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My latest book, Megacatastrophes: Nine Strange Ways the
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LATEST SPACE & SCIENCE NEWS
Archeo- | Eco-
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diaries | Strange news | Tech-
Space radiation killed Russian
Mars mission
(Feb 8, 2012) Russia's Phobos-Grunt
mission was felled by space radiation, a new report concludes.
The ambitious mission was supposed to bring a soil sample of the
Martian moon Phobos back to Earth. But it got stuck in Earth orbit
and eventually plunged into the ocean on 15 January.
Read
more. New Scientist |
Skydiver Felix planning 36
km record bid
(Feb 7, 2012) Sky diving
specialist Felix Baumgartner has announced that he plans to try
to break the record for the highest sky dive in history later
this year. If all goes well, he'll leap from a balloon at an altitude
of 36.5 km (120,000ft) and fall so quickly that he'll become the
first person to go faster than the speed of sound unaided by a
machine. A member of Baumgartner's team is Joe Kittinger
who holds the current free-fall record having, in 1960, jumped
out of a balloon at 31 km (102,800ft).
Read
more. BBC |
Spitzer peers through the dust
into star nursery
(Feb 6, 2012) This churning
cloud of dust and gas, imaged recently by the Spitzer
Space Telescope, marks one of the richest regions of star
formation in the Milky Way. The region, dubbed Cygnus X for its
location in the constellation Cygnus
(the Swan), is the birthplace of the largest population of massive
stars in a 6500-light-year radius. It's also a graveyard for newborn
stars whose formation was prematurely halted by their hostile
environment.
Read
more. New Scientist |
Newfound alien planet is best
candidate yet to support life, scientists say
(Feb 4, 2012) A potentially
habitable alien planet – one that scientists say is the
best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on
its surface – has been found around a nearby star. The planet,
GJ 667Cc, is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which
is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither
too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's
surface.
Read
more. Scientific American |
Four telescope link-up creates
world's largest mirror
(Feb 4, 2012) Astronomers
have created the world's largest virtual optical telescope linking
four telescopes in Chile, so that they operate as a single device.
The telescopes of the Very Large
Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal observatory form a virtual
mirror of 130 metres in diameter. A previous attempt to link the
telescopes last March failed.
Read
more. BBC |
Humble moss helped to cool
Earth and spurred on life
(Feb 3, 2012) Primitive
moss-like plants could have triggered the cooling of the Earth
some 470 million years ago, say researchers. A study published
in Nature Geoscience may help explain why temperatures
gradually began to fall, culminating in a series of "mini ice
ages". Until now it had been thought that the process of global
cooling began 100 million years later, when larger plants and
trees emerged.
Read
more. BBC |
NASA mission returns first
video from Moon's far side
(Feb 2, 2012) A camera aboard
one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)
lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far
side of the Moon. MoonKAM,
or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be
used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.
Read
more. NASA/JPL |
Volcanic origin for Little
Ice Age
(Feb 1, 2012) The Little
Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions,
and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude.
An international research team studied ancient plants from Iceland
and Canada, and sediments carried by glaciers. They say a series
of eruptions just before 1300 lowered Arctic temperatures enough
for ice sheets to expand.
Read
more. BBC |
The North Star might be shrinking
before our eyes
(Jan 31, 2012) Sailors have
navigated by the light of Polaris
for centuries, but all is not well with the North Star. There's
something wrong with its light, and the best explanation might
be that it's losing the equivalent of Earth's mass every year.
That's the argument put forward by astrophysicist Hilding Neilson
and his team at the University of Bonn.
Read
more. io9 |
Antimatter atoms to address
anti-gravity question
(Jan 29, 2012) The question
of whether normal matter's shadowy counterpart antimatter
exerts a kind of "anti-gravity" is set to be answered, according
to a new report. Normal matter attracts all other matter in the
Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels
it. A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it
has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles,
positrons.
Read
more. BBC |
Picture yourself on a sandboard
on Titan
(Jan 29, 2012) Standing
atop a huge mound of black, hydrocarbon sand, your sandboard tucked
under your arm, you take in the view. Row after row of black dunes
march into the distance as far as the eye can see, until everything
disappears behind an orange curtain of smog. Sandboarding on Titan
still, sadly, only happens in our imagination, but the moon's
amazing dunes are real.
Read
more. New Scientist |
Kepler finds 11 new planetary
systems
(Jan 27, 2012) NASA's Kepler
mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed
planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified
Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more
than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star.
The planets orbit close to their host stars and range in size
from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter.
Read
more. NASA/JPL |
'Starbursts' and black holes
lead to biggest galaxies
(Jan 25, 2012) Frenetic
star-forming activity in the early Universe is linked to the most
massive galaxies in today's cosmos, new research suggests. This
"starbursting" activity when the Universe was just a few billion
years old appears to have been clamped off by the growth of supermassive
black holes. An international team gathered hints of the mysterious
"dark matter" in early galaxies to confirm the link.
Read
more. BBC |
Largest solar storm since 2005
to hit Earth Tuesday
(Jan 24, 2012) The night
before last the Sun unleashed a solar
flare, along with a generous belch of ionized matter that
is now racing toward Earth at thousands of kilometres a second.
The solar storm front from the ionized blast, called a coronal
mass ejection, should arrive this morning, according to the NOAA’s
Space Weather Prediction Center. The forecasters called the event
the strongest solar storm since 2005.
Read
more. Scientific American |
Voyager instrument cooling
after heater turned off
(Jan 22, 2012) In order
to reduce power consumption, mission managers have turned off
a heater on part of NASA's Voyager
1 spacecraft, dropping the temperature of its ultraviolet
spectrometer instrument more than 23°C. It is now operating
at a temperature below minus 79°C, the coldest temperature
that the instrument has ever endured. This heater shut-off is
a step in the careful management of the diminishing electrical
power so that the Voyager spacecraft can continue to collect and
transmit data through 2025.
Read
more. NASA/JPL |
NEOShield to assess Earth defense
(Jan 21, 2012) NEOShield
is a new international project that will assess the threat posed
by near-Earth objects (NEOs)
and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big
asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet. The effort
is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of
Planetary Research in Berlin, and had its kick-off meeting this
week. It will draw on expertise from across Europe, Russia and
the US.
Read
more. BBC |
Black holes may turboboost
super-civilizations
(Jan 20, 2012) Super-smart
extraterrestrials have far more than the total stellar energy
output of the entire Milky Way at their fingertips. They could
tap into the mother of all storage batteries: the supermassive
black hole in the core of our galaxy. This gravitational engine
is vastly more efficient at converting matter to energy than stellar
nuclear fusion.
Read
more. Discovery.com |
Herschel telescope revisits
cosmic classic
(Jan 18, 2012) Europe's
Herschel space telescope has produced a majestic new version of
a classic astronomical target – the Eagle
Nebula (also called M16). This dense region of gas and dust
some 6,500 light-years from Earth hosts copious numbers of bright
new stars. Radiation from these objects is sculpting the clouds
of gas and dust, producing in places great columns and curtains
of material.
Read
more. BBC |
Alien hunters: What if ET ever
phones our home?
(Jan 16, 2012) For decades
we've been sending signals – both deliberate and accidental
– into space, and listening out for alien civilizations'
broadcasts. But what is the plan if one day we were to hear something?
If we ever detect signs of intelligent alien life, the people
likely to be on the receiving end of a cosmic signal are the scientists
of SETI, aka Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This loose
band of a couple of dozen researchers around the world doggedly
listens to the cosmos in the hopes of catching alien communications.
It's often in the face of scant funding and even ridicule.
Read
more. BBC |
Russian space probe heading
down
(Jan 14, 2012) Russia's
failed Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, is about to fall back to Earth
– quite probably on Sunday. The spacecraft has been losing
altitude rapidly in recent days and will soon be pulled into the
top of the atmosphere where it will be destroyed. Phobos-Grunt
weighed some 13 metric tons at launch, but very little of this
mass should make it through to the surface.
Read
more. BBC |
Super-cool Planck mission begins
to warm
(Jan 13, 2012) One of Europe's
great astronomical ventures is coming to a close. The Planck
telescope, put in space to map the oldest light in the Universe,
has run out of the helium coolant that keeps it in full working
order. Engineers expect the observatory's systems to start to
warm from their ultra-frigid state in the coming days, blinding
one of its two instruments. Nonetheless, Planck has gathered more
than enough data since its launch in 2009 to complete its mission
goals.
Read
more. BBC |
Bubble-blowing stars seen in
the thousands by public
(Jan 13, 2012) A project
to spot the "bubbles" that young, massive stars blow in the gas
surrounding them has come up trumps, finding more than 5,000 of
the objects. That increases the known catalogue of bubbles by
more than a factor of 10. The discoveries were made by citizen
scientists studying images from the Spitzer space telescope, as
part of the Milky Way Project.
Read
more. BBC |
Smallest exoplanet is the size
of Mars
(Jan 13, 2012) The smallest
exoplanet yet found around a Sun-like star is a rocky world half
the size of Earth and almost identical in size to Mars. Although
it is too hot for life, researchers say its discovery boosts the
chances of finding other, more life-friendly planets. The newly
discovered planet, called KOI-961.03, periodically passes in front
of its parent star, causing a slight dip in its brightness detected
by NASA's Kepler space telescope.
Read
more. New Scientist |
Exoplanets are around every
star, study suggests
(Jan 12, 2012) Every star
twinkling in the night sky plays host to at least one planet,
a new study suggests. That implies there are some 10 billion Earth-sized
planets in our galaxy. Using a technique called gravitational
microlensing, an international team found a handful of exoplanets
that imply the existence of billions more.
Read
more. BBC |
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