Space

The Moon's Strangest Giant Volcanic Eruption Detailed

A new map of the Moon's strangest volcano show that its explosive eruption spread debris over an area in the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex much greater than previously thought. By mapping the radioactive element thorium which spewed out during th ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 18 2015 - 12:00pm

Nova Vulpeculae 1670- Colliding Stars Explain 17th Century Explosion

In 1670, the greatest astronomers, including Cassini and Hevelius, the father of lunar cartography, documented the appearance of a new star in the skies. Hevelius described it as nova sub capite Cygni — a new star below the head of the Swan — and now it is ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 23 2015 - 11:00am

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko Reveals First Detection Of Molecular Nitrogen On A Comet

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has made the first measurement of molecular nitrogen at a comet,  Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko,  providing clues about the temperature environment in which it formed.  ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2015 - 2:33pm

ESA’s CHEOPS Satellite: The Pharaoh of Exoplanet Hunting

Just like the Pharaoh Cheops, who ruled the ancient Old Kingdom of Egypt, ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) could be someday ruling in the field of exoplanet hunting. ...

Blog Post - Tomasz Nowakowski - Mar 19 2015 - 5:23pm

Cosmic Building Block Dust From An Ancient Supernova Found

One of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang contain so much dust. The leading hypothesis is that supernovae, stars that explode at the end of their lives, contain large amounts of metal-en ...

Article - News Releases - Mar 23 2015 - 11:23am

Wandering Jupiter, Did Our Solar System Once Have Super-Earths?

We may have Jupiter to thank for our unusual solar system.  Before the inner planets we now call  Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars formed, a great inward-and-then-outward journey that Jupiter made early in the solar system's history may have torn apart ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 23 2015 - 3:21pm

Dark Matter- Now With More Darkness

Dark matter is an umbrella term for matter that no one has directly detected but must be out there or physics at the very large scale makes even less sense than it makes now. Since it does not reflect, absorb or emit light, it is invisible, so whatever it ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2015 - 1:31pm

The Stars May Be Singing

The study of fluids in motion – now known as hydrodynamics – goes back to the Egyptians so it has been involved in a lot of experiments but now it has provided something new; experimental evidence that stars may generate...sound. ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 27 2015 - 7:30am

ESA’s IXV spaceplane Test Flight a Complete Success

European Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) was launched on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Feb. 11. The spacecraft was then released into a suborbital trajectory, and flew autonomously, reentering and splashing down into th ...

Blog Post - Tomasz Nowakowski - Mar 29 2015 - 5:00pm

Proto-Clusters: Precursors Of Dense Galaxy Clusters Discovered?

Cosmologists may have discovered what could be the precursors of the vast clusters of galaxies that we see today. Galaxies like our Milky Way, with its 100 billion stars, are usually not found in isolation. 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, many are i ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 31 2015 - 9:30am