Saturn’s rings probably date back billions of years and could likely be around forever although they are continually changing, according to a new study published this week.Data collected by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s and later the Hubble telescope originally led scientists to think the planet’s famous rings were relatively young in cosmic terms and possibly created by a comet that smashed into a large moon.But new data collected by the Cassini probe suggests that rather than being formed some 100 million years ago, the rings were probably formed as the solar system was being built about 4.5 billion years ago.

You know, I never liked that earlier idea that the rings were young. WTF? I thought. This makes so much more sense.

Studies show that the ages of the rings differ significantly, and that the matter inside the rings is constantly changing.”The evidence is consistent with the picture that Saturn has had rings all through its history,” added the professor from the University of Colorado.Previously scientists believed that if the rings were as old as Saturn, they should be darker due to collecting cosmic pollution such as meteorite dust.But the observations from Cassini showed that there appeared to be a gigantic churning mass of ice and rock, which could explain why the rings appear quite bright when seen through telescopes on the ground.

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Using digital techniques and INT Photometric H-alpha dohinkies, astronomers have generated a new picture of our galaxy. One picture is here (click below enlarge) and below the fold is the abstract from the paper in Astrophysics.View full, very large version of this image Continue reading New Portrait of the Milky Way →

This time, it comes from the side effect of the Mars Rover getting the Martian equivalent of a flat tire…

NASA’s Spirit Mars rover has been dealing with [a] right front tire [that] went bad nearly two years ago. It didn’t go flat, but it’s quit turning forcing NASA to move the rover around in reverse ever since, trailing the stuck wheel behind.But nearly a year later, [it was noticed that [r]uts carved by the bad wheel last May churned up a bright spot in the rover’s wake.Rover guiders turned the craft back to the colorful streak for a closer look and discovered that the rock contains high levels of silica. Upon further investigation, however, another nearby rock cracked open that was jam-packed with silica.

Silica at this level of density, on Earth, tends to be associated with water, in one of a few differnt ways. Read all about it here, on The Buzz

This time, it comes from the side effect of the Mars Rover getting the Martian equivalent of a flat tire…

NASA’s Spirit Mars rover has been dealing with [a] right front tire [that] went bad nearly two years ago. It didn’t go flat, but it’s quit turning forcing NASA to move the rover around in reverse ever since, trailing the stuck wheel behind.But nearly a year later, [it was noticed that [r]uts carved by the bad wheel last May churned up a bright spot in the rover’s wake.Rover guiders turned the craft back to the colorful streak for a closer look and discovered that the rock contains high levels of silica. Upon further investigation, however, another nearby rock cracked open that was jam-packed with silica.

Silica at this level of density, on Earth, tends to be associated with water, in one of a few differnt ways. Read all about it here, on The Buzz

Try this: Starting at home, drive, run, ski, or walk about fifty thousand feet. That would be about ten miles, or 15 kilometers. It won’t take you long (especially if you drive) and chances are, when you get there, it will be a place at least vaguely familiar to you. At the very least, it will be a place that is qualitatively familiar to you. Even if you end up in a strip mall, or a government office building, or a recreational park, that you’ve never been to before, you’ll be able to find your way around.Now do the same thing, but instead of going across the landscape, go straight up. What a difference! You wont be able to breath, you’ll freeze to death, and there will be fewer strip malls (probably). Continue reading There are still mysteries →

Vger 2 (Voyager) took off in 1977, and over the last 30 years has been working pretty well. Vger is now 12,680,021,376 kilometers away and is traveling at 56 327 km per hour.Think about it this way: How many instruments in current scientific labs, and how many computers sitting on anyone’s desktop, were made n 1977. Probably a few, but not many. Just now, this space ship is in the vicinity of the Plasma Boundary, or the Termination Shock Wave. I like to think of the Termination Shock Wave as a speed bump, or maybe one of those spiky things in parking lots … (DO NOT BACK UP – TIRE DAMAGE WILL RESULT) … that surrounds the solar system. Or, it’s like the doorways at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis after a Game being played on a very cold day or in the rain … everybody is leaving the stadium but as they reach the outdoors, they slow down (to adjust their hats, open their umbrellas, etc.) so there is a kind of standing wave of extra, dense, vibrating humanity. Continue reading Go Little Vger, Go! →

This is one of those cool views of changes in scales. It runs from pretty large (some distance from the Milky Way) to pretty small (subatomic). One of the things you notice is that there is NOT a consistent fractal theme that operates on all scales. Fractals are not everything. They are just something.

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

Go here to see it.