two G gone in any countries, but not all. We have three G gone in Australia but not in other countries. And four G and five you will be with us for some time yet. And six G, I mean, there may be some early announcements in twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine new early devices that have it, but it's going to take several years. It won't be until twenty thirty five that six G handsets will be totally commonplace and that people will be using those networks and we yet to truly see how AI can help with propagating the signal and ensuring you get a better and stronger signal. So it's got great news for the telco industry and the phone companies. I'll have something new to sell new equipment to the phone company's new handsets to us. But at the moment it's still in the minds of boffins just to how they're really going to make it all happen. And there are plenty of developments from file Away and Ericsson and Nokia and others, but none of them have equipment ready to sell yet, and it's all still in the hype phase. That's Alexehravroyd from tech Advice dot life and this space Time, and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. 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