NASA’s Space Forensics: Solving Cosmic Mysteries with Crime Scene Narratives

摘要

Explosions, collisions, births, and deaths — the universe presents astronomers with an abundance of puzzles to analyze. Scientists are keen to solve the mysteries of these events and explore the origins, evolution, and mechanics of our universe. But these events may have happened millions or billions of years ago, and trillions of kilometers from Earth. The primary evidence astronomers can collect is electromagnetic radiation — light. The NASA Space Forensics project, funded by NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos (PCOS) and Cosmic Origins (COR) projects, takes audiences through astronomy problem-solving narratives that parallel crime scene forensics. The “corpse” could be a massive star that ended its life in a brilliant supernova explosion. The “theft” might involve stellar material, swirling into an unseen singularity at the center of a galaxy.