Astronomy Without A Telescope – Alien Mining

[/caption] Recently, some researchers speculated on what types of observational data from distant planetary systems might indicate the presence of an alien civilization, determined that asteroid mining was likely to be worth looking for – but ended up concluding that most of the effects of such activity would be difficult to distinguish from natural phenomena. …

New Studies: Planetary Rings Harbor Records of Past Smash-Ups

[/caption] Planetary rings are more than just astronomical marvels — they’re also a sort of archive, chronicling histories of impacts for decades. A pair of studies were published online in Science today by two different teams that noticed odd characteristics in the rings of Saturn and Jupiter — and followed them to this promising conclusion. In …

“Marstinis” Could Help Explain Why the Red Planet is So Small

[/caption] Mars is a small planet. In fact, for scientists who do solar system modeling, the planet is too small. “This is an outstanding problem in terrestrial planet formation,” said Dr. David Minton from the Southwest Research Institute. “Everyone who does simulations of how you form terrestrial planets always ends up with a Mars that …

Late, Big Bombardments Brought Heavy Metals to Earth

[/caption] One of the fundamental problems in planetary science is trying to determine how planetary bodies in the inner solar system formed and evolved. A new computer model suggests that huge objects – some as big as large Kuiper Belt Objects like Pluto and Eris — likely pummeled the Earth, Moon and Mars during the …

Buzz About Gliese 581g: Doubts of Its Existence; Aliens Signals Detected

[/caption] Ever since the announcement of the discovery of exoplanet Gliese 581g, there has been a buzz in the news, on websites, Twitter – pretty much everywhere, about the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. But the past couple of days there has been a different sort of buzz about this distant world. Two stories have …

Titan-ic Tsunami Causing Crack in Saturn’s C Ring

[/caption] Saturn’s rings have several gaps, most of which are caused by small moons shepherding ring debris into breaks in the rocky rings. But one gap may be caused by gravitational perturbations from Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, sending tsunami-like waves up to 3 kilometers (2 miles) high in the C ring. This causes one region …