Space and astronomy news
The upcoming Nov. 18 blastoff of NASA’s new MAVEN Mars orbiter is threatened by today’s US Federal Government shutdown. Launch processing work has now ceased! Spacecraft preps had been in full swing when MAVEN was unveiled to the media, including Universe Today, inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 27, 2013. …
Continue reading “Government Shutdown Stops MAVEN Work; Threatens NASA Mars Launch!”
“Ooompah, loompah, roopity rust… ALMA finds comets hiding in dust.” According to many studies over recent years, astronomers are aware planets seem to be everywhere around stars. However, just how these rocky bodies, including comets, are created is something of an enigma. Now, thanks to one sweet telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), science …
For those of us who practice amateur astronomy, we’re very familiar with the 150 light-year distant Hyades star cluster – one of the jewels in the Taurus crown. We’ve looked at it countless times, but now the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken its turn observing and spotted something astronomers weren’t expecting – the debris …
Continue reading “Hubble Observes Planet-“Polluted” Dead Stars In Hyades”
This might be the most exciting exoplanet news yet. An international team of scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Kepler mission has found a planetary system with two small, potentially rocky planets that lie within the habitable zone of their star. The star, Kepler-62, is a bit smaller and cooler than our Sun, and is home …
Continue reading “Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets”
As we’ve reported recently, the likelihood of findings habitable Earth-sized worlds just seems to keep getting better and better. But now the latest calculations from a new paper out this week are almost mind-bending. Using what the authors call a “very careful extrapolation” of the rate of small planets observed around M dwarf stars by …
Continue reading “Could There be 100 Billion Potentially Habitable Planets in the Galaxy?”
An international team of astronomers has figured out a way to determine details of an exoplanet’s atmosphere from 50 light-years away… even though the planet doesn’t transit the face of its star as seen from Earth. Tau Boötis b is a “hot Jupiter” type of exoplanet, 6 times more massive than Jupiter. It was the …
[/caption] According to conventional thinking, plant life first took hold on Earth after oceans and rivers formed; the soil produced by liquid water breaking down bare rock provided an ideal medium for plants to grow in. It certainly sounds logical, but a new study is challenging that view – the theory is that vascular plants, …
Continue reading “How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes”
[/caption] The White House has responded to two petitions asking the US government to formally acknowledge that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose to any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or …
Continue reading “No Alien Visits or UFO Coverups, White House Says”
[/caption] It is our general understanding of solar system composition that planets fall into two categories: gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus… and rocky bodies that support some type of atmosphere like Earth, Mars and Venus. However, as we reach further into space we’re beginning to realize the Solar System is pretty unique …
Continue reading “Coming To A Solar System Near You… Super-Earth!”
[/caption] The announcement yesterday of the discovery of the closest Earth-sized planet found so far that also exists in the habitable zone around its star is certainly exciting (read our previous article for all the details). Gliese 581g is surely a potential habitable planet where liquid water could exist on the planet‘s surface, and many …
Continue reading “Could Chance for Life on Gliese 581g Actually Be “100%”?”