Space

Citizen Scientists Find Fireballs In Jupiter's Atmosphere

The solar system is crowded with small objects like asteroids and comets, and most have stable orbits which keep them out of harm’s way, but a small proportion of them are in orbits that risk collision with planets. Smaller objects are more numerous and th ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 22 2013 - 11:46am

Does Earth Share Microbes With Mars Via Meteorites- Or Are They Interestingly Different For Life?

Robert Zubrin says that there are no contamination issues involved in colonizing Mars, because microbes get transferred between the planets all the time on meteorites. His ideas get a lot of publicity, and so did a paper earlier this year " The overp ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Feb 3 2016 - 11:16pm

M60-UCD1: Densest Galaxy Ever Discovered

If you began to travel to the star nearest to us after ol' Sol, named Alpha Centauri, it takes about four light years.   Now imagine there were instead 10,000 other stars crammed into that 25 trillion miles of space rather than none- that's the ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 25 2013 - 1:21pm

Could Microbes Transferred On Spacecraft Harm Mars Or Earth- Zubrin's Argument Revisited

In my last article, " Does Earth Share Microbes With Mars Via Meteorites- Or Are They Interestingly Different For Life? " I talked about the NRC study, which looked at the same meteorite data as Zubrin, and came to the opposite conclusion that a ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Mar 10 2016 - 6:04am

IGR J18245-2452: Star Morphs From Radio To X-ray Pulsar And Back Again

 IGR J18245-2452, located about 18,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius in a cluster of stars known as M28, is a neutron star with the peculiar ability to transform from a radio pulsar into an X-ray pulsar and back again. The star&# ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 26 2013 - 5:30am

IRAS 15445-5449 Shows A Magnetic 'Bloom'

 An old star, IRAS 15445-5449, is "blooming" in the southern sky — it has begun to push out a jet of charged particles that glow with radio waves. And astronomers are on the hunt to determine why  ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 29 2013 - 7:30am

Mars, Planet Of Surprises, Great To Explore Not So Great To Colonize- 1. Is It As Good A Place To Live As A Desert?

Mars looks quite hospitable in the photos, but all is not quite as it seems. Our Earth based intuitions lead us astray, and the planet is full of surprises. Though great to explore, it might not be so ideal as a second home. Mars looks Earth like You migh ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Sep 11 2015 - 5:02pm

Why Didn't ETs, Or Self Replicating Machines, Colonize Our Solar System Millions Of Years Ago?

In "Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths" I looked at a possible future where humans could colonize space and build habitats using materials from the asteroids. Later on, once we have fusion po ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jan 19 2014 - 11:06am

Life On the Edge In Cold Dry Deserts Of Mars- Dust Storms, And Contamination By Microbes From Leaky Spacesuits

This is part 2 of my series on  Mars, planet of surprises, great to explore, not so great to colonize   We saw so far that Mars is less hospitable than the coldest driest deserts on Earth. This is Wright valley, which is colder than it looks. It's an ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jan 19 2014 - 11:06am

If Mars Is For Hardy Explorers Only, Where Is The Best Place In The Solar System For First Time Colonists?

This is part 3 of my series on  Mars, planet of surprises, great to explore, not so great to colonize. In "Is it as good a place to live as a desert? we saw that Mars is a more inhospitable place than the coldest driest deserts on Earth, and has seve ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Feb 8 2018 - 2:37pm