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Seems like Saturn and its moons make up for a veritable gamer’s paradise after infrared imaging of the moon’s Tethys surface revealed a pattern that bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1980s video arcade emblem. Actually, this is the second time the Pacman feature has been spotted in the Saturn system, which suggests Saturn and its […]
Of the hundreds of exoplanets discovered thus far, many of them are classed as super-Earths, planets with a mass up to ten times that of our planet. Due to their inherent different structure however, their cores would be far from being similar to that of the Earth, leading many scientist to claim that they might […]
After no less than 48 hours of negotiating in Naples, Italy, the 20 European nations that support the European Space Agency (ESA) have finally agreed on a budget for the agency and a set of priorities which, while not delightful, doesn’t disappoint, despite the tight economic situation Europe is in at the moment. ESA’s activities, […]
The Curiosity rover is spending Thanksgiving on Mars, but its plans don’t involve eating turkey or watching football. The rover will spend the day scouting for possible sites to begin its first time drilling. “Thanksgiving isn’t so different on Mars. I had a long drive & plan to take photos. No pie, though,” the Curiosity […]
NASA officials are flooded with media requests from journalists recently looking to find out exactly what all the fuss is all about. Oh, haven’t you heard? Well I’m getting ahead of myself. Well, apparently scientists onboard the Curiosity rover mission have come across data that’s right “for the history books.” A monumental find, nothing less, […]
Astronomers have for the first time confirmed a bridge of hot gas with a temperature of about 80 million degrees Kelvin connecting a pair of galaxy clusters 10 million light-years apart. The discovery is of particular importance since it might help shed light on the missing baryonic matter that has been puzzling scientists for decades. The […]
NASA scientists have announced they have discovered the farthest object discovered so far in the Universe, a 13.3 billion old galaxy or a mere 420 million years after the Big Bang. That’s not to say that its 13.3 billion light years away from Earth, since the Universe has expanded greatly since then and the actual […]
In a new monumental find, Curiosity data readings suggest that radiation levels on the surface of Mars are very much similar to those in sub-orbital Earth. This means that astronauts or marsonauts can indeed set foot on the red planet, albeit for a limited amount of time. The findings came after the Curiosity rover, still […]
Like in a scene from a Sci-fi novel, about 100 light years away, somewhere in the constellation Doradus, a planet is travelling around the galaxy by itself, without orbiting a parent star. This “rogue planet“, has a temperature of about 400C and a mass between 4 to 7 times that of Jupiter – close to […]
Scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) have used a novel technique to peer through the nature of dark energy as far as ten billion years ago and measure the three-dimensional structure of the distant Universe. Tracing this 3-D map scientists were able to assess the influence of dark energy over time, which might help unravel […]
Right after midnight, the Taurid meteor shower are expected to peak, providing a delightful light show. The North Taurid meteors derive their name from the constellation Taurus the Bull. If you trace the paths of the Taurid meteors backward, you’ll see they appear to radiate from near the famous Pleiades star cluster of this constellation on […]
Ever increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere are not only hazardous to life on the planet’s surface, but also to human operations in space. A new study has found that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere upper levels could push made-made objects orbiting the planet further away from their trajectories, resulting in a […]
Now that this whole political circus has been finally wrapped, many projects that had been left on standby or have yet to enter development can now move forwards. This also includes, of course, NASA projects and its ambitious plans. Soon enough, the agency will publicly announce the first stage in its grander plan, namely setting […]
A startling study, which looked at data 10 times more comprehensive compared to previous similar efforts, found that half of all the stars that have ever existed were created between 9 and 11 billion years ago, with the other half created in the years since. What this means is an exponential fall in new stars being […]
Astronomers have used a novel planet hunter instrument to detect a new possible life supporting, Earth-like exoplanet. In fact the new planet is classed as a super-Earth, since it has a minimum mass of 7.1 times that of our planet, and is properly located on its parent star’s orbit to support the presence of liquid […]
As far as black holes go, Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is pretty boring. It emits about the same energy as the sun, despite being 4 million times more massive. Sagittarius A* Astronomers have observed that about once a day, the black hole awakes, emitting a brief […]
Between Oct. 28 and Oct. 30, NASA‘s Deep Space Network antenna in California was directed on “2007 PA8“, a one mile wide asteroid. In these few days the asteroid came the closest it will ever get to Earth in 200 years, which was still a few million miles away. Nevertheless, NASA released composite images of […]
The great pics from Hubble just never end! This time, the brave telescope offered an impressive view of the center of globular cluster NGC 6362. The image of this spherical collection of stars takes a deeper look at the core of the globular cluster, which contains a high concentration of stars with different colors. Seeing […]
When you think of asteroid impacts, the last thing that might come to mind is life. Contrary to popular belief, a team of researchers have recently presented their theory that holds intelligent life on our planet spurred with the help of asteroid impacts. As cosmic cold rock hit Earth, the impacts allowed for a shift […]
Curiosity took a break from its usual rock sampling activities and instead focused on the air, trying to figure out how Mars lost the biggest part of its atmosphere, leaving it with 100 times less than what Earth has. Researchers believe in the distant past, Mars was a pretty different sight from what we […]
I gotta say, sometimes it absolutely baffles me to see the kind of complex studies astrophysicists do, and this is definitely one of them. The light from the first stars in the Universe is still lingering around in the cosmos, and researchers have found a new way to capture it: using ultra-bright galaxies that act […]
Felix Baumgartner, the supersonic man who jumped from about 40.000 meters above ground is definitely a man up for new thrills and new conquests, so you’d expect him to be all for space exploration. But in a recent interview, he takes the totally opposite stand, claiming that any Mars missions are a waste of money […]
Do you remember Carl Sagan’s Voyager Golden Records? When the now iconic first Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977, a series of phonograph records containing 116 sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth were also attached onboard. These were inserted with the idea in mind that some alien race […]
Vesta is “peppered” with carbon materials which researchers believe were left behind by asteroids gently striking its surface. Vesta is an asteroid itself – but one so large that some astronauts were actually thinking about declaring it a planet, or at least a protoplanet. It is the second largest asteroid in our solar system, second […]
In the wake of the Sandy hurricane, which is currently still sweeping through North America’s east coast, weather forecasting has suddenly become a subject of major interest. It shouldn’t take natural disasters, which are getting more and more frequent unfortunately, to spark interest in this matter of grave importance. Despite this, funding for space geosciences, […]
After Curiosity had a bite of Martian turf at the site of Rocknest a few days earlier, soil analysis results have finally come in. According to scientists at NASA, the Martian sand in the rover’s vicinity is very much akin to volcanic soils found on Earth such as those of Hawaii. Though Mars is far from being […]
SpaceX has gone where no private company has gone before – and safely returned. They are now officially the only company able of space flight, after successfully delivering cargo to the International Space Station and now, returning, with some rather dubious cargo. Of the total 907 kilograms of experiments and gear it holds, the […]
No, this isn’t one of those misleading headlines. A MIT graduate student has recently proposed that bombarding an asteroid’s surface with paintballs could throw it off course from a possible collision orbit with our planet, by harnessing solar pressure. The paintball cloud would hit the targeted asteroid and cover it in paint – white paint to […]
The general consensus was that a star called Fomalhaut doesn’t host any planet. But astronomers, the thorough people they are, decided to take another look at it using the Hubble Space Telescope – and the results contradicted the everything, claiming that Fomalhaut does in fact have a planet, and furthermore, this planet (Fomalhaut b) is […]
Three new members have now embarked on the International Space Station, after docking the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft to the Poisk module. After NASA retired their sub-orbital space flight program, the Soyuz shuttles are currently the only way to get people in and out of the ISS. For Commander Sunita Williams and Flight Engineers Aki Hoshide […]
The Cassini spacecraft recorded the aftermath of the largest, hottest gas vortex ever recorded in our solar system, making astrophysicists think there’s much more to Saturn’s atmosphere than meets the eye. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft (often just called Cassini) is a robotic ship sent out to monitor the Saturn system. It sent out surprising, valuable data […]
Though this might sound like an oxymoron, this is possible the best term to describe one of the most interesting recent astronomical finds – the lowest mass supermassive black hole discovered so far. The black hole was detected at the center of a late-spiral galaxy, which astronomers at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory initially believed it […]
The European Southern Observatory has captured and analyzed an image of the center of our galaxy which, if printed at normal resolution, would measure 9 x 7 meters. The enormous 9 gigapixel image features the very center of the Milky Way and was created not to be a background for huge screens, but to help […]
Humanity has long dreamed of a mission to Mars, but the boots which would take the first steps on the Red Planet could be stomping on all Martian life. Despite any decontamination process, a swarm of 100 trillion microbes will accompany every astronaut who lands on Mars – as a part of their system. This […]
After SpaceX’s recent successful docking with the ISS, when it brought critical mission cargo to the space station, another important milestone for private space exploration has been attained, this time on part of another space company. Jeff Bezos’ (Amazon) private space venture, Blue Origin, recently successfully tested its emergency crew escape system – a key pre-requirement for getting […]
The European Space Agency has officially announced that it will launch a new space telescope tasked with the primary objective of finding Earth-like planets in our neighboring cosmic backyard. Though the mission’s budget is rather small, there’s nothing modest about its goals. Dubbed CHEOPS or CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite, at the end of its 3.5 year-long scheduled mission the […]
Nope, this is not the Mars chocolate I’m talking about – NASA’s Curiosity rover is digging in at Rocknest – a patch of Martian sand the robot has been exploring for the past week. If you look at the picture above, taken by one of Curiosity’s camera, you can actually see three bite-like marks, left […]
Sunita Williams is an Indian-American astronaut who currently holds the record for longest space flight time among female space travelers (over 200 days). She recently declared she’s not missing gravity at all and that she finds the experience of floating around in imponderability priceless. “I love being up here and I love floating around,” 47-year-old […]
This Friday, a solar eruption of spectacular proportions took place. The ensuing plasma wave, measuring millions of degrees in temperature, lasted for several hours, which is atypical for such events, and was several times the size of the Earth. It’s not the eruption’s sheer enormity that’s impressive, but it’s beauty as well, and for this […]
Astronomes have snapped a picture of a peculiar jet of material blasting from the supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. These jets are pretty much the biggest things we know of in the Universe, some of them being over 100 times bigger than the Milky way. It really looks similar to […]
Like I mentioned last week, this past weekend was light struck by Halley’s comet offsprings in a dazzling feast for the eyes and spirit. The debris from the famed comet, which last visited Earth in 1986, helps produce up to 25 meteors per hour during the Orionid meteor shower. Thus, those lucky enough to be out […]
Surprisingly many people have question the benefits of building and supporting an international space stations, especially considering the costs, which so far are just over $100 billion in 12 years. But people have to understand that only now can ISS astronauts start doing the science they were supposed to, as the ISS is just barely […]
A first analysis of the ice that froze onto the drillbit used to drill in the pristine Vostok lake shows no native microbes came with the ice. A while ago, researchers understood that precious insight on alien life could be found right here on Earth – in Russia, to be more precise. But Antarctica’s is […]
The most detailed observations of the icy world of Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, show complex weather patterns and other features that scientists have yet to fully describe. Popular belief had Uranus depicted as a bland, pale green world based on the now iconic observations from Voyager’s 1986 flyby of the planet. Its […]
It’s dinner time, and you know what there’s on the menu? Rocks! Martian rocks, to be more precise. After what seemed at times to be an excruciating series of baby steps, the rover has finally managed to extract the first samples and place it in CheMin – one of the two miniature laboratories located inside […]
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is currently seven years into its nine-and-a-half-year journey across the Solar System to explore Pluto. Since its launch in 2006, however, astronomers have discovered two more moons orbiting the dwarf-planet, which now pose a grave threat to the spacecraft’s initial navigation course because of space debris orbiting them. “We’ve found more and […]
This past weekend, the last American space shuttle, the Endeavour, made its final trip through the streets of Los Angeles to the California Science Center. The trip lasted from midnight Friday morning until midday Sunday as the shuttle traveled at the high speeds of two miles per hour. There were many delays and the shuttle […]
The search for other planets gets more and more exciting and fruitful, and now, researchers have found an exoplanet which lies truly close to us – in cosmic terms. Alpha Centauri Alpha Centauri is the closest solar system to our own, at only 4 light years away, so finding an Earth-sized planet there really is […]
Since last Sunday, Halley’s comet offspring have been swirling through the night sky delighting star gazers all around the world. This coming weekend, however, the Orionids will be at their peak and full splendor – your definitely don’t want to miss it! This time of year, the moon sets at about midnight, which offers more time for […]
A group of researchers from the United States found out that the Moon is covered with a soil containing typical water structure. Weirdly enough, the water substructure packed soil is created by a constant stream of charged particles coming from the sun, according to the team. The key is hydroxyl. As you probably know, […]
