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space

SPACE: Astronomers Find Giant, Ghostly Hand in Space

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Ghostly Hand

An enormous ghostly hand stretches through the depths of space, its wispy fingers pressing against a glowing cloud. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s quite real, as imagery gathered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows. The “hand” was spawned by the death of a massive star in a supernova explosion, which left behind a fast-spinning, superdense stellar corpse known as a pulsar, Chandra team members said in a description of the dramatic images. Full Story From Live Science

SPACE: Venus Has A Yummy, Gooey Exterior

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Venus - NASA

Venus may still be geologically active today, which could mean that Earth’s planetary sibling is a good place for scientists to learn about early Earth and faraway worlds. An international team of scientists used old radar images from NASA’s Magellan mission, which ended operations in 2004, to study the Venusian surface. They found places where chunks of crust were sliding and turning like “pack ice,” according to the researchers. Since the lowlands the observations focused on are relatively young, the geological activity that triggers the motions happened not too long ago and may even be continuing today. The work suggests … Read more

WHAT IF: Earth Stopped Spinning?

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Earth - pixabay

Earth is steadily spinning like a top, even if we can’t see, touch, hear or feel it. So, what would happen if Earth were to abruptly stop rotating?  If the spinning were to stop, the angular momentum of every object on Earthwould rip the surface apart, resulting in a really, really bad day. “This is just a thought experiment,” said James Zimbelman, senior geologist emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. “There is no natural force that would stop the Earth from spinning. That is part of why the planet has been spinning since it formed, … Read more

Spaceflight Grinches Your Heart

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Human Heart - Deposit Photos

What do extreme long-distance swimming and spaceflight have in common? They can both shrink the heart, according to a new study. Both activities reduce the pressure of gravity on the heart, making it so that it doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood upwards through the body. The heart is a muscle, and just like any other muscle in the body, if it’s not used as much as it used to be, it will shrink. To understand what effect weightlessness has on the heart, a group of researchers analyzed health data from retired astronaut Scott Kelly’s year aboard … Read more

SPACE: Did Mars Rover Curiosity Just Detect an Alien Belch?

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Curiosity Rover - NASA

A group of scientists may have just pinpointed the location on Mars of a mysterious source of methane, a gas most often produced by microbes — and NASA’s Curiosity rover could be right on top of it. Methane blips have pinged on Curiosity’s detection systems six times since the rover landed in Mars’ Gale crater in 2012, but scientists weren’t able to find a source for them. Now, with a new analysis, researchers may have traced the methane burps to their origin. To calculate the unknown methane source, researchers at the California Institute of Technology modeled the methane gas particles by … Read more

SPACE it’s the Dawn of a New Space Age. For the Rich.

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Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic’s newly minted astronauts are beyond thrilled following their journey to space on the company’s first fully crewed spaceflight. Sunday (July 11), Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson joined crewmates Sirisha Bandla and Colin Bennett in earning their astronaut wings following the successful launch and landing of the company’s Unity 22 suborbital mission. Beth Moses, who also flew aboard the craft, had already achieved astronaut status on a previous flight. The whole crew shared their excitement after returning to Earth, popping Champagne bottles, with Branson even lifting Bandla up onto his shoulders. “It was just magical,” Branson said during the … Read more

SPACE: Signs of Possible Life on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus?

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Enceladus - Pixabay

The methane wafting from Enceladus may be a sign that life teems in the Saturn moon’s subsurface sea, a new study reports. In 2005, NASA’s Cassini Saturn orbiter discovered geysers blasting particles of water ice into space from “tiger stripe” fractures near Enceladus’ south pole. That material, which forms a plume that feeds Saturn’s E ring (the planet’s second-outermost ring), is thought to come from a huge ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath the moon’s icy shell. And there’s more than just water ice in the plume. During numerous close flybys of the 313-mile-wide (504 kilometers) Enceladus, Cassini spotted … Read more

SPACE: Lots of Alien Worlds Could Know We’re Here

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alien - Deposit Photos

At least 1,715 nearby star systems sat at a perfect angle to view Earth during the past 5,000 years, meaning aliens living in those systems, if they exist and have the right technology, could have watched our planet from afar as early human civilizations first emerged. Of those star systems, 313 exited the special viewing zone, known as the Earth transit zone (ETZ), sometime in the past few thousand years, leaving 1,402 star systems capable of providing a glimpse of our planet today, according to a new study, published Wednesday (June 23) in the journal Nature. And over the next … Read more

Why is Space So Black?

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space - pixabay

Look up at the night sky with your own eyes, or marvel at images of the universe online, and you’ll see the same thing: the inky, abysmal blackness of space, punctuated by bright stars, planets or spacecraft. But why is it black? Why isn’t space colorful, like the blue daytime sky on Earth? Surprisingly, the answer has little to do with a lack of light. “You would think that since there are billions of stars in our galaxy, billions of galaxies in the universe and other objects, such as planets, that reflect light, that when we look up at the … Read more

SPACE: Water-Based Life Extremely Unlikely On Venus

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Venus - NASA

The amount of water in the atmosphere of Venus is so low that even the most drought-tolerant of Earth’s microbes wouldn’t be able to survive there, a new study has found. The findings seem to wipe out the hope stirred by last year’s discovery of molecules potentially created by living organisms in the scorched planet’s atmosphere that were seen as an indication of the possible presence of life. The new study looked at measurements from probes that flew through the atmosphere of Venus and acquired data about temperature, humidity and pressure in the thick sulfuric acid clouds surrounding the planet. … Read more