Did Expelled Stars Reionize the Ancient Universe?
Hot stars booted out of their galactic homes may be responsible for creating the conditions that led to today’s universe
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Want to Live on Mars? Here’s Your Chance
Just as NASA’s latest rover prepares to land on the surface of Mars, one Dutch company is looking to up the ante, with plans to send humans to the distant red planet. But before you sign up for travels to faraway lands, you may want to take note that the trip is a one-way deal,…
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Massive Landslides Spotted on Saturn’s Icy Moon
Landslides up to 50 miles long, spotted on Saturn’s moon, Iapetus, could help provide clues to similar movements of material on Earth. Scientists studying the icy satellite have determined that flash heating could cause falling ice to travel 10 to 15 times farther than previously expected on Iapetus. Extended landslides can be found on Mars…
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Flaring Black Holes May Solve Cosmic Ray Puzzle
Where do ultra high-energy cosmic rays come from? These charged particles zoom to Earth from outer space, but why is a mystery. Now a possible source – gamma-ray bursts, which seemed to have been ruled out – have received a new lease of life. Gamma-ray bursts are usually created by exploding stars, which produce neutrinos….
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Planetary Science: The Time Machine
Dating features on the Moon and Mars is guesswork. Scott Anderson is building a tool to change that.
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Why Do We Keep Going Back to Mars?
The huge NASA rover speeding toward an August landing on Mars may be the most capable and complex Red Planet explorer ever launched, but it’s far from the first. The 1-ton Curiosity rover — which will search for evidence that Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life — represents humanity’s 40th effort…
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Anti-Matter Universe Sought By Space-Based Detector
A seven metric ton particle detector parked for over a year on the International Space Station (ISS) aims to establish whether there is an unseen “dark universe” woven into the cosmos, the scientist leading the project said. And the detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS, has already broken all records in registering some 17…
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Kepler Spots Perfectly Aligned Alien Worlds
When NASA’s Kepler space telescope started finding planets at odd angles to their parent stars, scientists wondered if our solar system’s tidy geometry, with the planets neatly orbiting around the sun’s equator, was an exception to the rule. That idea can be laid to rest thanks to an innovative use of the Kepler data which…
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‘Impossible’ Stars Found in Super-Close Orbital Dances
Four pairs of what astronomers are calling “impossible stars” — stellar twins in orbits so close they defy explanation — have been found in our Milky Way galaxy, scientists say. Astronomers using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope in Hawaii discovered the four star pairs, each of which is a binary system in which two stars…
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Meteorites Hold Secrets of Earth’s Formation
Scientists attempting to better understand the formation and the present-day layering of planet Earth have turned to ancient meteorites — meteorites which they say could hold important clues to some of the Solar System’s earliest chemical processes. Those meteorites are known as diogenites, and researchers from the Carnegie Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and…