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If it weren’t for man’s innate drive for exploration and curiosity, humanity might have never made it farther than its African cradle. There’s a reason why humans are the dominant race on Earth and why there are only a few pristine places left, unscathed by man’s touch. Some have liken this expansion with the familiar […]
NASA wants the public (read – YOU) to pick the best moon image ever taken by the reconnaisance orbiter. They have settled the finals between 5 different pictures, and you get to vote which one wins. The winner will be the cover of a special image collection. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a NASA robotic […]
“Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication” Kindle version: MOBI. Other readers: EPUB Fixed layout: PDF. Scientists are becoming more and more excited about the possibility of encountering alien life forms – just a few days after some astronomers claimed that we will encounter intelligent life by 2034, NASA is already releasing a free eBook about communicating with […]
This past week, a few scientists took the bench and gave the U.S. Congress a relative date by which they expect we’ll have discovered signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. According to their estimates, by 2034 we should make first contact or 30 years ahead of Star Trek’s first contact. Whether this was […]
Astronomers have for the first time discovered a pair of supermassive black holes that orbit each other in an ordinary galaxy. At the heart of most galaxies, there lies a supermassive black hole – as you probably already figured out from the name, it’s like a normal black hole, but much bigger. But two supermassive […]
Growing vegetables in outer space – something which science fiction readers are very familiar with, but in the real world, this is a first – NASA’s veggie growing chambers have activated. We were telling you a while ago about NASA’s plans to start growing vegetables onboard the ISS – and now, the system is online. […]
I’ve expressed my fears that something like this might happen a few weeks ago when the first US sanctions hit the Russian government and its oligarchs, but all this time I was hoping that any political feuds may spare interfering with the International Space Station. Following the US government’s recent denial of export licences for hi-tech […]
In what’s considered the first find out of a slew to follow, a team of astronomers have identified a star that originated out of the same matter as our own sun. In lack of a better analogy, the two are siblings and probably share many more sisters. Apart from telling us where in the galaxy […]
Mark Lemmon is an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University and a camera operator for numerous Mars missions, especially those involving the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. These two rovers are considered nothing short of heroes by the men and women at mission control who were part of the projects. Spirit, for instance, […]
The Illustris project took 5 years of software development and 3 months running on 8000 processors – but it sure was worth it – the result is truly monumental! Now, researchers finally have an accurate model of the development of the universe, which even though is rough around some edges, still blends in well with today’s […]
Whenever alien invasions are concerned, most people tend to image extraterrestrial spaceships landing on Earth, not the other way around. In reality, this alien invasion most likely will happen or already has happen in reverse, as Earth-based life forms could reach distant asteroids or planets, like Mars, hitching rides on human spaceship. To assess this […]
After analyzing samples from eight different carbon-rich meteorites, researchers at Pennsylvania State Universities found these contained niacin, also known as vitamin B3 and the more pristine the meteorite, the higher the concentration. What this means is that the ancient Earth had a steady supply of vitamin B3 during its early years when it was frequently […]
About half of the Universe’s lifetime ago, it was feasting time for supermassive black holes – they were eating galaxies left and right, a new study might suggest. Taking advantage of a galaxy which acts like a natural zoom lens in space, astronomers have analyzed a black hole powering a quasar about 6 billion light years […]
You just gotta love European engineers! They’re about to blast away the top of a Chilean mountain to create a site for the European Extremely Large Telescope. This telescope will, for the first time, allow astronomers to directly observe planets outside the solar system. The telescope will be called the European Extremely Large Telescope… which is really […]
Remember a few days ago, when I was telling you about the big conference NASA had planned for today? Well, they sure didn’t disappoint! The team of astrophysicists from the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center have just reported a major milestone: for the first time, they have found an Earth-sized planet at the right distance […]
NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, April 17, to announce a new discovery made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. NASA hosts conferences all the time, what makes this one so special? Well, two reasons: first of all, there’s a big paper published in the […]
It’s something that puzzled me for years now: consider a pair of identical twins; say, one gets a job as an astronaut and rockets into space. The other is also an astronaut, but he decides to skip this one and stay home. After a while, they reunite, but are they still identical? That’s exactly what NASA […]
The Red Planet is dear to many of us. There’s a sort of brethren feeling, something that relates Earth and Mars together which makes people fond of the planet, but also at the same time weary. Weary because it’s dead planet, and because people don’t want the same thing to happen to Earth. The Martian […]
Until just a few decades ago, there wasn’t any proof that there were any planets beyond those in our solar system, although of course everybody expected them to exist somewhere. After the Kepler Space Telescope was deployed, astronomers found not one, but a couple hundred exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars). In fact, our galaxy is […]
The photo right above was captured by the Curiosity Rover’s right-hand navigation camera , currently deployed on Mars and on route to Mount Sharp, which shows a striking flare of light seemingly torching near the horizon. Taken on April 4th, the photo somehow made its way to the general public (bad idea NASA) and stirred international […]
Scientists have been analyzing high-energy gamma rays originating from the center of our galaxy and they’ve reported that there’s a good chance that at least some of them come from dark matter. This is the best indication of dark matter to ever be found. What is dark matter? Think about our universe for a moment […]
Earth is not the only place in the solar system to hold watery oceans: Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons also holds a liquid ocean, albeit one that is covered by ice. However, Enceladus is still an extremely exciting place to find extraterrestrial life – not only because of the water it holds, but because water […]
A new massive computer model that simulates the formation of the solar system from its early days when all it used to comprise was a huge disk of matter to present day shows that Earth’s moon formed some 65 million years later than previous estimates led us to believe. The method provides a new way […]
A few weeks ago, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea that caused worldwide turmoil, I wrote a piece about the potentially dangerous consequences to manned space flight. In the article, I argue that seeing how the US space program, like many other in the rest of the world for that matter, is heavily reliant on Russian […]
When it comes to rings, we usually think about gas giants – Jupiter and Saturn have spoiled us that way. But astronauts have showed that asteroids can have rings too – at just 250 kilometres across, Chariklo is the smallest known body which has rings. Previously, only gas giants in our solar system have been […]
One of the biggest mysteries in solar physics is how is it possible that the sun’s surface is colder than its atmosphere. At first glance, it seems that the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, is hotter than the heat source which is preposterous given the second law of thermodynamics. So, either the sun doesn’t care […]
An eminent team of US researchers found that it is highly unlikely that the moon ever once harbored important quantities of water, after studying a mineral called apatite. Generally speaking, scientists have always though the moon was water barren, a theory confirmed by the initial rock samples brought back by the Apollo missions, however in […]
If you’ve been living in a cave or just don’t care about science at all, then you don’t know what the International Space Station is, and I’ll explain here. The ISS is a a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. It’s been launched in 1998, and since then, it has been continuously operating. Astronauts […]
We are detecting waves on a world 1,272,000,000 km away from Earth. An interesting world The signature of isolated ripples was observed in a sea called Punga Mare on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan; but before you get overly excited, you should know that these seas are not filled with water, but with hydrocarbons […]
The BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole reported the first ever piece of evidence that support the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe cam to be. Their data suggests that scientists have come across signals left over by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came […]
Future lunar missions may be fueled by gas stations in space, according to a new plan developed by MIT engineers. A spacecraft might dock at a propellant depot, somewhere between the Earth and the Moon, and pick up some more fuel before heading on to the moon. The carry load is still a major problem for […]
A new study has concluded that virtually all red dwarfs, the stars which make up at least three quarters out of all the stars in the Universe, have planets orbiting them. The study suggested that habitable-zone super-Earth planets (where liquid water, and therefore life as we know it can exist) orbit around at least a […]
Following Russia’s invasion of Crimea, the world political scene has been suddenly turned upside down. Many were surprised by this move, and harsh words and threats from the west were thrown down Putin’s alley. Talks of economic sanctions for Russia, in hope its military presence in Ukraine might be withdrawn, have been publically made. ZME […]
In light of recent NASA budget cuts, a lot of politicians, citizens and, frankly mostly non-science folks, reflect that money should be funneled to other more, immediate goals: education, health, fighting unemployment etc. The rhetoric goes by the familiar terms that there isn’t any reason for man to venture outside the planet, until he at […]
Astronomers have recently discovered water in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, using a novel technique – they believe that this new method could reveal more and more planets which feature water; so far, all life as we know it, is based on water. They made their discovery on a Jupiter-like planet […]
A piece of rock traveling at at 61,000 km/h punched a crater 40 metres wide on the surface of the Moon, producing a flash that could be seen from Earth. I feel like Hollywood can ruin your expectations when talking about huge meteoritic impacts – we’re dealing with a meteorite here that’s way smaller than […]
A team led by astronomers at The Australian National University has discovered what they believe to be the oldest star in the known Universe – forming shortly after the Big Bang, some 13.7 billion years ago. This is the first time astrophysicists get the chance to study the chemistry of the oldest stars, giving scientists […]
Black holes have fascinated both researchers and laymen for decades. Without a doubt, they are the point of maximum interest in terms of astrophysical research – objects with an incredibly large mass – so large that even light itself can’t escape it… what secrets do these objects still hold? According to Carlo Rovelli at the […]
It takes the form of vapor plumes erupting into space and the theory the scientists have agreed upon is that the main cause could be the ice geysers on the planet surface functioning similarly to volcanoes. The scientific explanation of the fact is detailed in the journal Nature on January 22, where it is explained […]
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently completed one of its most thorough and ambitious mozaic projectes. Astronomers at Hubble, stitched together some 438 separate images, both in visible and infra-red light, to complete the most accurate picture of the Tarantula Nebula so far, spanning across no less than 600 light-years. The Tarantula nebula contains some 800,000 […]
A new map of a slice of the Universe was recently released by BOSS – Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey – and it’s the most accurate and comprehensive one so far. The map plots the location of some 1.2 million galaxies with an astonishing accuracy of 99%, nothing short of spectacular – remember, each of these […]
Captioned above is one of Hubble‘s most famous and beautiful space photos. The photo features NGC 609 – a magnificent star cluster, which Hubble captured complete with colored gas, dust and a slew of stars of various brightness. Pictures like these remind people of the tremendous gift they have – sight. How can one share […]
The European Space Agency‘s billion-dollar star surveyor ‘Gaia’ is now in its operational orbit around a gravitationally stable virtual point in space, at about 1.5 million km from Earth. Gaia has been traveling to reach that point since December 19, following a spectacular launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Last night, the surveyor […]
Good news everybody – the International Space Station won’t be sunk into the ocean in 2020! In case you don’t know what I’m taking about, in a previous article, we were telling you about the plans to sink the International Space Station in the ocean, in 2020. However, the ISS will be on at least […]
This year Hubble will embark on one its most ambitious projects yet, as it’s scheduled to glimpse farther away into the Universe than ever before. Six new “deep field” images are slated, and recently astronomers at Hubble have delivered the first to the public. The image reveals extremely faint, tiny galaxies that may be more […]
In the past few decades planet hunters have confirmed a couple hundred alien planets, with hundreds more on the waiting list. Think about it, hundreds or thousands of light years away a myriad of alien planets exist, maybe some similar to our very own Earth, which scientists are ferociously studying. There many technical limitations however. […]
A team of astronomers recently discovered a new exoplanet some 200 light years away whose mass is about the same as Earth’s – the first Earth-mass planet that transits, or crosses in front of, its host star. Although very similar in mass, the planet is 60% larger in diameter suggesting it has a thick atmosphere. […]
I think many of us wanted, at some point in our lives, to become astronauts. Unfortunately, not so many of us actually make it – but that doesn’t mean we can’t help. With only a laptop or a tablet, YOU can help astronomers discover black holes from the comfort of your couch. An international team […]
There has been a debate over the number of spiral arms the Milky Way galaxies has, due to mixed results in the past. For years, it was believed the Milky Way had four spiral arms, but in 2008 readings from the Spitzer Space Telescope suggested it actually had only two. Wouldn’t you know it, a […]
In the past two decades alone, some 900 exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – have been identified, with some 2300 more in queue. Most of these were confirmed using the now discontinued Kepler space telescope. It’s remarkable how much scientists can find out about a distant plant, hundreds of light years away, simply […]
