Space

3.5 Billion Years Ago, Life Could Have Developed On The Moon Instead

The moon is just a big rock in Earth's orbit now but things could have gone a lot differently in the distant past. In fact, there may have been two early windows of habitability for Luna. In a new paper, astrobiologists say conditions on the lunar sur ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 23 2018 - 2:33pm

Exoplanets Where Life Could Develop As It Did On Earth

Though evidence to-date shows we are the first advanced species, at least in our cosmic neighborhood, that doesn't mean it can't happen elsewhere. It is absolutely likely, because according to one estimate there are as many as 700 million trillio ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 30 2018 - 8:05am

These Hotspots Can Last For Millions Of Years

You may have trouble finding a hotspot in that store you are visiting, but there is one place they are persistent: inside neutron stars. A new study shows that instabilities can create intense magnetic hot spots that survive for millions of years, even aft ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 31 2018 - 6:33am

Guest Post: Alessandro De Angelis, Multi-Messenger Astrophysics

I am very happy to host here today an article by my INFN colleague Alessandro de Angelis, a well-known and authoritative italian astrophysicist. Alessandro has recently published a beautiful new book on this subject, which I invite you to have a look at ( ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Aug 15 2018 - 11:01am

Peering Into The Void: Cosmic Web Reveals This Part Of The Early Universe Had Almost No Matter!

About 1 billion years after the Big Bang, the gas in deep space was highly opaque to ultraviolet light and its transparency varied widely from place to place, obscuring much of the light emitted by distant galaxies. This opaque quality contains tantalizing ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 15 2018 - 8:43am

Exoplanets Containing Water May Be More Common Than Believed

Some exoplanets with masses two to four times the size of Earth can be explained by large amounts of water- and they may be more common than previously thought, say researchers. The 1992 discovery of exoplanets orbiting other stars has sparked interest in ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 20 2018 - 6:38am

'How Close To Sending Humans To Mars?' Should Ask '... To Moon?' Right Now No-one Can Repeat Apollo, Including The US

People often ask, "How close are we to sending humans to Mars" and it's not surprising given the optimistic presentations by Elon Musk and others. However, Mars is just too far away to send humans at this stage. ...

Article - Robert Walker - Sep 20 2018 - 9:17am

Elon Musk, Please Hire Me As An Astronaut For Space X’s BFS

Dear Mr Musk, you should hire me to fly Yusaku Maezawa to the Moon and back.  Especially if you want to connect to the past and future history of space flight.  I am a fully qualified scientist with a MS in Physics and a thesis in Astronomy meeting all th ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Sep 22 2018 - 6:35pm

Does 'The Goblin' Make Neptune Sized Planet 9 More Likely?... And Are Mars Or Earth Sized 'Goblin's Possible?

Does this discovery of 'The Goblin make 'Planet 9' more likely? Yes I’d say so. It’s looking really strange. I’m beginning to be won around to the idea:). There is plenty of space for planets to exist beyond Neptune. No known big gas giants ...

Article - Robert Walker - Jan 22 2019 - 1:30pm

Fun Speculation- Can Neptune Sized Exomoon Have Moonlets Like Neptune's Triton? Or A Ring? Even Moonlets Of Moonlets?

Just before the flyby of Pluto by New Horizons I wrote a speculative fun article about whether it could spot moonlets of Pluto’s moons. Can Moons Have Moons? Or Rings? Theoretically it seems possible that moonlets just possibly might be dynamically stable ...

Article - Robert Walker - Oct 6 2018 - 11:36am