fascinating space and astronomy

New Evidence of Dark Matter

2007-05-16T04:07:00.000-07:00

A hazy ring of dark matter spawned by a colossal cosmic crash eons ago offers the best evidence to date that vast amounts of this mysterious stuff reside in the universe, scientists said on Tuesday..........

Yahoo News

Ancient Star Almost as Old as the Universe

2007-05-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

Astronomers have spied a granddaddy of the galaxy—a 13.2-billion-year-old star formed soon after the big bang 13.7 billion years ago..........

National Geographic News

Earth-like Planet Discovered Outside Solar System

2007-04-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

In a finding that if confirmed could stand as a landmark in history, astronomers have reported discovering the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date: a world that may have liquid oceans and thus life..........

World Science

Water Outside Our Solar System

2007-04-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

Evidence of water has been detected for the first time in a planet outside our solar system, an astronomer said on Tuesday, a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth..........

Yahoo News

Hot, Windy Planets Beyond the Solar System

2007-01-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Earth's inhabitants are used to temperatures that vary, sometimes greatly, between day and night. New measurements for three planets outside our solar system indicate their temperatures remain fairly constant -- and blazing hot -- from day to night, even though it is likely one side of each planet always faces its sun and the other is in permanent darkness..........

Science Daily

Signs of Flowing Water on Mars

2006-12-13T04:49:00.000-08:00

NASA photos have revealed bright new deposits in two gullies on Mars that suggest water coursed through these ditches sometime in the past seven years, researchers say..........

World Science

Scientists Find Organic Materials Inside Meteorite

2006-12-07T04:53:00.000-08:00

NASA researchers at Johnson Space Center, Houston have found organic materials that formed in the most distant reaches of the early Solar System preserved in a unique meteorite. The study was performed on the Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite, a rare type of meteorite that is rich in organic (carbon-bearing) compounds..........

Science Daily

NASA Announces Plans for Lunar Base

2006-12-05T04:50:00.000-08:00

NASA announced plans today to build a permanent base on the moon by 2024.“With such an outpost, NASA can learn to use the moon’s natural resources to live off the land, make preparations for a journey to Mars, conduct a wide range of scientific investigations and encourage international participation,” the agency said in a statement..........

World Science

Puzzling Hurricane-Like Storm on Saturn

2006-11-11T08:58:00.000-08:00

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has seen something never before seen on another planet -- a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's South Pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds..........

Science Daily

Large Meteorite Unearthed in Kansas

2006-10-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

Scientists were excited when they pulled a 154-pound meteorite from deep below a Kansas wheat field, but what got them most electrified was the way they unearthed it..........

Yahoo News

Amazing Photo of Victoria Crater on Mars

2006-10-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

An image released today by the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson exposes the distinctive lacy scallops of Mars's Victoria Crater in unprecedented detail. The feature, an impact crater near the Martian equator, is approximately half a mile (800 meters) in diameter..........

National Geographic News

Study Holds Out Possibility of Life on Other Planets in Solar System

2006-09-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

A comprehensive review by leading scientists about our solar system which speculates on the possibility of life on other planets has been published..........

Science Daily

Evolution of the First Galaxies

2006-09-14T05:56:00.000-07:00

A systematic search for the first bright galaxies to form in the early universe has revealed a dramatic jump in the number of such galaxies around 13 billion years ago. These observations of the earliest stages in the evolution of galaxies provide new evidence for the hierarchical theory of galaxy formation--the idea that large galaxies built up over time as smaller galaxies collided and merged..........

Science Daily

Study Says Other Earthlike Planets Exist

2006-09-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

New computer simulations by astronomers have found that Earth-like planets, warm and wet enough for life, should be common.

The simulations focused on a common type of solar system identified before, featuring planets called Hot Jupiters. A third of these systems also produce Earth-like worlds in the computer reenactments, the researchers said..........

World Science

Highest Clouds Discovered Above Mars

2006-08-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

Planetary scientists have discovered the highest clouds above any planetary surface. They found them above Mars using the SPICAM instrument on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. The results are a new piece in the puzzle of how the Martian atmosphere works..........

Science Daily

Cosmic Crash Proves Existence of Dark Matter

2006-08-22T04:28:00.000-07:00

A colossal crash between two clusters of galaxies has wrenched apart “dark matter” and normal matter, proving the mysterious dark substance exists, astronomers say..........

World Science

A New Way to Explore Mars

2006-07-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

MIT engineers and scientist colleagues have a new vision for the future of Mars exploration: a swarm of probes, each the size of a baseball, spreading out across the planet in every direction...........

Science Daily

Galaxies Cluster Near Dark Matter

2006-04-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

Try mixing caramel into vanilla ice cream -- you will always end up with globs and swirls of caramel. Scientists are finding that galaxies may distribute themselves in similar ways throughout the universe and in places where there is lots of so-called dark matter..........

Science Daily

Solar System's New Tenth Planet a Little Larger Than Pluto

2006-04-18T04:21:00.000-07:00

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has resolved the "tenth planet," nicknamed "Xena" for the first time, and has found that it is only just a little larger than Pluto..........

Science Daily

Earth Life Began on Mars?

2006-04-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

..........A few scientists think there's evidence that humans actually descended from Martian microbes, not exactly what the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus had in mind. But it merits further study, said chemist Steven Benner, who has founded a new institute in Gainesville, the Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology, which aims to bridge chemistry and biology, with evolution as its guide."If you really want to find a place to get life started, it's Mars, and if you want to get a place to get life to flourish, it's Earth," Benner said.While at the University of Florida a few years ago, Benner's team collaborated with scientists at The Scripps Research Institute to explore what kind of chemistry is necessary to support life..........

Unexplained Mysteries

Saturn May Have Millions of Mini-Moons

2006-04-03T04:07:00.000-07:00

Now scientists have found the first evidence of millions of "missing link" moonlets—bigger than ring particles but small enough to fit inside a football stadium.
The international team found signs of four such moonlets in one small segment of Saturn's brightest ring, called the A ring, according to a report in this week's issue of the journal Nature............

National Geographic News

Proof of Big Bang

2006-03-21T05:23:00.000-08:00

New NASA space-probe observations of the oldest light in the cosmos are the most direct evidence yet that the universe expanded extremely quickly immediately after the big bang, physicists say..........

National Geographic News

Huge Star Burst from the Dawn of Time

2006-03-10T05:09:00.000-08:00

A gigantic star that lived fast and died young in a huge cosmic explosion soon after the dawn of time has been detected by astronomers looking back into the infancy of the universe.The cataclysmic event took place 12.8 billion years ago, just 900 million years after the Big Bang, and has provided scientists with their first opportunity to study an individual star that formed so far back in time..........

The Australian

Liquid Water Geysers Discovered on Saturn Moon

2006-03-09T16:43:00.000-08:00

Scientists have found evidence that cold, Yellowstone-like geysers of water are issuing from a moon of Saturn called Enceladus, apparently fueled by liquid reservoirs that may lie just tens of yards beneath the moon's icy surface..........

MSNBC

Researchers Predict Powerful Sunspots

2006-03-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

Solar researchers are predicting that the next cycle of sunspots, flares and magnetic storms from the sun will be the most powerful and active seen in nearly 50 years..........

Scripps Howard News

Largest Ever Galaxy Portrait

2006-03-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

This new Hubble image reveals the gigantic Pinwheel galaxy, one of the best known examples of “grand design spirals”, and its supergiant star-forming regions in unprecedented detail. The image is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy ever released from Hubble..........

Science Daily

Top Five Stars That May Support Life

2006-02-24T05:50:00.000-08:00

Scientists already know that only a tiny fraction of the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy seem to have what it takes to support life on orbiting planets. Now researchers think they know where such potential habitable stars—or "habstars"—hang in the sky. Margaret Turnbull, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., recently released her list of top five potential habstars in our galaxy, three of which can be seen from Earth with the naked eye..........

National Geographic News

Galaxy Smashups Littered Early Universe

2006-02-22T04:06:00.000-08:00

A study has found that the biggest galaxies in the universe formed through repeated, grand smashups early in the history of the universe..........

World Science

Astronomers Get Shortlist of Possible ET Addresses

2006-02-20T05:39:00.000-08:00

Astronomers looking for extraterrestrial life now have a short list of places to point their telescopes.

They include nearby stars of the right size, age and composition to have Earth-like planets circling them, scientists said on Saturday.

But cuts in federal funding mean that private philanthropists who pay for the bulk of their work may find out first when and if extraterrestrial life is discovered, the astronomers told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Margaret Turnbull of the Carnegie Institution of Washington released her "top 10" list of potential stars to the meeting. They will be the first targets of NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder, a system of two orbiting observatories scheduled for launch by 2020..........

Topix.net

Scientists Studying Saturn Lightning Storm

2006-02-15T12:18:00.000-08:00

Researchers are tracking a gigantic storm on Saturn that is unleashing lightning bolts more than 1,000 times stronger than those found on Earth.Using instruments aboard the international Cassini spacecraft, scientists from the University of Iowa first spotted the storm on Jan. 23..........

CBS News

Hints of Mega Solar Systems

2006-02-10T04:35:00.000-08:00

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has identified two huge "hypergiant" stars circled by monstrous disks of what might be planet-forming dust. The findings surprised astronomers because stars as big as these were thought to be inhospitable to planets..........

Science Daily

NASA Focuses on New Craft to Return to the Moon

2006-02-07T04:37:00.000-08:00

NASA has delayed two programs that search for planets capable of supporting life as the space agency instead focuses on developing a new manned spacecraft to return to the moon in the next decade..........

AP Wire

Ongoing Galaxy Formation Detected

2006-02-05T11:49:00.000-08:00

Astronomers have reported finding a huge blob of hot gas around a spiral galaxy, evidence that galaxies like our Milky Way are drawing in material from a gradual inflow of intergalactic gas..........

World Science

A Tenth Planet?

2006-02-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

Scientists have measured the size of a solar system object discovered last year and confirmed that it is larger than Pluto.
The icy object, called 2003 UB313, is located in the far reaches of the solar system. It measures 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) in diameter. Pluto, by contrast, measures 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers)..........

National Geographic News

Roving Mars: Almost Like Being There

2006-01-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

If you live anywhere near an IMAX theater, it is well worth the trip to see the newly released Disney production, "Roving Mars". Made specially for the 6-story high IMAX screen and surround- sound experience, it is, as one would expect for an armchair interplanetary journey, a visually breathtaking adventure. Apart from the visuals, interspersed with real still photos snapped by the mars rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity", even more impressive is the up close and personal emotional triumph of the engineering undertaking itself, highlighted most effectively with portrayals of the elation felt by the staff of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as that history-making "first signal" emerged from the nerve-racking silence of the control center when "Spirit" touched down intact. After a string of disappointments (two thirds of all Mars ventures ended in failure), it had to be sweat. "Roving Mars" is playing in most IMAX theaters everywhere.

Planet Pluto: Within Our Reach

2006-01-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

"Space travel" has a deeper meaning these days. Celebrities and businessmen are dishing out their millions for a trip to space, while mention of space travel agencies and even talk of tourist trips going around the moon starting in 2008 seem to be the wave of the future. But on the other side of the spectrum, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are looking farther into space -- not to the Earth's moon, but to Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.

While a trip to our moon takes a few days depending upon the spacecraft, the four-billion-mile journey to reach the ninth planet and its moon will take a total of 10 years.

The New Horizons spacecraft, which is the first mission of NASA's New Frontiers program to explore other planets, was launched Jan. 19 at 2 p.m. EST. The spacecraft is controlled by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Aerospace Engineering Prof. Jim Andary is the Chief System Engineer for the Missions System Engineering Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"The New Horizons spacecraft was the fastest spacecraft to leave the earth ... it set a record," Andary said."It went past the moon in nine hours."..........

The Cavalier Daily

Moon is Dragging Continents West

2006-01-26T06:22:00.000-08:00

Someday not so soon Washington, D.C., may find itself about where San Francisco is now. According to a recent study, Earth's surface may be slipping slowly westward, dragged by the same lunar forces that produce tides..........

National Geographic News

New Planet Discovered

2006-01-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

Astronomers on Wednesday announced the discovery of what is possibly the smallest planet known outside our solar system orbiting a normal star.
Its orbit is farther from its host star than Earth is from the sun. Most known extrasolar planets reside inside the equivalent of Mercury’s orbit.
The planet is estimated to be about 5.5 times as massive as Earth and thought to be rocky. It orbits a red dwarf star about 28,000 light-years away. Red dwarfs are about one-fifth as massive as the sun and up to 50 times fainter. But they are among the most common stars in the universe...........

MSNBC

Stardust Space Cargo a Big Hit

2006-01-23T05:53:00.000-08:00

Scientists say they're thrilled and awed by their first glimpse at the comet particles and samples of interstellar dust returned by the Stardust spacecraft..........

National Geographic News

Capsule With Comet Dust Recovered

2006-01-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

Special helicopter-borne teams secured and recovered the capsule, containing tens of thousands of comet grains and as many as 100 bits of interstellar dust, shortly after it landed. The capsule was moved to a clean room at the Air Force’s Utah Testing and Training Range, where a canister containing the collector grid was to be extracted and shipped to the Johnson Space Center in Houston later this week..........

Read More

Orion Nebula: A New High Resolution Image

2006-01-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

If beauty is in the details, this is one of the most beautiful pictures ever made. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured one of the most detailed astronomical images in history. Released yesterday, the original of this Orion Nebula image is a mosaic of a billion pixels..........

National Geographic News

Another Galaxy Merging with Milky Way

2006-01-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

A previously unrecognized galaxy appears to be merging with the Milky Way, bringing hundreds of thousands of stars into our home galaxy that no one has noticed until now, astronomers said..........

New York Times

Astronomers Measure the Most Distant Moon

2006-01-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

An international team of astronomers says the most distant moon in the Solar System, Charon, which orbits Pluto, is an icy rock that has no sign of an atmosphere..........

Yahoo News

Dry Ice Storms on Mars?

2005-12-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

Bombarded by violent storms of dry ice, the red planet's ice caps may have fewer silent nights than generally thought, according to new weather models.
Climate experts have long agreed that all is calm during the polar nights—the sunless winter months on Mars' north and south poles.
The poles are too cold, and the carbon dioxide rich atmosphere too thin and clear, to result in exciting weather, or so the thinking goes.
But now there's mounting evidence that temperature differences in the polar night stir up the atmosphere, creating storms..........

National Geographic News

Aquifers on Mars

2005-12-03T06:43:00.000-08:00

Substantial quantities of liquid water must have been stably present in the early history of Mars. The findings of OMEGA, on board ESA's Mars Express, have implications on the climatic history of the planet and the question of its 'habitability' at some point in its history..........

Science Daily

The First Stars?

2005-11-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

NASA researchers say they have detected what may be the faint infrared glow of the first stars in the universe.
Known as population III stars, the distant bodies are thought to have formed just 200 million years after the big bang, the event that in theory created the universe some 14 billion years ago..........

National Geographic News

View educational and scientific programming on Dish Network.

Sources of Oxygen on the Moon?

2005-10-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Hubble Space Telescope, which normally surveys the edges of the universe, has turned its attention to our nearby Moon and found mineral concentrations that might prove to be sources of oxygen for human visitors, researchers said Wednesday..........

New York Times

NASA Takes Giant Step Toward Finding Earth-Like Planets

2005-10-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away..........

Science Daily

Exploring Mars With Balloons

2005-09-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

Global Aerospace Corporation of Altadena, CA proposes that the Mars exploration vehicle combining the global reach similar to that of orbiters and high resolution observations enabled by rovers could be a balloon that can be steered in the right direction and that would drop small science packages over the target sites. The concept being developed by the Global Aerospace Corporation is funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)..........

Science Daily

Planet Baby Picture

2005-09-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

............new findings not only reinforce the idea that giant planets, such as Jupiter, form much faster than scientists have traditionally expected, but one of the gas-enshrouded stars, called GM Aurigae, is analogous to our own solar system.

At only 1 million years of age, the star gives a unique window into how our own world may have come into being..........

News (WebIndia123.com)

Are Wormholes Tunnels for Time Travel?

2005-09-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

As any self-respecting science fiction fan knows, wormholes—theoretical shortcuts through space and time—make for excellent time travel portals..........

National Geographic News

Explosion at the Edge of the Universe

2005-09-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite and several ground-based telescopes have detected the most distant explosion yet, a gamma-ray burst from the edge of the visible universe..........

ScienceDaily

The Sun Has a Binary Partner?

2005-09-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

The ground-breaking and richly illustrated new book, Lost Star of Myth and Time, marries modern astronomical theory with ancient star lore to make a compelling case for the profound influence on our planet of a companion star to the sun. Author and theorist, Walter Cruttenden, presents the evidence that this binary orbit relationship may be the cause of a vast cycle causing the Dark and Golden Ages common in the lore of ancient cultures..........

EurekAlert

Space Elevators in Our Future?

2005-08-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

Blasting a space shuttle away from Earth's gravity and through atmospheric friction at 15,000 miles an hour (24,140 kilometers an hour) is the most dangerous and costly part of every mission.
Why not just take an elevator instead? Thanks to a new development in the manufacture of molecule-size cylinders known as carbon nanotubes, that may one day be a viable option.
In theory, space elevators need a fixed line, or cord, that stretches from an anchor on Earth to a station out in space. The station acts like a counterweight, forever "held" above the planet by the centrifugal force from Earth's rotation.
A tram-like vehicle equipped with electric motors could climb this tether from Earth's surface into space at a safer speed than rocket alternatives..........

National Geographic News

The Star Bar

2005-08-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

MILWAUKEE - (KRT) - Slowly, scientists are putting together the emerging bits of knowledge about the spiraling galaxy we call home, the Milky Way.

It is made up of as many as 100 billion stars. It's 100,000 light years across. It has rotated about 50 times during its lifetime. There most certainly is a super massive black hole at its center.

And now two Wisconsin scientists say they have revealing evidence on a long-suspected major feature of the Milky Way.

Writing in Astrophysical Journal Letters, their comprehensive structural analysis offers a wealth of new details on the long central bar of stars that runs across the center of the galaxy.

The bar, which has been suspected since the 1980s and was identified in a 2002 paper by other scientists, turns out to be longer than initially believed, according the work of Robert Benjamin, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Ed Churchwell, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The bar is composed of older, so-called red stars, possibly millions of them...........

The Wichita Eagle

New Planet Discovered

2005-08-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system..........

Science Daily

Local Man Has Own Launch Pad to Stars

2005-07-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

PLEASANTON — When a team of planet hunters announced the discovery of a new extrasolar planet on June 30, it was already old news to amateur astronomer Ron Bissinger.
The day before the announcement, Bissinger, tipped off by a member of the research team, had detected evidence of planet HD 149026b from an elaborate miniature observatory he built in his back yard..........

Tri-Valley Herald

Dust-enshrouded Star Like the Sun

2005-07-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

Astronomers report tremendous quantities of warm dusty debris surrounding a star with luminosity and mass similar to the sun's, but located 300 light-years from Earth. The extraordinary nature of the dust indicates a violent history of cosmic collisions between asteroids and comets, or perhaps even between planets. The discovery is published July 21 in Nature..........

ScienceDaily

A New Planet in a Three Star System

2005-07-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

A newfound planet has three suns, a scientist says—a discovery that highlights the unimagined beauties the cosmos still has in store for us, suggests planets are even more common than previously believed, and could rewrite theories of planet formation..........

World Science

A New Planet With Massive Core

2005-07-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

Astronomers have discovered an extrasolar planet with the largest core of any known planet. The discovery is especially exciting to planet formation theorists, because it provides extremely strong observational evidence in support of the "core accretion" theory, one of two main theories for how giant planets form..........

Read More Tim Stephens and Denize Springer, UC Santa Cruz Currents, July 11, 2005

Minerals on Mars

2005-07-08T05:54:00.000-07:00

From space and even on the surface, Mars just looks dry, reddish and rocky as far as the camera can see. But there's actually a pretty complex world of minerals under that surface layer of basalt. By studying the surface of Mars with Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, NASA scientists have turned up very interesting surface features which hint at the hidden minerals underneath. This research is published in the latest edition of the Journal Nature. Read More

Universe Today July 7, 2005

Comet Impact Succeeds

2005-07-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

IMPACT! Scientists blast projectile into comet

July 4, 2005
Special to World Science

Scientists shot a washing machine-sized projectile into a comet, eight times faster than a rifle bullet. The impact created an enormous blast visible on images sent back to Earth, and whose size surprised even some mission scientists.

This image from NASA TV is a view from Deep Impact's flyby showing the impactor colliding with comet Tempel 1. (NASA)

NASA researchers confirmed the impact at 1:58 a.m. Eastern U.S. time, in a project designed to better understand what comets are made of.

A sequence of images sent back by cameras on the projectile revealed growing amounts of detail on the rocky-looking comet as a huge crater came to view. Later, images showed a bright blast showering off the speeding, potato-shaped object.

Now, the task of analyzing the images and other data from the mission begins..........Read More

Deep Impact Spacecraft Detects Comet Outbursts

2005-06-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft observed a massive, short-lived outburst of ice or other particles from comet Tempel 1 that temporarily expanded the size and reflectivity of the cloud of dust and gas (coma) that surrounds the comet nucleus.

The outburst was detected as a dramatic brightening of the comet on June 22. It is the second of two such events observed in the past two weeks. A smaller outburst also was seen on June 14 by Deep Impact, the Hubble Space Telescope and by ground based observers..........Read More

ScienceDaily June 29, 2005

Solar Sails Set to Debut

2005-06-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

The Planetary Society, a U.S. nonprofit group devoted to space exploration, plans to launch the world's first solar sail spacecraft tomorrow.
Cosmos 1 will be launched from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea and carried into orbit by a converted intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Initially orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 500 miles (800 kilometers), the spacecraft will gradually move outward by solar sailing—propelled by the pressure of light particles from the sun striking the craft's eight triangular sails.
The journey has no destination. The mission's goal is simply to prove that solar sail technology works.
Space sails carry no fuel and can continue accelerating over almost unlimited distances. This prompts scientists to envision a time when the technology may be used for future travel between planets in our solar system. Someday solar sails might be used to send astronauts to new worlds around other stars..........

National Geographic News, June 20, 2005 Read More

A New Planet Outside Our Solar System

2005-06-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

A planet that may be Earth-like -- but too hot for life as we know it -- has been discovered orbiting a nearby star. The discovery of the planet, with an estimated radius about twice that of Earth, was announced yesterday at the National Science Foundation. "This is the smallest extrasolar planet yet detected and the first of a new class of rocky terrestrial planets," Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution in Washington said in a statement. "It's like Earth's bigger cousin." Read More

TechNewsWorld June 14, 2005

Volcano on Titan

2005-06-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

A recent flyby of Saturn's hazy moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft has revealed evidence of a possible volcano, which could be a source of methane in Titan's atmosphere.

Images taken in infrared light show a circular feature roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) in diameter that does not resemble any features seen on Saturn's other icy moons. Scientists interpret the feature as an "ice volcano," a dome formed by upwelling icy plumes that release methane into Titan's atmosphere..........

ScienceDaily, June 11, 2005 Read More

Image of Dust Disk and Black Hole

2005-06-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700-light-year-wide dust disk encircles a 300-million- solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052.

The disk, possibly a remnant of an ancient galaxy collision, will be swallowed up by the black hole in several billion years. The black-and-white image on the left, taken by a ground-based telescope, shows the complete galaxy. The Hubble picture on the right is a close-up view of the dust disk surrounding the black hole..........

See the website for the amazing photo image and other images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope.

A New Mission to Mars

2005-06-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

NASA has given the green light to a project to put a long-armed lander on to the icy ground of the far-northern Martian plains. NASA's Phoenix lander is designed to examine the site for potential habitats for water ice, and to look for possible indicators of life, past or present..........

NASA News, June 2, 2005

A Deep Impact Encounter on the Horizon

2005-06-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

On July 4, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft will attempt an extraordinarily daring encounter with the far-flung comet Tempel 1, which is hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. As if that is not challenging enough, the comet's size, shape and other characteristics are not entirely known..........

ScienceDaily, June 2, 2005

Space Telescope Reveals Striking Scene

2005-06-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

The saga of how a few monstrous stars spawned a diverse community of additional stars is told in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The striking picture reveals an eclectic mix of embryonic stars living in the tattered neighborhood of one of the most famous massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Eta Carinae. Astronomers say that radiation and winds from Eta Carinae and its massive siblings ripped apart the surrounding cloud of gas and dust, shocking the new stars into being..........

ScienceDaily, June 1, 2005 Read More

Mysterious Spot on Titan

2005-05-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Saturn's moon Titan shows an unusual bright spot that has scientists mystified. The spot, approximately the size and shape of West Virginia, is just southeast of the bright region called Xanadu and is visible to multiple instruments on the Cassini spacecraft. The 483-kilometer-wide (300-mile) region may be a "hot" spot -- an area possibly warmed by a recent asteroid impact or by a mixture of water ice and ammonia from a warm interior, oozing out of an ice volcano onto colder surrounding terrain. Other possibilities for the unusual bright spot include landscape features holding clouds in place or unusual materials on the surface..........

ScienceDaily, May 25, 2005 Read More

Another New Planet

2005-05-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- An international collaboration featuring Ohio State University astronomers has detected a planet in a solar system that, at roughly 15,000 light years from Earth, is one of the most distant ever discovered. In a time when technology is starting to make such finds almost commonplace, this new planet -- which is roughly three times the size of Jupiter -- is special for several reasons, said Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State . The technique that astronomers used to find the planet worked so well that he thinks it could be used to find much smaller planets -- Earth-sized planets, even very distant ones.
And because two amateur astronomers in New Zealand helped detect the planet using only their backyard telescopes, the find suggests that anyone can become a planet hunter..........

ScienceDaily, May 26, 2005 Read More

Flying Whales and Other Alien Life Forms

2005-05-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

One side of the planet is draped in eternal freezing darkness, the other side is bathed in permanent starlight. Fields of "stinger fans"—animals that look like tall plants—cover the floodplains. Other strange species abound, from giraffe-like predators called gulphogs to tiny flesh-dissolving tadpoles known as hysteria.

Welcome to the planet Aurelia.

No, we haven't discovered life on another world—yet. But this could be what life on the fringes of our galaxy looks like, according to a group of scientists that contributed to the National Geographic Channel's special Extraterrestrial, which premieres Monday, May 30. Alien life is not just possible but probable, according to many scientists. And thanks to new technology, we may not be too far from finding it..........

National Geographic News, May 20, 2005 Read More

Voyager Enters a New Frontier

2005-05-25T05:08:00.000-07:00

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered the solar system's final frontier. It is entering a vast, turbulent expanse, where the sun's influence ends and the solar wind crashes into the thin gas between stars........

ScienceDaily, May 25, 2005 Read More

Martian Ice Cap Mystery Explained

2005-05-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

CORVALLIS, Ore. (May 11, 2005) -- An interdisciplinary team of scientists thinks it has an answer to a long-standing mystery of why the permanent icecap on Mars' South Pole is offset from the pole itself. Simply put, it's colder and stormier in that hemisphere.

But that is only part of the equation, scientists say, and new understanding about Mars' climate and its polar regions may suggest clues to finding water in the planet's equatorial zone - where it would be easier to land a spacecraft - and opening the door to future exploration and the search for life..........

Read More

ScienceDaily, May 19, 2005

Beginning a New Era of Space Flight

2005-05-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), currently known as the Orbital Space Plane, looks to be the cornerstone of President Bush's new initiative for a return to the moon and beyond. Once the larger components for the International Space Station (ISS) are in place, the space shuttle will be phased out in favor of the newer, lighter CEV.........

Read More

Map of Life On Earth Could Be Used On Mars

2005-05-13T05:34:00.000-07:00

May 9, 2005 — A geologist from Washington University in St. Louis is developing new techniques to render a more coherent story of how primitive life arose and diverged on Earth — with implications for Mars.........

-- ScienceDaily, May 13, 2005

A New Moon Near Saturn

2005-05-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted a previously unseen moon hiding in a gap between Saturn's rings, the space agency said Tuesday.
The newfound moon, which astronomers are calling S/2005 S1 for now, was first photographed on May 1 and is just 4 miles in diameter. Its discovery comes on the heels of an announcement last week that astronomers using ground-based telescopes in Hawaii had detected 12 other moons around Saturn.............

Amit Asaravala, Wired News, May 10, 2005 Read More

Birth of a Black Hole Detected for the First Time

2005-05-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

Associated Press
GREENBELT, Md. — The birth of a black hole has been captured for the first time, a NASA scientist said Monday. NASA's Swift orbiting observatory detected the gamma ray burst of the collision between two dense neutron stars about early Monday and pointed its visible light and X-ray telescopes at the collision about a minute later, said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for the Swift mission.........

Read More

Earth-like Planets on Our Discovery Horizon?

2005-05-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

Ten years after finding the first planet outside our solar system, scientists say they may be ready to move into a new phase of planetary exploration - one that examines distant worlds for signs of Earth-like life.

So far, astronomers have discovered some 145 so-called extrasolar planets orbiting stars besides our sun..........

Some Amazing Sites for Views of Our Universe

2005-05-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

Interested in some very amazing views of our Solar System and the Universe at large? Try these sites: space.com and rc-astro.com. They're an eye-full.

Storms on Saturn Converge

2005-05-06T13:13:00.000-07:00

Three months before Saturn arrival, the Cassini spacecraft has observed two storms in the act of merging into one larger storm. This is only the second time this phenomenon has been observed on the ringed planet.......

Read More

fascinating space and astronomy

New Evidence of Dark Matter

Ancient Star Almost as Old as the Universe

Earth-like Planet Discovered Outside Solar System

Water Outside Our Solar System

Hot, Windy Planets Beyond the Solar System

Signs of Flowing Water on Mars

Scientists Find Organic Materials Inside Meteorite

NASA Announces Plans for Lunar Base

Puzzling Hurricane-Like Storm on Saturn

Large Meteorite Unearthed in Kansas

Amazing Photo of Victoria Crater on Mars

Study Holds Out Possibility of Life on Other Planets in Solar System

Evolution of the First Galaxies

Study Says Other Earthlike Planets Exist

Highest Clouds Discovered Above Mars

Cosmic Crash Proves Existence of Dark Matter

A New Way to Explore Mars

Galaxies Cluster Near Dark Matter

Solar System's New Tenth Planet a Little Larger Than Pluto

Earth Life Began on Mars?

Saturn May Have Millions of Mini-Moons

Proof of Big Bang

Huge Star Burst from the Dawn of Time

Liquid Water Geysers Discovered on Saturn Moon

Researchers Predict Powerful Sunspots

Largest Ever Galaxy Portrait

Top Five Stars That May Support Life

Galaxy Smashups Littered Early Universe

Astronomers Get Shortlist of Possible ET Addresses

Scientists Studying Saturn Lightning Storm

Hints of Mega Solar Systems

NASA Focuses on New Craft to Return to the Moon

Ongoing Galaxy Formation Detected

A Tenth Planet?

Roving Mars: Almost Like Being There

Planet Pluto: Within Our Reach

Moon is Dragging Continents West

New Planet Discovered

Stardust Space Cargo a Big Hit

Capsule With Comet Dust Recovered

Orion Nebula: A New High Resolution Image

Another Galaxy Merging with Milky Way

Astronomers Measure the Most Distant Moon

Dry Ice Storms on Mars?

Aquifers on Mars

The First Stars?

Sources of Oxygen on the Moon?

NASA Takes Giant Step Toward Finding Earth-Like Planets

Exploring Mars With Balloons

Planet Baby Picture

Are Wormholes Tunnels for Time Travel?

Explosion at the Edge of the Universe

The Sun Has a Binary Partner?

Space Elevators in Our Future?

The Star Bar

New Planet Discovered

Local Man Has Own Launch Pad to Stars

Dust-enshrouded Star Like the Sun

A New Planet in a Three Star System

A New Planet With Massive Core

Minerals on Mars

Comet Impact Succeeds

Top 25 Unanswered Science Questions

Deep Impact Spacecraft Detects Comet Outbursts

Solar Sails Set to Debut

A New Planet Outside Our Solar System

Volcano on Titan

Image of Dust Disk and Black Hole

A New Mission to Mars

A Deep Impact Encounter on the Horizon

Space Telescope Reveals Striking Scene

Mysterious Spot on Titan

Another New Planet

Flying Whales and Other Alien Life Forms

Voyager Enters a New Frontier

Martian Ice Cap Mystery Explained

Beginning a New Era of Space Flight

Map of Life On Earth Could Be Used On Mars

A New Moon Near Saturn