Space

Astronomers are certainly not strangers to manipulating public relations through mass media - they write reasonable papers and then encourage the press to go nuts with it.   Witness the recent…

A new report in Nature Geoscience says there may be large deposits of carbonate sedimentary rocks a few miles beneath the surface of Mars. If substantial carbonate minerals exist it might indicate a…

"TAU researcher confirms oily "water" on a Saturn moon", so reads the email that crossed my desk.  Then I learned why no mountain or landform on Titan can ever be taller than 6,200 feet. …

A persistent hypothesis is that perhaps life did not 'originate' on Earth at all, perhaps its building blocks came from space. In April, the public, fed by astronomy's runaway hype train, were…

The discovery of Gliese 581g was cause for rampant hype almost everywhere but here, along with some rather ridiculous claims that there was a 100% chance of life there. The actual paper authors were…

New research is challenging the belief that the planet Neptune knocked a collection of planetoids known as the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt to its current location at the edge of the solar system. The…

The Chinese Chang'e series is taking over the moon.  For lunch, NASA people in Florida are heading to bread lines, while meanwhile the Chinese are microwaving the entire moon for their own…

Despite vast great differences between the atmospheres of Venus and Earth, it turns out very similar mechanisms produce lightning on the two planets. The rates of discharge, the intensity and the…

Scientists have discovered a new type of solar wind interaction with airless bodies in our solar system. Magnetized regions called magnetic anomalies, mostly on the far side of the Moon, were found…

A team of planet hunters has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times our mass) orbiting nearby star Gliese 581 at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's…