This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Martin Rees is Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, at the University of Cambridge, the Astronomer Royal, a member of Britain's House of Lords, and a former President of the Royal Society. The following interview was conducted at Trinity College, Cambridge, by The Conversation's Matt Warren.

Into space

Q: How big is the universe … and is it the only one?

Our cosmic horizons have grown enormously over the last century, but there is a definite limit to the size of the observable universe. It contains all the things from which light has been able to reach us since the Big Bang, about 14 billion years ago. But the new realisation is that the observable universe may not be all of reality. There may be more beyond the horizon, just as there's more beyond the horizon when you're observing the ocean from a boat.

What's more, the galaxies are likely to go on and on beyond this horizon, but more interestingly, there is a possibility that our Big Bang was not the only one. There may have been others, spawning other universes, disconnected from ours and therefore not observable, and possibly even governed by different physical laws. Physical reality on this vast scale could therefore be much more varied and interesting than what we can observe.

The universe we can observe is governed by the same laws everywhere. We can observe a distant galaxy and see that the atoms emitting the light are just the same as the ones in the lab. But there may be physical domains that are governed by completely different laws. Some may have no gravity, or not allow for nuclear physics. Ours may not even be a typical domain.

Even in our own universe, there are only so many ways you can assemble the same atoms, so if it is large enough it is possible that there is another Earth, even another avatar you. If this were the case, however, the universe would have to be bigger than the observable one by a number which to write down would require all the atoms in the universe. Rest assured, if there's another you, they are a very, very long way away. They might even be making the same mistakes.

Q: So how likely is alien life in this vast expanse?

We know now that planets exist around many, even most, stars. We know that in our Milky Way galaxy there are likely millions of planets that are in many ways like the Earth, with liquid water. The question then is whether life has developed on them – and we can't yet answer that.

Although we know how via Darwinian selection a complex biosphere evolved on Earth around 4 billion years ago, we don't yet understand the actual origin of life – the transition from complex chemistry to the first metabolizing, replicating structures. The good news is that we will have a better idea of how that happened within the next ten or 20 years and crucially, how likely it was to happen. This will give us a better understanding of how likely it is to happen elsewhere. In that time, we will also have technologies that will allow us to better search for alien life.

But just because there's life elsewhere doesn't mean that there is intelligent life. My guess is that if we do detect an alien intelligence, it will be nothing like us. It will be some sort of electronic entity.

If we look at our history on Earth, it has taken about 4 billion years to get from the first protozoa to our current, technological civilisation. But if we look into the future, then it's quite likely that within a few centuries, machines will have taken over – and they will then have billions of years ahead of them.

In other words, the period of time occupied by organic intelligence is just a thin sliver between early life and the long era of the machines. Because such civilisations would develop at different rates, it's extremely unlikely that we will find intelligent life at the same stage of development as us. More likely, that life will still be either far simpler, or an already fully electronic intelligence.

On intelligence

Q: Do you believe that machines will develop intelligence?

There are many people who would bet on it. The second question, however, is whether that necessarily implies consciousness – or whether that is limited to the wet intelligence we have within our skulls. Most people, however, would argue that it is an emergent property and could develop in a machine mind.

Q: So if the universe is populated by electronic super minds, what questions will they be pondering?

We can't conceive that any more than a chimp can guess the things that we spend our time thinking about. I would guess, however, that these minds aren't on planets. While we depend on a planet and an atmosphere, these entities would be happy in zero G, floating freely in space. This might make them even harder to detect.

Q: How would humanity respond to the discovery of alien life?

It would certainly make the universe more interesting, but it would also make us less unique. The question is whether it would provoke in us any sense of cosmic modesty. Conversely, if all our searches for life fail, we'd know more certainly that this small planet really is the one special place, the single pale, blue dot where life has emerged. That would make what happens to it not just of global significance, but an issue of galactic importance, too.

And we are likely to be fixed to this world. We will be able to look deeper and deeper into space, but travelling to worlds beyond our solar system will be a post-human enterprise. The journey times are just too great for mortal minds and bodies. If you're immortal, however, these distances become far less daunting. That journey will be made by robots, not us.

Q: What scientific advances would you like to see over the coming century?

Cheap, clean energy, for one. Artificial meat is another. But the idea is often easier than the application. I like to tell my students the story of two beavers standing in front of a huge hydroelectric dam. "Did you build that?" asks one. "No," says the other. "But it is based on my idea." That's the essential balance between scientific insight and engineering development.

On expertise

Q: Michael Gove [the British politician who was a leader of the campaign for the UK to leave the EU] said people have had enough of experts. Have they?

I wouldn't expect anything more from Mr Gove, but there is clearly a role for experts. If we're sick, we go to a doctor, we don't look randomly on the internet. But we must also realise that most experts only have expertise within their own area, and if we are scientists we should accept that. When science impacts on public policy, there will be elements of economics, ethics and politics where we as scientists speak only as laymen. We need to know where the demarcation line is between where we are experts and where we are just citizens.

If you want to influence public policy as a scientist, there are two ways to do it. You can aspire to be an adviser within government, which can be very frustrating. Or you can try and influence policy indirectly. Politicians are very much driven by what's in their inbox and what's in the press, so the scientists with the greatest influence are those who go public, and speak to everyday people. If an idea is picked up by voters, the politicians won't ignore it.

Q: Brexit – good or bad?

I am surprised to find myself agreeing with Lord Heseltine [former UK Conservative government minister] and Tony Blair [former Labour prime minister], but it is a real disaster, which we have stumbled into. There is a lot of blame to be shared around, by Boris Johnson et al, but also by Jeremy Corbyn [leader of the UK Labour party] for not fighting his corner properly. I have been a member of the Labour Party for a very long time, but I feel badly let down by Corbyn – especially as Labour voters supported Remain two to one. He has been an ineffective leader, and also ambivalent on this issue. A different leader, making a vocal case for Remain, could have tilted the vote.

On the other side, Boris Johnson [now UK foreign secretary – who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU] has been most reprehensible. At least Gove has opinions, which he has long expressed. Boris Johnson had no strong opinions, and the honourable thing to do if that is the case is to remain quiet. But he changed his stance opportunistically (as in the Eton debating society) and swung the vote.

Q: But why is it such a disaster?

My concerns are broad geopolitical ones. In the world as it is now, with America becoming isolationist and an increasingly dominant Russia, for Europe to establish itself as a united and powerful counterweight is more important than ever. We are jeopardizing something that has held Europe together, in peace, for 60 years, and could also break up the United Kingdom in the process. We will be remembered for that and it is something to deplore.

One thing astronomers bring to the table is an awareness that we have a long potential future, as well as the universe's long past – and that this future could be jeopardized by what happens in the coming decades.

Q: More broadly, how much danger is the human race in?

I have spent a lot of time considering how we as a species can make it into the next century – and there are two main classes of problems. First, the collective impact of humanity as its footprint on the planet increases due to a growing population more demanding of resources. Second, the possible misuse by error or design of ever more powerful technology – and most worryingly, bio-tech.

There is certainly a high chance of a major global setback this century, most likely from the second threat, which increasingly allows individual groups to have a global impact. Added to this is the fact that the world is increasingly connected, so anything that happens has a global resonance. This is something new and actually makes us more vulnerable as a species than at any time in our past.

Q: So terrorism will pose an even greater threat in the coming century?

Yes, because of these technologies, terrorists or fanatics will be able to have a greater impact. But there's also the simple danger of these technologies being misused. Engineering or changing viruses, for example, can be used in benign ways – to eradicate Zika, for example – but there's obviously a risk that such things can get out of control.

Nuclear requires large, conspicuous and heavily-protected facilities. But the facilities needed for bio-tech, for example, are small-scale, widely understood, widely available and dual use. It is going to be very hard indeed properly to regulate it.

In the short and intermediate term, this is even more worrying than the risks posed by climate change – although in the long term, that will be a very major problem, especially as both people and politicians find it very difficult to focus on things further down the line.

I have been very involved in campaigns to get all countries involved in research and development into alternative, clean energy sources. Making them available and cheap is the only way we are going to move towards a low carbon future. The level of money invested in this form of research should be equivalent to the amount spent on health or defence, and nuclear fusion and fourth generation nuclear fission should be part of that.

Q: In the medieval world, people would start building cathedrals that only later generations would finish. Have we lost that long-term perspective?

That's right. In fact, one very important input behind the political discussion prior to the Paris climate agreement was the 2015 Papal Encyclical. I'm a council member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which helped to initiate the scientific meetings which were important in ensuring that the encyclical was a highly respected document. Whatever one thinks of the Catholic church, one cannot deny its long-term vision, its global range and its concern for the world's poor. I believe that the encyclical, six months before the Paris conference, had a big impact on the leaders and people in South America, Africa and Asia. Religion clearly still has a very important role to play in the world.

Q: Have you ever encountered anything in the cosmos that has made you wonder whether a creator was behind it?

No. Personally, I don't have any religious beliefs. But I describe myself as a cultural Christian, in that I was brought up in England and the English church was an important part of that. Then again, if I had been born in Iran, I'd probably go to the mosque.

Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

Mysterious bright anomalies known as "magic islands" that wink in and out of existence on the seas of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, may be streams of bubbles, a new model suggests.

Such bubbles, each up to more than an inch (2.5 centimeters) wide, might complicate any future missions seeking to explore Titan's seas, to the study's researchers said.

Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury, making the natural satellite the largest of the more than 60 known moons orbiting Saturn. It is also the only extraterrestrial body known to regularly support liquid on its surface, with seas and lakes likely made of nitrogen, methane and ethane, researchers have said. [Titan in Pictures: Amaznig Photos of Saturn's Big Moon] 

In 2013, using radar aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft, researchers peered through Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere to analyze the second-largest sea on the moon, Ligeia Mare. Titan's seas and lakes usually appear dark, but Cassini detected bright anomalies in Ligeia Mare that mysteriously disappeared after subsequent observations. 

"The physical process behind this strange behavior was, up to now, absolutely not understood," study lead author Daniel Cordier, a planetary scientist at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne in France, told Space.com. 

Previous research suggested these playfully named magic islands were not alien creatures or spacecraft, but potentially gas bubbles or floating solids. Now, Cordier and his colleagues suggest that these anomalies are due to fizzing in Titan's unstable seas.

To learn more about the magic islands, the researchers developed computer models of how gases and liquids might behave in the frigid seas of Titan. The scientists based their models in part on experimental data previously collected by the oil and gas industry about how similar fluids act under pressure when deep underground.

The new findings suggest that on Titan, surface fluids are usually mixtures richer in methane, while deeper fluids are mixtures rich in ethane. Since the surface fluids are in contact with Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere, they are rich in nitrogen as well, the study said.

The researchers suggested that wind, tides, or the effects of heating and cooling may force surface mixtures to flow downward. The liquids in these sinking mixtures then separate because of the increased pressure found at lower depths. Nitrogen gas bubbles released by these separating liquids then rise back to the surface. Bubbles are highly reflective to radio waves, and so look bright under radar scans, the researchers said.

The calculations suggest that the bubbles can reach up to 1.8 inches (4.6 cm) in width and likely form at depths of about 330 to 660 feet (100 to 200 meters). This bubbling is only temporary, which explains why the Cassini spacecraft did not always see it, the researchers said.

Cordier noted that if future missions seek to deploy submarines to Titan's seas, "possible instabilities of the liquid at the sea bottom have to be taken into account."

The scientists detailed their findings online Monday (April 18) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

What would happen if a drone got caught in an electrical storm?

That's the question YouTuber Tom Scott asked when he brought two DJI Phantom 3 drones to the University of Manchester’s High Voltage Laboratory. The British university's lab can generate lightning on command, thanks to an impulse generator that can create a bolt of more than 1 million volts. The drones were no match for the lightning, and were fried when caught in the middle of the bolt.

For the first experiment, a drone was tethered to the ground (to ensure it wouldn't fly out of the bolt's path) and shocked with more than 1 million volts of electricity. Slow-motion video of the shock showed that the lightning strike went through the drone, and the robotic flyer came crashing down. [Electric Earth: Stunning Images of Lightning]

"The electricity passed straight through, flowing from one of the propellers to exit through the foot of the drone," Enna Bartlett, digital coordinator for the university, described in a blog post. "Surprisingly there were no visible marks on the outside of the drone, but that doesn’t mean that the insides got away unscathed; as it turns out, the electricity took the path of least resistance and fried all the sensitive internal electronics."

Electrical engineering researchers Vidyadhar Peesapati and Richard Gardner, who carried out the experiments to answer Scott's question, thought they'd try to protect the other drone in the second experiment. Rather than tether the done as is, the researchers added a lightning rod made of copper tape to act as a lightning conductor.

Though the copper tape was intended to attract the lightning atthe highest point on the drone, the propellers were still equally as tall (and attractive) to the bolt of electricity. In that experiment, the drone was more severely damaged than the first experiment. The researchers said the propellers were explosively pulled away from the drone due to the sheer force of the strike.

The tests made for an electrifying video on Scott's YouTube channel, but also added to scientists' understanding of how aeronautics interact with lightning.

"With our understanding of how airplanes behave in thunderstorms and how to provide protection for them," Bartlett wrote, "this knowledge could be applied to drone technology to ensure the drone and its pilot stays safe should they fly in adverse weather conditions."

Original article on Live Science.

Last year, scientists announced that they had finally observed gravitational waves, the elusive and long sought-after ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first posited by Albert Einstein. The waves came from a catastrophic event — the collision of two black holes located about 1.3 billion light years away from Earth — and the released energy undulated across the universe, much like ripples in a pond.

The detection by the upgraded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Advanced LIGO), along with two subsequent gravitational wave discoveries, confirmed a major prediction of Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and heralded a new era in physics, allowing scientists to study the universe in a new way by using gravity instead of light.

But a fundamental question remains unanswered: How and why do black holes collide and merge?

In order for the black holes to merge, they must start out very close together by astronomical standards, no more than about a fifth of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. But only stars with very large masses can become black holes, and during the course of their lives, these stars expand to become even larger.

A new study published in Nature Communications uses a model called COMPAS (Compact Object Mergers: Population Astrophysics and Statistics) in an attempt to answer how large binary stars that would eventually become black holes fit within a very small orbit. COMPAS allows the researchers to pursue a kind of "paleontology" for gravitational waves.

"A paleontologist, who has never seen a living dinosaur, can figure out how the dinosaur looked and lived from its skeletal remains," said Ilya Mandel from the University of Birmingham in the UK, the paper's senior author, in a statement. "In a similar way, we can analyze the mergers of black holes, and use these observations to figure out how those stars interacted during their brief but intense lives."

What they found was that even two widely separated "progenitor" stars can interact when they expand, engaging in several episodes of mass transfer.

The researchers started by analyzing the three gravitational wave events that were detected by LIGO and attempted to see if all three black hole collisions evolved in the same way, which they call "classical isolated binary evolution via a common-envelope phase."

It starts with two massive progenitor stars at quite wide separations. As the stars expand, once they come so close that they cannot escape each other's gravity, they begin to interact and engage in several episodes of mass transfer. This results in a very rapid, dynamically unstable event that envelops both stellar cores in a dense cloud of hydrogen gas.

"Ejecting this gas from the system takes energy away from the orbit," the team said. "This brings the two stars sufficiently close together for gravitational-wave emission to be efficient, right at the time when they are small enough that such closeness will no longer put them into contact."

The researchers said the simulations with COMPAS have also helped the team to understand the typical properties of the binary stars that can go on to form such pairs of merging black holes and the environments where this can happen.

For example, the team found that a merger of two black holes with significantly unequal masses would be a strong indication that the stars formed almost entirely from hydrogen and helium — called low-metallicity stars — with other elements contributing fewer than 0.1 percent of stellar matter (for comparison, this fraction is about 2 percent in our Sun). They were able to determine that all three events detected by LIGO could have formed in low-metallicity environments.

"The beauty of COMPAS is that it allows us to combine all of our observations and start piecing together the puzzle of how these black holes merge, sending these ripples in spacetime that we were able to observe at LIGO," said Simon Stevenson, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Birmingham and the paper's lead author.

The team will continue to use COMPAS to gain a greater understanding how the binary black holes discovered by LIGO could have formed, and how future observations could tell us even more about the most catastrophic events in the universe.

Originally published on Seeker.

{ http://www.livescience.com/ }

In a stunt straight out of a science-fiction film, a real-life, jet-powered hoverboard cruised over the Atlantic Ocean.

Franky Zapata, a hoverboard, took to the skies in a promotional video for the watch company Breitling. The Swiss watchmaker announced its partnership with the Flyboard Air project in December with an incredible video that shows Zapata flying on his hoverboard, reported The Telegraph. Zapata flew about 164 feet (50 meters) over the Atlantic Ocean for almost 7 minutes, The Telegraph said.

Breitling used the video to announce that it will be the main sponsor of Flyboard Air, with the partnership marking "a new chapter in conquering the skies." [Up She Goes! 8 of the Wackiest Early Flying Machines]

"By supporting the FlyboardAir project, Breitling's intention is once again to foster the spirit of daring and invention that has always characterized aviation since the time of the very first 'magnificent men in their flying machines' — that taste for adventure [and] that combination of daring and discipline, which consistently drive aeronautics to push the boundaries of feasibility," Breitling officials said in a statement.

Essentially a flying skateboard — like Marty McFly's famous ride in the 1989 classic movie "Back to the Future Part II" — several hoverboard prototypes have been developed in recent years. The Flyboard Air was invented by Zapata Racing and took four years of development, the company said. The Flyboard Air hoverboard is still a prototype and is not commercially available, the company said.

However, Zapata and his hoverboard have already set numerous world records. In April 2016, Zapata flew the Flyboard Air almost7,400 feet (over 2,200 meters) from a height of about 160 feet (50 m), setting a new world record for the longest hoverboard flight.

Unlike the company's original Flyboard, which connects to a watercraft turbine via a long hose, the Flyboard Air is hose-free. The system's "independent propulsion unit" allows the hoverboard to fly for up to 10 minutes, according to Zapata Racing, reaching a maximum speed of 93 mph (150 km/h) and an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,000 m).

"This has really been a life's work," Zapata said, according to The Telegraph. "Who has never dreamt of leaping out of the water and soaring through the air, free of all constraints? This is the dream that is at the origin of the products we create." 

Original article on Live Science.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

You don't need to be a professional astronomer to find new worlds orbiting distant stars. Darwin mechanic and amateur astronomer Andrew Grey this week helped to discover a new exoplanet system with at least four orbiting planets.

But Andrew did have professional help and support.

The discovery was a highlight moment of this week's three-evening special ABC Stargazing Live, featuring British physicist Brian Cox, presenter Julia Zemiro and others.

Viewers were encouraged to join in the search for exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars – using the Exoplanet Explorers website. After a quick tutorial they were then asked to trawl through data on thousands of stars recently observed with NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

Grey checked out more than 1,000 stars on the website before discovering the characteristic dips in brightness of the star in the data that signify an exoplanet.

Together with other co-discoverers, Grey's name will appear on a scientific paper reporting the very significant discovery of a star with four planets, orbiting closer to the star than Mercury is to our Sun.

Grey told Stargazing Live:

That is amazing. Definitely my first scientific publication … just glad that I can contribute. It feels very good.

Cox was clearly impressed by the new discovery:

In the seven years I've been making Stargazing Live this is the most significant scientific discovery we've ever made.

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#BREAKING: Stargazing Live viewers find four-planet solar system via crowd-sourcing project http://ab.co/2oMknm3 

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GIF: Animation of the solar system found by citizen scientists

A breakthrough for citizen science

So just what does this discovery signify? First, let’s be clear: this is no publicity stunt, or a bit of fake news dressed up to make a good story.

This is a real scientific discovery, to be reported in the scientific literature like other discoveries made by astronomers.

It will help us understand the formation of our own Earth. It's also a step towards establishing whether we are alone in the universe, or whether there are other planets populated by other civilisations.

On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that this discovery joins the list of more than 2,300 known exoplanets discovered by Kepler so far. There are thousands more candidate planets to be examined.

If Grey and his colleagues hadn't discovered this new planetary system, then somebody else would have eventually discovered it. But that can be said of all discoveries. The fact remains that this particular discovery was made by Grey and his fellow citizen scientists.

Amateurs and professionals working together

I think that the greatest significance of this discovery is that it heralds a change in the way we do science.

As I said earlier, Grey didn't make this discovery alone. He used data from the Kepler spacecraft with a mission cost of US$600 million.

Although we can build stunning telescopes that produce vast amounts of valuable data, we can't yet build an algorithm that approaches the extraordinary abilities of the human brain to examine that data.

A human brain can detect patterns in the data far more effectively than any machine-learning algorithm yet devised. Because of the large volume of data generated by Kepler and other scientific instruments, we need large teams of human brains – larger than any research lab.

But the brains don't need to be trained astrophysicists, they just need to have the amazing cognitive abilities of the human brain.

This results in a partnership where big science produces data, and citizen scientists inspect the data to help make discoveries. It means that anyone can be involved in cutting-edge science, accelerating the growth of human knowledge.

A gathering of brainpower

This is happening all over science and even the arts, from butterfly hunting to transcribing Shakespeare's handwriting.

Last year citizen scientists in the Australian-led Radio Galaxy Zoo project discovered the largest known cluster of galaxies.

None of these projects would be possible without widespread access to the internet, and readily-available tools to build citizen science projects, such as the Zooniverse project.

Will machines ever make citizen scientists redundant? I have argued before that we need to build algorithms called "machine scientists" to make future discoveries from the vast volumes of data we are generating.

But these algorithms still need to be trained by humans. The larger our human-generated training set, the better our machine scientists will work.

So rather than making citizen scientists redundant, the machine scientists multiply the power of citizen scientists, so that a discovery made by a future Andrew Grey may result in hundreds of discoveries by machines trained using his discovery.

I see the power of citizen scientists continuing to grow. I suspect this is only the start. We can do much more. We can increase the "fun" of doing citizen science by introducing "gaming" elements into citizen science programs, or by taking advantage of new technologies such as augmented reality and immersive virtual reality.

Perhaps we can tap into other human qualities such as imagination and creativity to achieve goals that still frustrate machines.

I look forward to the day when a Nobel prize is won by someone in a developing country without access to a traditional university education, but who uses the power of their mind, the wealth of information on the web and the tools of citizen science to transcend the dreams of traditional science.

Ray Norris, Professor, School of Computing, Engineering, & Maths, Western Sydney University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

Jupiter is famous for its Great Red Spot, a storm twice the diameter of Earth that rages on the gas giant's surface. Now, researchers have found that it has a second great spot, almost as large — this one, a Great Cold Spot caused by the planet's vibrant auroras.

Researchers first detected the ever-changing Great Cold Spot in data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and went back to track its existence over a 15-year period in observations from another telescope. The cool patch stretches up to 15,000 by 7,500 miles (24,000 by 12,000 km) across at its largest, and it's about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) cooler than the surrounding area in the planet's upper atmosphere. Although it disappears from time to time it seems to always re-form, just offset from the planet's bright aurora.

"The Great Cold Spot is much more volatile than the slowly changing Great Red Spot, changing dramatically in shape and size over only a few days and weeks, but it has reappeared for as long as we have data to search for it, for over 15 years,"  Tom Stallard, a planetary astronomer at the University of Leicester in the U.K. and lead author on the new work, said in a statement. [2nd 'Great Spot' on Jupiter Discovered by Astronomers (Video)]

The spot is likely formed as a byproduct of the planet's spectacular auroras, researchers said in the statement, and that because of the way the spot always re-forms it might be as old as the auroras themselves — up to many thousands of years in age.

Jupiter's newfound Great Cold Spot appears as a dark patch in this map of emissions from the hydrogen ion H3+, which is present in Jupiter's atmosphere, as measured by NASA's IRTF telescope in Hawaii. The cool spot moves over time and changes shape, but always re-forms.

Credit: Tom Stallard

Like on Earth, the bright light of Jupiter's auroras comes from electrically charged particles colliding with the planet's atmosphere near its north and south poles, guided by the planet's magnetic field. But Jupiter's auroras are much more constant and intense, and they're powered from particles coming from the planet's moons as well as the sun.

According to the new research, the aurora deposits energy into Jupiter's atmosphere, heating it up so there's a large disparity in heat between the top of the atmosphere and farther below. This seems to whip up a vortex in the atmosphere, creating a patch that is cooler than the surroundings and offset from the aurora.

Stallard said that a similar effect can be found near Earth's aurora, but that it's less of a permanent fixture because the Earth auroras vary so much more, and because Jupiter's spin acts to trap some of its heat in place.

Researchers tracked the Great Cold Spot over time, noting dramatic changes in shape and size from day to day. Here, it is seen in July of 1995 and continues to reappear until 15 years later, in December of 2000.

Credit: Tom Stallard

"The atmospheric flows generated by Earth's aurora can drive heat quickly across the whole planet, making the upper atmosphere ring like a bell, while Jupiter's fast spin traps this energy nearer the poles," Stallard said.

The researchers were surprised to find the Great Cold Spot, Stallard added, and they will continue to investigate it while looking for evidence of other atmospheric features. Combining their Earth-based observations with those from the Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter should provide much more insight into the giant planet's weather. 

The new work was detailed April 10 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. 

The solar system's dwarf-planet population is about to increase by one.

The far-flung object 2014 UZ224 — informally known as DeeDee, for "Distant Dwarf" — is about 395 miles wide (635 kilometers), new observations reveal. That means the frigid object probably harbors enough mass to be shaped into a sphere by its own gravity, entitling it to "dwarf planet" status, researchers said.

Astronomers first spotted DeeDee in 2014 using the optical Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile (though they didn't announce the discovery until 2016). [Meet the Solar System's Dwarf Planets]

The initial Blanco observations allowed the discovery team to nail down DeeDee's orbit. The object loops around the sun on a highly elliptical path that takes more than 1,100 Earth years to complete; it's currently about 92 astronomical units (AU) from the sun but comes as close as 38 AU and gets as far away as 180 AU. (One AU is the average Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million km.)

DeeDee is therefore the second most distant "trans-Neptunian object" with a confirmed orbit at the moment, researchers said. The dwarf planet Eris is more far-flung, though that's not always the case; Eris is currently about 96.5 AU from the sun, but it never gets more than 98 AU from Earth's star.

For perspective, Pluto orbits the sun at an average distance of 40 AU, with a maximum orbital distance of 49 AU.

But the Blanco data did not allow the discovery team — which was led by David Gerdes, an astronomer at the University of Michigan — to pinpoint DeeDee's size. While the researchers suspected that the object is a dwarf planet, they couldn't definitively determine from the optical observations whether DeeDee is relatively small and bright, or big and dark.

So Gerdes and his colleagues studied DeeDee with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a system of powerful radio telescopes in Chile. ALMA picked up the faraway object's heat signature, which is directly proportional to its size.

"We calculated that this object would be incredibly cold, only about 30 degrees Kelvin, just a little above absolute zero," Gerdes said in a statement.

ALMA also measured DeeDee's brightness in millimeter-wavelength light, finding that the object reflects just 13 percent of the sunlight that hits it. That means DeeDee is about as dark as the dirt on a baseball infield, astronomers said.

Combining the ALMA data with the earlier Blanco observations allowed the team to figure out how big DeeDee is, a result they just published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. (Some more perspective: DeeDee is larger than Saturn's spherical, geyser-spouting moon Enceladus, which has a diameter of 313 miles, or 504 km.)

The discovery and study of DeeDee (which has not yet officially been anointed a dwarf planet) shows that astronomers can probe the deep outer solar system and that similar techniques could potentially spot Planet Nine, the big world hypothesized to lurk out there undetected, researchers said.

"There are still new worlds to discover in our own cosmic backyard," Gerdes said. "The solar system is a rich and complicated place."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.