Space

The question of whether Titan can retain its thick, organic atmosphere for the rest of its lifetime could hinge on how efficiently methane molecules were packed inside water “crates” during a period of the moon’s formation. Dr Vasili Dimitrov, who spoke at ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 23 2007 - 12:49pm

Saturn's Skewed Ring Current

Images taken by Cassini’s Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) show that Saturn’s ring current is a warped disc that balloons out of the equatorial plane on the planet’s dayside and remains a thin disk that rises above the plane at larger distances on ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 23 2007 - 1:00pm

Flares From Far Side Of The Sun Affect Weather Of Inner Planets

Observations of solar flares by spacecraft at Mars, Venus and the Earth show that eruptions on the far side of the Sun may affect our “space weather” back on Earth. In December 2006, a series of solar flares produced in a single active region were observed ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 23 2007 - 1:12pm

Wrinkles On The Moon

Good lighting and high resolution cameras in the SMART-1 satellite are making it possible to put together the story linking geological and volcanic activity on the Moon. “Thanks to low-elevation solar illumination on these high-resolution images”, says SMA ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2007 - 6:26am

Validating Einstein's Distortion Of Space-Time

Einstein's general theory of relativity explained for us that the universe is elastic and gravity distorts space-time like we distort a couch when we sit on it. John Wheeler explained this perfectly when he wrote, "Matter tells space how to curve ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 10 2007 - 5:05pm

Astronomers Find Billion Light Year Hole In Space

Astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious, unseen “dark matter.” While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 27 2007 - 9:49pm

Shrinking Giants, Exploding Dwarves

When white dwarf stars explode, they leave behind a rapidly expanding cloud of 'stardust' known as a Type Ia supernova. These exploding events, which shine billions of times brighter than our sun, are all presumed to be extremely similar, and thu ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 28 2007 - 12:46am

The Embryonic Rain Of IRAS 4B

Astronomers at the University of Rochester have discovered five Earth-oceans’ worth of water that has recently fallen into the planet-forming region around an extremely young, developing star. Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy at the Universit ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 29 2007 - 1:17pm

Aurigid's Best Kiess Brings Shooting Stars

The Aurigid meteor shower peaked on September 1, originating from C/1911 N1 Kiess, or comet Kiess, a long-period comet that takes about 2000 years to orbit the Sun. It was discovered in 1935 by Carl Kiess. As Earth passes through the dust comet Kiess left ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 4 2007 - 4:12pm

"Lego-Block" Galaxies In The Early Universe

Here are nine of the smallest, faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant universe. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 6 2007 - 12:01pm