gear Push settings
NASA’s Kepler telescope is on a roll – recently, astronomers working on it discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found orbiting a star similar to our sun. A similar star, a different system The planets are located in a system researchers call Kepler-37, just over 200 light years, […]
Despite some initial worry, Curiosity’s drill worked out just fine, and now, the rover has revealed historic images that confirm it has obtained the first samples from the inside of another planet. No other rover or device has drilled to another planet and collected a sample from its interior. “Seeing the powder from the drill […]
Deep inside the Milky Way lies the beautiful star breeding ground known as the Lobster nebula, located in the constellation Scorpius – some 8,000 light-years away from Earth. The nebula has been the subject of study for astronomers for many years, however just recently it has been imaged in infrared for the first time capturing […]
During a chance encounter with an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies (like those at the LHC); this acceleration is similar to that which takes place around distant supernovas and provides a valuable in-situ study environment. The Cassini spacecraft is an absolutely stunning […]
NASA’s really trying to step up their social media game, and this is definitely good news. This week, NASA’s social media followers and their guests will have the unique opportunity to talk to three of the six crew members aboard the International Space Station, as well as the scientists and engineers involved in the project. […]
A new, probably significant discovery will be published in two weeks, the leader of a space-based particle physics experiment said Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Why this is important Dark matter is every bit as mysterious and cool as it sounds; from what we know so […]
So, remember that Higgs boson discovery we got all excited about a while ago? You know, validated the Standard model, proved our understanding of the subatomic world not wrong, and all that? Turns out, that same data could very well be an obituary for our Universe – at least that’s what Joseph Lykken of the […]
The weekend that has just passed was a tight one for asteroid news. At the center was of course the much raved about “2012 DA14” – the closest asteroid of this significant size to flyby Earth since recorded history – which actually speared passed Earth at an altitude of 27,700km, a few thousand kilometers below the […]
Tonight a historical event is about to occur after an asteroid half the size of a football field, called “2012 DA14”, is set to make the closest flyby to Earth any asteroid of its kind has ever made, since we know of. NASA along with all the other space programs in the world positively dismiss […]
A telescope in Chile recently imaged one of the brightest spots at the core of the Milky Way, beautifully illustrating a star cluster and its neighboring dark nebula. The latter offers a stunning contrast for the billions of stars present in this patch of our galaxy. This fantastic view was made possible using the Wide Field […]
Astronomers at NASA‘s Chandra X-ray Observatory were delighted to come across one of the rarest events in the Universe, after they came across an atypical kind of supernova. To top it over, the supernova’s remnants may have given birth to the Milky Way’s youngest black hole estimated thus far. After a massive star, say ten times […]
After researchers surveyed data from the Kepler mission tasked with identifying possibly habitable planets outside our solar system they found that 6% of red dwarfs – the most common type of planets – are within this zone. This new adjustment would mean that the nearest Earth-like planet might lie just 13 light years away. Astronomers […]
NASA’s Landsat Data Continuity Mission spacecraft aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is cleared for flight, and with the weather forecasts remaining excellent, it seems everything is set for the launch. The Landsat satellite operations began all the way back in 1972, providing a huge amount of useful satellite information. This eight generation […]
A lot of worry was spurred when a malfunction at Curiosity’s drilling mechanism jeopardized the entire mission, but now, everything seems to be working out just fine; the rover conducted its first test drill without any negative events. However, the real work is just beginning, as the first drilling-sampling operation took place. This is the […]
Our galaxy is teeming with billions of planets very much like our own, a new research suggests – many of them circling a star similar to our Sun. Earlier research suggested that if you want to find planets like our own, you must first find stars like our own; but a fresh analysis from the […]
It was a mystery that kept astronomers scratching their heads for years, but now, it finally seems to be cracked: particles from inside the solar system bounce off a “ribbon” of energy boundary and neutral atoms from that collision stream inward. Why and how this happens remained a mystery for quite a while. Basically, this strange […]
If you remember, a few weeks ago I reported on the ISON comet, discovered just last year, but which is already hailed as possibly the “comet of the century”. If the ISON comet won’t collapse during its closest approach to the sun, its trail will be so bright and massive that it will become visible […]
The Kepler mission has proven to be invaluable to science today thanks to its formidable discoveries of exoplanets in our galaxy. It’s rather remarkable how scientists can tell so much from so little, like the size, mass, orbit and sometimes even composition of a distant planet all by analyzing light. On other hand, it’s frustrating […]
Recently, Curiosity rover made its most complex maneuver since it landed on Mars after it drilled a promising rock, offering scientists with invaluable geological information otherwise inaccessible. This is the first time a robot has carried out a drilling operation on another planet, and the last important check in Curiosity’s scientific arsenal, signaling all the […]
The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were […]
After the successful test in which the Iranians sent a monkey into outer space and back safely, their goal of sending a man to the Moon by 2025 seems quite feasible. Ok, so some liked this, the US didn’t really like it but that’s a different story – but Iran’s space program is not really […]
That’s what NASA officials have been telling the press recently, at least. If you haven’t heard yet, a football field-sized asteroid called 2012 DA14 is expected to come buzzing past Earth later this month, making it, in NASA’s own words, a ‘record-setter’ in terms of asteroid proximity. The asteroid will pass so closely by Earth […]
The Uroburos is a mythological symbol representing a serpent or dragon eating its own tail – a symbol of cyclicality and eternal return. The Cassini spacecraft watching Saturn recently caught a glimpse of a storm that looks remarkably like the mythological creature – only it choked on its own tail. The storm came out incredibly […]
Ridges of Martian impact craters could be fossils of cracks in the Martian surface, formed by minerals deposited by flowing water, according to a new research. The findings, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, could explain a mysterious network of ridges that vein across the […]
As our search for alien planets improves and intensifies, astronomers are starting to pay more and more attention to one crucial aspect of alien planets: whether they fit into the ‘habitable zone‘ – the so-called Goldilocks area in which a planet is not too close and not too far from its star – just perfectly […]
Close, but not too close – an asteroid like that can crash on our planet every 1200 years, but there’s no reason to worry, even though it will make a flyby on February 15, passing at a distance of only 26.780 km. For comparison, the distance to the Moon varies from around 356,400 km to […]
The American (NASA) and European (ESA) space agency have teamed up to create a new spacecraft that will hold a groundbreaking telescope. The mission, Euclid, will look at billions of galaxies, create a more accurate map of the Universe, and also map out the mysterious dark matter and dark energy. Dark Matter and Dark Energy […]
A historic expedition that took over 10 years of planning and 3 years of preparation, a national effort from both researchers and students, finally concluded today. The team from Montana State University managed to drill into a lake that has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. After hauling equipment hundreds of miles across […]
Presumably, of course, since this news piece has only been delivered by an Iranian state-owned and controlled news outlet, and has yet to be confirmed by an independent source. Apparently, the Iranian space program successfully launched a live monkey into space, after the capsule in which the animal was housed reached an altitude of 75 miles, […]
Astronomers are baffled by a pulsar heavier than the Sun and smaller than New York which alternatively switches on and off between radio and X-ray emissions. Small and heavy Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars, with a radius in the order of about 10 km, made up of neutrons. It is the result of […]
Deep Space Industries (DSI), a private space ventures company, has recently announced plans of launching a fleet of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft set to touch base with near-Earth space rocks. The small sized, light weight spacecraft would analyze and sample asteroids for those rich enough in resources like fuel, water and rare minerals. The first launch is scheduled […]
The Very Large Array radio telescope network in New Mexico recently captured this amazing view of a 20,000 year old nebula that intriguing enough is shaped like a manatee – the famous and adorable sea cow native to the greater Gulf of Mexico – in its favorite position: floating on its back with its fins across […]
Researchers from Leicester University have shown that auroras (similar to Earth’s aurora borealis) occur on other bodies outside our solar system. Aurora borealis Aurora borealis is a natural light display occuring in high latitude areas (both north and south), caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere. Here’s […]
The cold, lifeless Vesta asteroid might be a lot more like our planet than astronomers believed – having a very active life in the early stages of the solar system evolution, a study of a Saharan meteorite shows. The planet that wasn’t Vesta might host a magmatic layer under its rocky exterior, allowing minerals to […]
Exobiologists have found what they believe to be the clearest evidence that Mars supported life – though it may not seem obvious at a first glance. The research published in Nature Geoscience shows all the needed ingredients for life in a huge crater that goes up to 5km below the planet’s surface. The McLaughlin crater, […]
The most powerful explosion in the Universe – a gamma-ray burst– might have hit Earth during the middle ages. Luckily enough for our ancestors the event had its origin thousands of light years away and its effects went by unnoticed. Last year, scientists found unusual levels of radioactive carbon-14 in cedar trees in Japan and spikes […]
Using combined imagery delivered by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) and recent color channel data, the European Space Agency has recently discovered the vestiges of an ancient river that used to flow through Mars’ highlands. The river is 1,000 miles long and at some points 4 miles wide and 1,000 feet deep. The images are simply […]
NASA announced in a recent statement that they have beamed an image of the legendary painting to the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon, to test communication abilities with the satellite, using laser technology. The image was first converted to a suitable digital format, after which it traveled just less than 400.000 […]
Space exploration is nowadays most often an international affair, and NASA‘s Orion project is not an exception. NASA signed an agreement in mid-December for the European Space Agency (ESA) to provide a service module for the Orion spacecraft’s Exploration Mission-1 in 2017. When the spacecraft will be launched, it will have attached the ESA-provided service […]
The first sample from underground Mars will come from a rockbed that showcases unexpected mineral veins of gypsum. A Martian candy store Astronomers and geologists are now in the equivalent of a Martian candy store of scientific objectives: the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay is literally teeming with minerals that could only […]
At the end of last year, NASA permanently decommissioned the spacecrafts Ebb and Flow after engineers intentionally crashed them on the moon’s surface. Now, the space agency has released video footage from the last moments of spacecraft Ebb just before it hit, which can watch just below. Prepare for some goosebumps. The two spacecraft were part of a mission known as GRAIL, tasked […]
Recently, NASA announced in a press release that it has awarded $17.8 million to Bigelow Aerospace, a private aerospace contractor, to install a new habitat module to the International Space Station. The module is atypical of the current “tin can” modules, as it’s essentially an inflatable living quarters. Details are still scarce, however, according to Bigelow the […]
Discovered last year by Russian astronomers Vitaly Nevsky and Artyom Novichonok, the gigantic ISON comet is set to make its appearance later this year as it approaches the sun when it will become visible to the naked eye during the day, and as bright as a full moon during the night. Astronomers estimate the comet […]
Astronomers from Britain’s University of Central Lancashire have recently published a landmark paper that describes the largest known structure in the Universe, a group of quasars so large it spans 4 billion light-years across at its longest end. The study holds broader consequences, not just because of the encountered astronomical milestone, since it challenges Albert Einstein’s Cosmological […]
The ultimate goal of all current Mars missions and observations is that of finding evidence of life or, on the contrary, collect data that would once and for all flag the planet as barren and devoid of life. Recent findings from scientists at University of Florida both help ease and complicate this quest after it’s […]
These past couple of days have been marked by the Apophis asteroid, one of the objects passing closest to our planet. While this year’s passing was far enough for comfort, Apophis was expected to make a more closer passing in 2036 – but revised calculations have now showed there is no need for panic. After […]
Astronomers have just spotted the biggest known spiral galaxy – by accident. A team was looking through data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) satellite for star-forming regions around a galaxy called NGC 6872, only to be shocked noticing a vast swathe of ultraviolet light from young stars, indiacting that it also contains remnants of […]
If you’re like most people, the possibility of a colony on Mars seems a little far-fetched; but now, a nonprofit Dutch company plans to establish a colony on Mars by 2023 – and they’re looking for volunteers. Mars One, as they are called, have already release an advertisement announcing they are searching for pioneers, and […]
Due to a “closer” approach of asteroid Apophis this month of just 40 Earth-Moon distances, astronomers were able to get a better glimpse of the much talked about asteroid in order to better understand it. Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who is leading the analysis of the […]
A possible Earth-like planet was found by the Kepler Telescope; if the data is correct, then this would make it the most Earth-like world yet detected beyond our solar system. Unglamorously named KOI 172.02 (Kepler Object of Interest), the planet is some 50% larger than Earth, orbiting its star on an orbit which would make […]
