SmithsonianMediaLIVE

Live events from Smithsonian Media. Legal:

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Join us for a one-time-only live event that reveals the secret history of Yellowstone, tomorrow, March 18th at 7pm EST. Get your tickets now: https://t.co/C2mbO2vPnc

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Thanks to everyone who attended #FutureCon at @AwesomeCon this year! We hope you had as much fun engaging with cutting-edge science & tech as we did :)

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JUNO completes a fresh orbit of Jupiter every 53 days. At the end of each orbital cycle, new images of Jupiter reach us here on Earth. NASA encourages artists to make use of these JunoCam Images to create beautiful artworks @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Europa's eccentric orbit means that the moon is constantly expanding and contracting, a process which generates heat sufficient to keep its subsurface ocean from freezing @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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JUNO has found that Jupiter has a strange "diffuse core" in which heavy elements are widely scattered. Scientists are still figuring out the details, but it's clear these findings will "rewrite the books" on planetary makeup @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Wrapping up our #FutureCon panels @AwesomeCon: "Hidden Worlds: Jupiter and its Moons." Head to Room 144 at 4PM to hear NASA scientists and engineers talk about the secrets hidden inside Jupiter and its awesome moons.

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Looking at the M87 supermassive black hole from Earth is like eyeing an atom held at arm's length. The Event Horizon Telescope's achievement in creating a composite image of M87 is remarkable @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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A small fraction of active supermassive black holes give off ultra-energetic plasma jets that move at near-light speeds and can affect the makeup of their galaxy as they shoot outward from the center @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times as massive as our sun, sit at the hearts of galaxies. Many lie dormant, but some are "active galactic nuclei" that can be seen thanks to the bright halos of their accretion disks. @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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"The event horizon of a black hole refers to the region in which nothing can escape--the escape velocity is higher than the speed of light." This is due to the curvature of spacetime in the vicinity of the hyper-dense object. Not even light can get out. @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Black holes have in common extremely high density. Their mass, however, varies wildly. "They don't have to be a billion times the mass of our sun or anything--though some are." @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Head to Room 144 at 3PM for "Supermassive Black Holes: Monsters in the Universe!" Join moderator Dr. Joe Pesce and a panel of world-class experts as we discuss the facts surrounding these awesome monsters in the universe! #FutureCon @AwesomeCon

[SmithsonianMediaLIVE @SmithsonianLive]

LIGO and the Virgo detector have also used grav waves + visual data to show that short gamma ray bursts are the result of neutron stars merging. And we're now detecting new black holes all the time @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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LIGO's first-ever gravity wave detection (in 2015) was of a black hole collision 1.3 billion light-years away. In other words, we on Earth detected grav waves from an event that occurred 1.3 billion years ago. @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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By separating incoming waves into component parts and then rejoining them (after taking them on detours), the scientists at LIGO can use interferometry techniques to definitively ID gravitational waves. @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Gravitational fields lead to ripples in the fabric of spacetime, which propagate in quadripolar gravity waves. These waves stretch and squeeze according to two distinct mathematical patterns unfolding simultaneously. @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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Dr. Erin Macdonald explains that "spacetime tells matter how to move" while "matter tells spacetime how to curve." It's a reciprocal relationship @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

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A new Moon mission would need to collect samples completely distinct from the Apollo samples--over half of which have yet to be analyzed in depth. But the panel is optimistic a novel Moon mission (perhaps targeting the south pole) is on the way @AwesomeCon #FutureCon

[SmithsonianMediaLIVE @SmithsonianLive]

Catch "The Story and Science of Gravitational Waves" with Dr Erin Macdonald at #FutureCon @AwesomeCon. She'll discuss the history behind the detection, share some fun stories, and more. See it at 2PM in Room 144!

[SmithsonianMediaLIVE @SmithsonianLive]

Pitching a new Moon mission is tricky: proposers want to exploit resources in situ (such as water preserved in the shaded regions) to lower mission costs, while NASA would prefer that any such resources be preserved for analysis upon discovery. @AwesomeCon #FutureCon