Red dwarf stars may be the key.
Until now, models of planetary formation pointed to most planets forming with either too much or too little water. This was especially prominent around the most common type of stars in the galaxy – red dwarves.
Continue reading “How the Webb Telescope could finally verify a huge exoplanet theory” »
Experimental video mashup on the Singularity featuring Ben Goertzel & Hugo de Garis.
Music by Scott Hanson (Tycho) — the actual song is Melanine form the album Dive.
Hugo de Garis
Ben Goertzel
Continue reading “Hugo de Garis & Ben Goerzel on the Singularity” »
The incredible power of the Sun has been captured in a stunning video showing a massive coronal magnetic ejection being thrown into space.
NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest moon will touch down on a terrain of dunes and shattered, icy bedrock, according to a new analysis of radar imagery from the Cassini spacecraft.
Launching in 2027, Dragonfly is a rotorcraft that will arrive in 2034 and explore Titan from the air. Its range will be far greater than that of a wheeled rover, with Dragonfly capable of covering around 10 miles (16 kilometers) in each half-hour flight, according to NASA. Over the span of its two-year mission it will explore an area hundreds of miles or kilometers across. However, before taking to the sky on its own, Dragonfly must first arrive on Titan under a parachute, soft-landing on frozen terrain that is hidden from easy viewing by the dense hydrocarbon smog that fills the moon’s atmosphere.
Jupiter’s storms aren’t the scariest thing about Jupiter. Find out what NASA is afraid of the most about Jupiter.
In the southern sky shine two smudges, known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. They are satellite galaxies of the much larger Milky Way, and one of their qualities has puzzled scientists. As the Clouds tumble through space, the Milky Way should be exerting enough gravitational force to knock loose their star-making material. But the smaller galaxies are still building new stars. A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature finally explains it.
What they did — “A lot of people were struggling to explain how these streams of material could be there,” Dhanesh Krishnarao, assistant professor at Colorado College and lead author of the new study, says in a NASA description of the paper. “If this gas was removed from these galaxies, how are they still forming stars?”
Slide 1 of 13: There’s no questioning the fact that the universe is weird. Just look outside and you’ll see all manner of strange, self-reproducing flora…
What we know about Venus so far has been gathered from several past probes.
With a slightly smaller diameter than Earth, Venus orbits closer to the Sun. This means that any water on the surface would have evaporated shortly after its formation, starting its greenhouse effect. Early and sustained volcanic eruptions created lava plains and increased the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — starting the runaway greenhouse effect, which increased the temperature from just a little higher than Earth’s to its current high value of 475°C.
While Venus’s year is shorter than ours (225 days), its rotation is very slow (243 days) and “retrograde” — the other way round to Earth. The slow rotation is related to a lack of magnetic field, resulting in a continuing loss of atmosphere. Venus’ atmosphere “super-rotates” faster than the planet itself. Images from many missions show V-shaped patterns of clouds composed of sulphuric acid droplets.
Continue reading “The clouds of Venus may be habitable — a crewed flyby could confirm the theory” »
The tool will look into how the Sun’s magnetic field creates coronal mass ejections and other eruptions.
This Sunday China is set to launch its first dedicated solar observatory into space in order to help investigate the mysteries of the Sun, according to a report by published Nature.
The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) will be equipped with three instruments that will provide information on how the Sun’s magnetic field causes coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and other eruptions.
On Saturday evening (Oct. 8), should local weather conditions permit, you’ll be able to enjoy a view of a waxing gibbous moon hovering near to the “king of the planets,” Jupiter.
Both will be posed about one-quarter up in the east-southeast part of the sky as darkness begins to fall. The moon, which will be less than 24 hours from full phase — 99-percent illuminated by the sun — will be situated just below and to the left of Jupiter, a distance measuring roughly 4 degrees.
