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Astronomers have come across a peculiar phenomenon after observing a distant dying star that sheds matter in a three-dimensional spirally pattern due to pulsations at its core. This is a totally atypical behavior, which scientists have yet to encounter before, one that might shed new light on star evolution. The red star called R Sculptoris, […]
Following what seemed to be a serious problem with one of the engines from the Falcon 9 rocket, the unmanned but highly equipped Dragon capsule successfully latched itself to the International Space Station (ISS). The capsule was capture by astronauts using a robotic arm after what seemed to be a flawless approach – which is […]
Astrobotic Technology Inc., a spin-off company of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) announced a full-sized prototype called the Polaris lunar rover – a rover designed specifically to work in the dark side of the Moon, home of the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar poles. The idea is to launch the rover using one of […]
After SpaceX managed what seemed to be a successful launch, one of the nine Merlin engines suffered what the company called “an anomaly” – an anomaly that looks just like an explosion – but engineers insist it’s not really a problem and everything went according to plan. You can check it out for yourself, in […]
It may look like an ordinary cup of sand, but for NASA scientists this is a milestone almost as important as the rover’s landing on Mars itself. Yesterday, Curiosity finally scooped a patch of martian soil and shook it for refinement, a moment which was being observed with anxiety from back on Earth. “There was a […]
Astronomers at UCLA university have made a remarkable discovery, after they’ve confirmed the presence of a star orbiting the black hole at the center of our galaxy in a mere 11-and-a-half years – that’s the shortest known orbit of any star near this black hole. The researchers involved in the paper describing the find claim that […]
We’re entering a new era in terms of low orbit space flight, ladies and gents. SpaceX successfully launched the first in a dozen planned missions to supply the International Space Station, after it successfully tested its Dragon capsule and Falcon rocket earlier this year. Thirty years ago, a private company launching shuttles to the ISS […]
Einstein’s theory, as well as other theories about the fundamental space-time fabric around a black hole may be strongly tested, after astronomers report the finding of a a star that orbits an enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Scientists explain it takes the star 11 and a half years to […]
The Curiosity rover is preparing to scoop in the Martian soil for the first time. The vehicle has driven up to a pile of sandy material that mission scientists have dubbed “Rocknest”. Using its clam-shaped tool, Curiosity will start digging in the ground, the first thing to do being to eliminate any previous earthly contamination. […]
Precisely today, October 4, 55 years ago one of the most important milestones in human spaceflight took place. Then, the first ever artificial satellite, the soviet Sputnik, was launched into space and into Earth’s orbit, signaling the start of the space race, while also sparking an unprecedented support for sciences in American schools. As the […]
The universe is expanding – fast. Researchers had a pretty good idea how fast, but now, they measured in even greater detail: it is expanding at a rate of 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers (46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles) per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec being about 3 million light-years). Hard to wrap […]
Black holes are simply the worst neighbors to have around, as they wreck havoc in their vicinity. Scientific belief states, however, that in a globular cluster, which is a massive spherical conglomeration of thousands of thousands of stars, you can’t have more than one black hole, if any. New findings however show that there’s no safe neighborhood, […]
Surrounding our planet are rings of plasma, part of Earth’s magnetosphere, which are pulsing with radio waves. These aren’t audible to the human ear, but radio dishes and antennas always pick them up. Recently, NASA scientists recorded some of the Earth’s pulses and transformed them into acoustic waves – the end result is a short song […]
The Russian space program’s Mission Control Center recently announced that the International Space Station will adjust its orbit to prevent a possible collision with a debris cloud from a Japanese satellite. The dodge is provisionally planned for 10.22am BST (9.22 GMT, 00.01 PST), time at which the Russian Zvevda module will fire its booster rockets and move […]
Rovers, like Curiosity, have been great for gathering samples and studying the terrain and atmosphere of distant worlds, but what about environments less favorable to wheeled machines? An interesting concept has been unveiled recently, in which scientists propose landing a sort of robotic boat on Titan’s largest methane lake, in order to have a physical […]
In a surprising find, scientists have discovered a cold layer sandwiched between two hot ones in Venus atmosphere, the hottest planet in the solar system. The said layer is so cold, that carbon dioxide freezes over and falls down on the surface as ice or snow. Popular astronomical conception has Venus portrayed as Earth’s evil twin, a […]
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change models suggest that average global temperatures will likely rise by 2 to 11.5 degrees F (1.1 to 6.4 degrees C) by the end of this century. The consequences of an increase of just a few degrees are dire. Apparently, taking clear and effective steps […]
Nebulae are among the most brightest objects in the sky, and besides their fantastic halo in the night sky, which served to inspire artists for countless past generations and more to come, they’re also an indispensable part of the Universe’s ‘ecosystem’. Essentially interstellar clouds of dust, gas, hydrogen, helium and other ionised gases, a nebula serves like a […]
Although this Saturday night full moon might seem ordinary enough, it bares a certain significance. Traditionally dubbed the “harvest moon” for generation by people living in the northern hemisphere, its light helped farmers stay longer in the fields even at night during the peak of the harvest season. Curiously enough, the moon officially turns full on […]
At the center of most galaxies lie black holes, some of which are classed as supermassive black holes. These cosmic bodies can have a mass billions of times greater than that of the sun, crammed in just a fraction of the latter. Gravity goes completely haywire in such an environment where this humongous mass gets crushed […]
Though a barren, life-intimidating landscape, Mars still has the most resembling weather to Earth compared to the other planets in our solar system. Recent measurements beamed by the Curiosity rover, which touched down on the martian surface a few weeks ago, have confirmed the scientists’ theories of extreme pressure swings. According to observations, pressure variations can be […]
Discovered just last week by a Russian team at the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON), the comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) is set to flyby less than two million miles away from the sun, unleashing a spectacle of light in the process at the end of 2013. Astronomers estimate, if it doesn’t desintegrate, that the comet […]
Just a few days ago, I was telling you how Hubble photographed the faintest, oldest galaxy ever observed, and now, the valiant telescope has gone even further: it assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind’s deepest-ever view of the universe. Called eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years (!) […]
Recent measurements conducted by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and observed by other X-ray instruments from around world and in space, suggest that our galaxy is surrounded by hot spherical gas formation that stretches across 300,000 light years and has an equivalent mass of some 60 billion suns or roughly all the stars in the Milky Way. If […]
At the beginning of the year, we reported how NASA, despite being faced with drastic budget cut-backs, had an audacious plan of building a human-tended waypoint on the far side of the moon. Suspended in space, hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth, astronauts would care to this outpost by conducting experiments in deep space, […]
From time to time, the sun projects billion-ton clouds of charged particles from its scorching surface, surrounded by a solar atmosphere scientists dub corona, into space. Sometimes, these blasts hit the Earth’s magnetic field with a high potential for wrecking havoc to satellites and communications, and in extreme cases massive electrical power surges. It’s become a […]
Two studies conducted by scientists at NASA based on data gathered by the Dawn spacecraft, which orbited around the Vesta asteroid, showed that the giant space rock holds tantalizing signs of water on its surface – albeit in very small amounts, in the form of hydrated minerals. These conclusions were drawn after scientists found that volatile, or easily […]
The moment many of us have been waiting for is almost here: Curiosity prepares to make its first contact with a Martian – a Martian rock, that is. The rover has been on the Red Planet for six weeks now, still preparing its devices, namely its Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) which will be used […]
The first galaxies formed very fast after the Big Bang – in cosmic time, that is. It’s estimated that the earliest ones appeared some 500 million years after the Big Bang, a period about which researchers know very little. How they observed it Even though they are typically very bright, such galaxies are quite hard […]
This four pound geological marvel, captioned above, is what’s commonly reffered to as a lunar meteorite. And like all things of rarity, it’s been recently listed for auction – the biggest chunk of moon rock yet. Experts believe it should sell around the $380,000 mark. Lunar meteorites are a special class of moon rocks. During […]
As once can see above, Curiosity recently caught glimpse of a partial solar eclipse from the surface of Mars and wired back some eye candy for us Earthlings to rejoice. You might find the fact that there’s only a small black dot partially covering the sun a bit disappointing. Instead, maybe we should look at […]
The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) is the most powerful sky survey instrument yet built, a collaborative international effort which took more than eight hard years worth of planning and design. Recently, the camera, installed on top of a mountain in Chile at the Victor Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, was tested for the first time and […]
We’ve seen a lot of concepts cross the realm of SciFi into reality, however transferring fabrics of imagination to practical applications which respect the laws of physics can be troublesome, if not sometimes impossible. If in a book or TV show, like Star Trek for instance, things like teleportation, time travel or faster than light speeds are […]
Astronomers, financially backed by NASA, have for the first time ever discovered tantilizing evidence that planets can form and exist around sun-like stars, densly packed together in star clusters. The finding is of significant importance, as scientists claim that it shows that planet can indeed exist in extremely harsh environments, like star clusters. The two […]
In the past couple of months, all Mars-related attention has been almost unanimously shifted towars the Curiosity rover. Not to discredit any of its achievements thus far, which are just appetizers for marvelous fings to come off Curiosity, but the Opportunity rover has been trailing the Martian surface for the past eight years now, long […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has already driven 112 meters on the surface of Mars, leaving behind these tracks, photographed by another NASA satellite orbiting the Red Planet. The spacecraft landed one month ago, on August 5, in a mission to search for the basic ingredients of life, and figure out if Mars has, or had at […]
It’s one asteroid down and one to go, for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. After spending a year studying the Vesta asteroid and retrieving valuable information to Earth, Dawn is now ready to head for its next destination: Ceres. A different world Scientists expect Ceres to be very different from Vesta. Ceres is considered to be the […]
While NASA gives all sort of fun names to missions, projects, telescopes – asteroids is not their slickest field. Names like (101955) 1999 RQ36 don’t exactly roll off the tip of your tongue. This is why the people at NASA decided to hold a contest for students, which will decide how an asteroid will be […]
Southern LA residents are already mourning the loss of 400 trees which were cut in order to make way for the Endeavour flyby. Endeavour, the fifth and last space worthy space shuttle built by the US, will be given the retreat it deserves – in a museum, where it will be seen and admired by […]
NASA released footage of an absolutely remarkable phenomena: the ejection of a massive solar filament, a type of coronal ejection, captured in all its splendor. According to the space agency, the filament has been hovering in the Sun’s atmosphere since August, and it was ejected on the 31st of August. The solar eruption was shaped […]
Neil Armstrong: 1930-2012. This is not something I wanted to write down – and I feel extremely sad and awkward doing it. The man who took the first step on the Moon died due to a heart condition. The American hero, 82 years old, who never dwelled on his success, and never tried to milk […]
The sun has been extensively studied by astronomers for the last 50 years. While previous research suggested that the the sun is slightly sun bulged a bit around the middle , making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped, new measurements however taken by a satellite suggest that its shape is the closest to that of a perfect […]
According to recent findings as a result of observations from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), it seems like the moon’s pale atmosphere contains helium, a fact in question for some forty years since the first hints were discovered on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions. The moon is often considered not to have an […]
Since it landed, the Mars Science Laboratory mission has offered a series of premieres for space exploration like the first-ever panorama of Gale Crater, the first measurements of high energy radiation on another planet, the first movie of a spacecraft landing on another planet, the first images from a focusable camera on another planet or first images […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is really getting down to business, sending spectacular pictures back to Earth – including a colour panoramic image of the Gale Crater landing site. During a press conference, NASA officials announced the pictures are not only spectacular themselves, but also crucial to understanding the Martian landscape. “The Navcam and Mastcam images have […]
Researchers have found evidence that the crater in case was formed when the ground was slammed by a massive meteorite, millions of years ago. Prince Albert crater Measuring about 25 kilometers across, Prince Albert crater was named after the peninsula in which it was discovered. Researchers never were really sure when it was formed, the […]
Ok, enough of the low-res, black and white photos from Curiosity. NASA just released the first high-resolution, nearly dust free, photograph taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars. The image was taken by the rovers’ Navigation Cameras (NavCams), which are capable of photographing at 1megapixel, depicting a flat Martian landscape with the looming rim of […]
Previously, we shared the largest and, respectively, most detailed 3-D maps of the Universe released by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Now the survey has released a new, massive update to the map, again, making it the largest 3-D map of the Universe, which pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. Were you […]
Strap on your 3-D glasses, folks. Curiosity is back on ZME Science, this time in full 3-D. We just got ahold of two extraordinary three-dimensional photos, taken by the car-sized rover on Mars by combining images from the robot’s navigation cameras, which operate in pairs to provide stereo views of the Martian surface.
Hope you’re all not too bored by the influx of Curiosity we’ve been feeding these past few days. We believe this to be one of the most significant scientific events of the year, topped maybe just by the discovery of the Higgs boson, and as such the rover’s landing on martian soil deserves at least […]
