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Dark energy is the mysterious force that drives the Universe’s expansion at an ever increased pace. Probing and understanding this force is thus imperative for astronomers’ and cosmologists’ efforts of peering through the Universe’s secrets. Recently, a new massive project set on probing the nature of dark energy was launched, called the Dark Energy Survey (DES), […]
Some 5.000 years separate us from the birth of Ancient Egypt, in 3.100 BC. Add another 5.000 years, and you still haven’t reached the date when Göbekli Tepe was built. The temple (now in southern Turkey) took shape over 11.000 years ago, around the same time Plato’s hypothetical Atlantis goes under, 5 millennia before the […]
Ever since 2010, I’ve been telling you about a group of scientists and investors which wants to send people to Mars – on a one way trip, that is. But in early 2013, this took a huge step forward, materializing in the form of Mars One – a non-profit organization that plans to establish a […]
As we know by now, most galaxies, including our own, have a supermassive black hole at their center. However, the one in our galaxy, Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star) has a surprisingly small appetite, something which has puzzled astronomers for years. Sagittarius A* is 4 million times as massive as the sun, but it is […]
Physicists have successfully reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in an experiment which used ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber. This is the first experiment which recreates at least some of the conditions from the Big Bang. “This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of […]
Our farthest scout in the Universe, the Voyager-1 probe, has traveled some 18.7 billion kilometers so far and it doesn’t show any sign of stopping. Soon enough, it will be the first man-made object to leave our solar system, when exactly however has been a matter of debate. For the past year or so, contradictory […]
When the space shuttle was first designed, its makers intended on building the very first partially reusable craft capable of sending cargo or people into space and then return. The vision was extremely seducing: you launch the craft and then within a few days it would be ready to fly again, greatly reducing cost and […]
The general belief surrounding black holes is that they’re massive, but vicious matter gobbling cosmic objects. While it’s true the reputation of black holes as destroyers precede them, we should not forget that they fill an important role in the Universe as creators. Scientists now know that black holes are inexorably linked with galaxies, lying […]
After years of planning and hard work, the Gemini Observatory team recently unveiled some of the work they performed using one of their newly installed instruments. Called the FLAMINGOS-2, the instrument provides astronomers with a powerful mix of capabilities, including high-resolution wide-field imaging (infrared) as well as spectroscopy. The newly mounted piece is already on […]
The Sun is gearing up for a major polarity switch, NASA announced: the North Pole which was in the northern hemisphere, has now started pointing south. The solar magnetic polarity reversal cycle has an 11 year period, which is still not fully understood. “This always happens around the time of solar maximum,” says David Hathaway, […]
We’ve all come to love and cherish the visionary images of astronauts out in space in their spacesuits. There’s something truly incredible about getting to see a humanoid form right in space, overlooking our beautiful blue marble, wrapped inside a protective suit that shelters the new millennium explorer from the cold, deadly grips of vacuum. […]
We all appreciate and love the sun’s gaze in the morning, but truth be told were it not for our planet’s protective magnetic fields the sun’s warm embrace would have suddenly turn into a death ray. So instead of scorching Earth, solar wind bounces off the magnetic field, which leads radioactive particles to circulate the […]
Launched just month, NASA’s IRIS telescope which is currently orbiting Earth has already beamed down its first images of the sun. The details are unprecedented, as scientists can now study a multitude of thin, fibril-like structures that have never been seen before, revealing enormous contrasts in density and temperature. The telescope’s main mission is that […]
Hailed by many as the “comet of the century”, the ISON comet is expected to blaze so bright after it enters the inner solar system that it will become visible even to the naked eye from here on Earth and for many months too. This only if it will survive the first leg of its […]
Valles Marineris is the largest canyon on Mars, and in the solar system for that matter that we know of. It’s 4000 km long, 200km wide, 10 km deep and stunningly beautiful. Just so you can get a glimpse of how beautiful it is, ESA just recently posted a movie that focuses on an enclosed 8 km-deep […]
Physicists today and the theories they currently elaborate are seemingly entrenched in one major idea: that the Big Bang occurred once in a moment of singularity (infinitely dense Universe) and has expanded ever since. Christof Wetterich, a theoretical physicist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has an alternate view. He believes the Universe is not […]
Every little thing we hold for granted here on familiar ground and gravity is different in space. Take washing your hair for instance. Expedition 36 crew member Karen Nyberg recently uploaded a video on YouTube which has since gone viral which demonstrates how astronauts aboard the International Space Station wash their hair in microgravity. At first […]
NASA and a company called Aerojet Rocketdyne recently finished testing a rocket engine injector created purely through 3D printing. The future – today 3D printing is pretty much what it sounds like – it is a process of making a three-dimensional solid objects of virtually any shape from a digital model. Adopting the technique even […]
An US astronomer recently reported that he and his team have discovered a new moon orbiting the eighth and farthest planet from the sun, Neptune. Designated S/2004 N 1, this is the 14th known moon to circle the giant planet. Some of you might find it odd that we’ve yet to spot all the moons orbiting […]
The world, known as HD189733b, has a deep azure hue, probably the result of molten silicate glass rain in the atmosphere, which scatters blue light. The giant planet is one of the closest and most studied in the exoplanets recently discovered; it is a sauna, a hazy hothouse swept by blow-torch winds powered by the […]
The otherwordly new video features one of the two Martian moons – Phobos, as it rises on the sky. Even though the movie only has 32 seconds, the action actually took place over the course of 27 minutes. Mars has two moons: Phobos (which is just 22 km wide on average), and Deimos, which is […]
The overwhelming part of the universe is still a mystery to astronomers – and most of what we know is a result of deduction and analysis. So it should be no big surprise that when radio waves from 11 billion light years was received, they couldn’t pinpoint its origin. Their brightness and distance suggest that […]
Pluto may not be a planet anymore, but it still has a few moons. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is announcing that the names Kerberos and Styx have officially been recognised for the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto, which were discovered in 2011 and 2012. Both the names come from Greek mythology. Kerberos (or […]
The Fermi Space Telescope has catalogued the 514 most powerful objects in the Universe, that we know of. Astrophysicists don’t know what over 10% of them are. Why 514? The idea was to catalog the objects which emit γ-ray sources at energies above 10 GeV. What’s a GeV? It stands for Giga electronvolt, which […]
Although astronomers have identified less than a dozen potentially habitable planets so far, a new study suggests that our galaxy may be teeming with planets actually capable of hosting life. Based on data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, researchers had previously predicted that there should be one Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of each red […]
Scientists from Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford have analyzed the compositions of Martian meteorites found on Earth and data from NASA’s rovers, and they reached the conclusion that the Red Planet had an atmosphere pretty rich in oxygen 4 billion years ago. They compared Martian rocks with meteorites, and the fact […]
The Voyager 1 has truly gone where no man has gone before – the brave shuttle is now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, closer and closer to becoming the first man-made object to reach interstellar space. To me, it’s just baffling that we sent something 18 billion kilometers from […]
A near-Earth object (NEO) is a Solar System object whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth; now, the 10.000th near-Earth object, asteroid 2013 MZ5 was discovered, on the night of June 18, 2013, by the Pan-STARRS-1 telescope located on the summit of the Haleakala crater on Maui. Out of the 10.000 discovered NEOs, over […]
Musica Universalis or Music of the Spheres is an philosophical concept which portrays the proportions in the movement of the celestial bodies – the sun, planets, stars and so on – as a form of music. These observable patterns aren’t quite musical, since they lack harmony, but the idea itself has influenced a great of […]
More and more discoveries seem to hint at a watery past for Mars. Now, NASA research shows that hunks of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) may glide down some Martian sand dunes on cushions of gas similar to miniature hovercraft, plowing away as they go down. This study could explain one of the mysteries of […]
Typically on Earth, days usually have a temperature maximum somewhere after lunch, and a minimum during the night. But for Mars, things are pretty different: “We see a temperature maximum in the middle of the day, but we also see a temperature maximum a little after midnight,” said Armin Kleinboehl of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory […]
Astronomers have discovered 26 likely black holes in the Andromea Galaxy – the biggest number of black holes ever found in a galaxy except for our own. Black holes are pretty difficult to detect, because they emit no light of their own – they are only observed by light given off by material which falls […]
An extremely rare and small galaxy has just been reported by astronomers, which by all accounts can be considered the least massive galaxy discovered thus far. The very faint galaxy, consisting of roughly 1,000 stars, supports current theories relating to the formation of the Universe. Located in the constellation Aries, the dwarf galaxy dubbed Segue 2 […]
Early galaxies were very different from those we see today – it was overgrown black holes, and not stars that lit them up, claims a new study; in it, it is suggested that these obese black holes were numerous and bright enough that we should be able to detect them now, billions of years […]
If you’re a regular follower of NASA’s updates, you may have caught glimpses of some of the X-ray photos they report showing the surface of the sun. In these photos, dark specks of various sizes can be seen, which are actually what astronomers refer to as coronal holes. They may extend from the Sun’s equator to […]
Stars have a pull on all planets, but they exhibit a special kind of attraction towards a class of planets called ‘Hot Jupiters‘. Hot Jupiters, also called roaster planets or pegadisds are a class of extrasolar planets very similar to Jupiter, but which have very high temperatures because they orbit very close to the Sun. […]
Towering thunderstorms are a bad sign, often announcing a strong tropical cyclone – and NASA’s satellites observed just that. The TRMM satellite spotted thunderstorms reaching heights of almost 9 miles high within Tropical Storm Andrea, while the Aqua satellite provided an infrared view that revealed very cold cloud top temperatures that coincided with the towering […]
As we’ve already posted today, NASA’s GRAIL mission did a great job of mapping out the gravitational features of the Moon. Just as a quick add to that, here’s two maps which I hope you’ll find interesting:
Detailed analysis and review have confirmed the scientists’ initial opinion – the pebble containing slabs Curiosity stumbled upon last year were indeed part of an ancient streambed. When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, it was expecting to find lots of things – but finding evidence of ancient water so close to the land site […]
NASA’s GRAIL mission had been studying the Moon’s gravitational field for 9 months, with great results – they have discovered the massive regions which cause irregularities in the Moon’s gravitational field, making it uneven. Planetary gravitational fields The Earth, the Moon, and pretty much all planets have irregular gravitational field – first of all because […]
Black holes are the single most interesting and puzzling objects in our Universe – that we know of. But as if they weren’t mysterious enough, researchers have found that if you apply a quantum theory of gravity to these bizarre objects, the all-crushing singularity at their core disappears, opening a whole new Universe of possibilities […]
In a never-before seen feat, astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, something which can provide valuable clues to understanding these mysterious objects. Neutron stars Neutron stars are the cores of former high-mass stars, the remains of supernovae after the blow-up. As the core of the massive […]
It’s the outskirts of our solar system – spherical particles of rocks and ice, way beyond the familiar planets, and even the former planet Pluto, there lies the Oort Cloud – a spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU from the Sun (AU = the distance from the Sun to […]
Well the title may be a little flashy, but here’s what it’s about: some highly unusual minerals have been found at the centers of impact craters on the moon. Geologists working on the case believe that they may be the shattered remains of the space rocks that made the craters, but didn’t exhume any material […]
The “Ring Nebula” is a very popular target for amateur astronomers around the world since its bright glow and highly characteristic shape make it easily identifiable, even to those who have yet to learn even the most basic tricks of the trade. This fantastic cosmic cloud tells the story of a dying star and for […]
A team of Canadian researchers has discovered a bacterium that thrives in the Arctic regions, much below freezing point, at -15 degrees C in one the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth. The discovery of the bacterium Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 was made in Ellesmere Island, Canada, a part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, […]
In April, the Russian space agency launched the Bion-M craft which carried quite a few mice, gerbils, newts, snails and some microfauna into Earth’s orbit. The experiment was designed to test how weightlesness affect them and how these organisms adapt in the process. The craft returned back to Earth on May 19th in an otherwise […]
In March, a medium sized meteorite slammed into the moon’s surface causing the greatest explosion observed thus far, ever since the moon’s surface was first monitored by NASA looking for such events eight years ago. The meteorite collided with the moon at a mind-boggling 56,000 mph (90,000 kph), creating a new crater 65 feet wide (20 […]
Buried deep at some 2.4 kilometers beneath the surface, in the vicinity of an underground mine near Ontario, Canada, scientists have stumbled across what may actually be the oldest water on Earth. Isolated for more than a billion years, the water pocket holds invaluable clues that may hint how ancient life formed, while also shinning hope that […]
Dire news came today. Astronomers, and people dreaming of life beyond our solar system alike all over the world, are morning the loss of the Kepler – the space telescope tasked with discovering exoplanets capable of supporting life. One of the telescope’s wheels failed and as such, the telescope can’t stabilize its gaze on a […]
