This new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer represents a scenario where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out. This version is a 360-degree video that lets viewers look all around during the trip. Goddard scientists created the visualizations on the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. The destination is a supermassive black hole with 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun, equivalent to the monster located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. To simplify the complex calculations, the black hole is not rotating. A flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds the black hole and serves as a visual reference during the fall. So do glowing...

This is a temperature map of the exoplanet WASP-43 b, made using MIRI on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The planet is too close to its star to be seen individually, but its brightness was calculated by measuring the brightness of the star-planet system as a whole. WASP-43 b is tidally locked and has an average temperature of 2,280°F (1,250°C) on the dayside and 1,115°F (600°C) on the nightside. The temperature map shows that the nightside is covered in thick, high clouds, which make it appear cooler than it would if there were no clouds.

NASA/Kasey Dillahay

The Sun is near the maximum phase of the solar cycle, so the solar magnetic field is evolving rapidly. This predictive model is updated in near real-time with the latest measurements of the surface magnetic field. This animation shows how the Sun and the prediction are evolving with time. Credits: Predictive Science Inc.

It helps in designing ways to prevent toxins and viruses from entering the cell, and in creating drug-delivery vehicles and vaccines. Credit: Niels Bohr Institute.

Animation showing the change in orbital population with no future launches, starting in 2023. Red shows debris, green shows payload, cyan shows derelict, and white shows rocket bodies. The animation shows a 200-year progression.

Taken from JRE #2076 w/Aza Raskin & Tristan Harris: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZcB...

Researchers have found that frozen methane trapped under our oceans, is vulnerable to melting due to climate change and could be released into the sea.

A team of researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama have created a simulation of the Apollo 12 lander engine plumes interacting with the lunar surface. The simulation animation illustrates the last 30 seconds of descent before the engine cut-off, and it shows the predicted forces that the plumes would exert on a flat computational surface. These forces are known as shear stress, which is the amount of lateral or sideways force applied over a specific area. It is the leading cause of erosion as fluids flow across a surface. The fluctuating radial patterns in the animation illustrate the intensity of predicted shear stress, with dark purple representing lower shear stress and yellow representing higher shear stress. The credits for this simulation go to...