Space

Scientists Solve Riddle Of White Dwarf Celestial Archaeology

A decades old space mystery has been solved by an international team of astronomers who  investigated hot, young, white dwarfs — the super-dense remains of Sun-like stars that ran out of fuel and collapsed to about the size of the Earth.  It has been know ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2014 - 10:48am

Dwarf Planet 2012 VP113 Hints At A Huge Unknown Mystery Planet In The Solar System?

We know the Voyager spacecraft has left the solar system. What no one can really say is when. Boundaries in space are entirely human vanities, there is no 'Now leaving the Local System' sign after Pluto. Well, it's all so unsettled that two ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2014 - 4:40pm

In Space, Astronaut Hearts Work Less, Shrink, And Become More Spherical

The heart becomes more spherical when exposed to long periods of microgravity in space, according to a study of 12 astronauts. The research has implications if any progress toward a trip to Mars ever gets made. NASA already has a zero-risk culture and cut ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 29 2014 - 9:40am

Dimethylnaphthalene And The Cosmic Barometer

Exploding stars, random impacts involving comets and meteorites, and even near misses between two bodies can create regions of great heat and high pressure and researchers have developed a method for analyzing the pressure experienced by tiny samples of o ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 31 2014 - 1:34pm

Apatite Error May Have Led To Overestimate Of Water In Moon

The amount of water present in the moon may have been overestimated by scientists studying the mineral apatite, according to a new computer model created to accurately predict how apatite would have crystallized from cooling bodies of lunar magma early in ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 1 2014 - 6:30pm

Regolith: Small Asteroid Layer Formed By Thermal Fatigue

The centimeter-sized fragments and smaller particles that make up the regolith — the layer of loose, unconsolidated rock and dust — of small asteroids is formed by temperature cycling that breaks down rock in a process called thermal fatigue, according to ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2014 - 2:00am

Galactic Center Gamma Rays May Be A Clue To Dark Matter

A new study of gamma-ray light may lead to evidence of dark matter, a hypothetical blanket term for whatever must make up most of the material universe. Using publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scholars at the Fermi ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 4 2014 - 10:55pm

Subsurface Ocean Confirmed On Saturn Moon Of Enceladus

In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft sent pictures back to Earth depicting an icy Saturnian moon spewing water vapor and ice from fractures, known as "tiger stripes," in its frozen surface. It was big news that tiny Enceladus—a mere 500 kilom ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2014 - 8:07pm

Watching For Black Hole Sgr A* To Gobble Up Gas Cloud G2

Right now a doomed gas cloud is edging ever closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. These black holes feed on gas and dust all the time, but astronomers rarely get to see mealtime in action. Northwestern University ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 4 2014 - 10:00am

Where The Milky Way Stands In The 'Council Of Giants'

The universe is big- really big. Just our Milky Way galaxy alone is about 300 billion stars, with planets whizzing around them and clouds of gas and dust floating in between. Then there is our orbiting companion, the Andromeda Galaxy and a small group of g ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 6 2014 - 5:00am