First, there were big-giant planets discovered orbiting other stars. Then, more recently, a planet in the star’s Goldilocks Zone … where water would be at least sometimes liquid, were it present. But that was a big planet that may or may not have been truly “class M” in having a surface, atmosphere, etc.
Now, NASA reports planets the size of the earth beyond our solar system. Unfortuntely, they are not in the zone. But still, this is cool.
I’m not sure exactly what this means, but …
A respected scientist from the Cern particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see “the first glimpse” of the Higgs boson next week.
…Next Tuesday, two separate teams will each reveal the outcome of trawling through their latest data from LHC collisions. A spokesman for one of these teams told us that this year alone they’ve searched the remains of some 350 trillion collisions, with only ten or so producing candidates for a reliable sign of the Higgs.
Anybody got any inside info?
This is very, very cool.
Geologically, there are ways in which minerals move around and get deposited with rock. A common phenomenon is for a crack to form due to cooling of molten rock or an earthquake or something, and then this space gets filled in. Stuff might just fall into it. Liquidizer rock (magma) might intrude into it. Hot gasses containing residue might build up a deposit within it, or liquid water might flow through it leaving behind minerals, which fill the crack. The thing is, geologists have studied these processes and have a pretty good idea of what they are, how they work, and what they look like.
Continue reading Definitive Evidence of Liquid Water Activity on Mars
First, I should say right away that the planet that has been in the news so much lately is not known to be “earth like” … depending on what you think “earth like” is. What we know is that the planet orbits its star in a position that allows for the possibility that water on its surface could be liquid. But, the possibility that the planet has a “surface” … as opposed to some increasingly dense gaseous layer like Neptune … has not yet been established. Not that this would favor life one way or another. For all we know, getting life started on a hard crust covered earth is way harder than on a gaseous liquid water rich blob of a planet.
Either way, it is very interesting that, according to reports, the US Air Force is paying SETI to restart its operations and focus on this new planet to see if we can pick anything up.
Which makes a remarkable amount of sense, don’t you think? If there’s liquid water, there’s probably life. If there is life, there is probably Milton Berle.
… and probably has been there for months, but new research is confirming the nature of this very interesting phenomenon. It is the outer edge of our solar system, where fast moving stuff heading away from the sun has slowed down because it’s movement is stifled by gravity, but some extra-energetic particles are still leaking out into the greater galactic region, from which they are unlikely to return. Also, the solar system’s magnetic fluxy stuff is bunched up in this region.
Continue reading Voyager 1 Is In the Stagnation Zone
Maybe. Well, not really. But it could be ….
NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.
The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don’t yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.
This space ship will go and investigate life on mars
I remember my first solar eclipse. I was a kid, and it was the one Carlie Simon sang about, in March 1970.
(The eclipse reference is just past three minutes. Some other time we can argue over whether or not Carlie, singing in this video on Martha’s Vineyard, was referring to the March 1970 eclipse or the July 1972 eclipse, but I’m sure it was the former, because that’s the one everybody got all excited about.)
I was such a geek that I actually missed the eclipse because I was busy collecting data. There was a phone number you could call and a lady’s voice would give you the time and temperature. Perfect. I called the number again and again and wrote down the time and temperature and made a graph. And I got results!
Continue reading The Best Eclipse Ever (of the moon and of the sun)
YU55 is in the vicinity now, and will pass within the Moon’s orbit tomorrow. NASA sent me a pretty crappy image but I fixed it up for you:
The image was taken on Nov. 7 at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the asteroid was approximately 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) away from Earth. Tracking of the aircraft carrier-sized asteroid began at Goldstone at 9:30 a.m. PDT on Nov. 4 with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) antenna and lasted about two hours, with an additional four hours of tracking planned each day from Nov. 6 – 10.
Continue reading Asteroid Will Pass Within Moon’s Orbit on November 8th
PASADENA, Calif. — A new NASA study suggests if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting habitats were most likely below the Red Planet’s surface.
A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests Martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes. These episodes occurred toward the end of a period of hundreds of millions of years during which warm water interacted with subsurface rocks. This has implications about whether life existed on Mars and how the Martian atmosphere has changed.
We’ve discussed this before. Now, you can watch the film!
A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.
The findings show that the stellar explosion took place in a hollowed-out cavity, allowing material expelled by the star to travel much faster and farther than it would have otherwise.
“This supernova remnant got really big, really fast,” said Brian J. Williams, an astronomer at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Williams is lead author of a new study detailing the findings online in the Astrophysical Journal. “It’s two to three times bigger than we would expect for a supernova that was witnessed exploding nearly 2,000 years ago. Now, we’ve been able to finally pinpoint the cause.”
Pronounced Quake.
No, NOT your granddady’s model rocket club. The following video documents one of the more amazing model rocket launches ever. BE WARNED: There are VERY LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS SOUNDS on this video. apparently, you can hear the screams in space!
Enjoy: