Space and astronomy news
Earth, four billion years ago, was a lifeless, hot and violent place. Not exactly a world where you’d expect life to form. But this was the scene where the first life-forming amino acids appeared. And how did this happen? According to new research, a lump of rock floating though space may have been irradiated by …
Continue reading “Did a Cooked Meteorite Seed Life on Earth?”
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has measured huge quantities of water and organic compounds surrounding the star AA Tauri, 450 light years from Earth. AA Tauri is a young star, only a million years old, not too dissimilar to our Sun when it was a baby. What makes AA Tauri even more special is that it …
Continue reading “Could AA Tauri Hold the Biochemical Key to Extra-Terrestrial Life?”
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are getting mischievous again. These artefacts from the Big Bang could be responsible for hiding inside planets or stars, they may even punch a neat, radioactive hole through the Earth. Now, they might start playing interplanetary billiards with asteroids in our solar system. Knocking around lumps of rock may not sound …
Continue reading “Could Primordial Black Holes Deflect Asteriods on a Collision Course with Earth?”
We can all guess what would happen should a massive black hole drift into our solar system… there wouldn’t be much left once the intense gravitational pull consumes the planets and starts sucking away at our Sun. But what if the black hole is small, perhaps a left over remnant from the Big Bang, passing unnoticed through our …
Continue reading “What Would Happen if a Small Black Hole Hit the Earth?”
One of the most spectacular sights in the night sky is a fireball; a rock from space impacts the atmosphere and blazes a trail that can last seconds or even minutes. These burn up harmlessly, but when do they turn dangerous? When do asteroids get large enough that they can actually get through the atmosphere …
This week, we’re on to the next planet in the solar system. Having only visited it up close once with Voyager 1, we don’t know much about this sideways-spinning ice giant. But today we’ll cover what we do know, including its faint rings, sideways axis of rotation and rocky core – a first in the …
Monday, October 22 – Something very special happened today in 2136 B.C. There was a solar eclipse, and for the very first time it was seen and recorded by Chinese astronomers. And probably a very good thing because in those days the royal astronomers were executed for failure to predict!Today is also the birthday of …
Continue reading “What’s Up this Week: October 22 – October 28, 2007”
Astronomers have found a burned out white dwarf star with the remants of an Earthlike planet orbiting it. This chemical fingerprint gives hope that terrestrial planets, like the ones in our Solar System, could be common across the Universe. Now we just need to find some that havn’t been pulverized into planet powder. The white …
Continue reading “Dead Star Found Polluted By Earthlike Planet”
Great big Jupiter-like planets are one thing, but the Holy Grail of extrasolar planetary discover is going to be another Earth – complete with life. We’re not there yet, but astronomers announced the next best thing yesterday: a roughly Earth-mass planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its parent star. In other words, liquid water …
Continue reading “Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in the Habitable Zone”
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! We’ll start off the week in living color and end it fishing for galaxies in Pices. Along the way, we’ll have a look at the dark side as we study obscuration nebula… and you won’t have to say “Betelguese” three times to study this bright star! If you were disappointed in missing …
Continue reading “What’s Up this Week: December 11 – December 17, 2006”