NASA Prevents Space Wreck; Black Hole Winds; Oldest Fossils Found
NASA Prevents a Wreck at Mars The folks at NASA’s MAVEN program recently had to give their spacecraft a small unscheduled course correction so that it wouldn’t smash into Mars’s moon Phobos. The spacecraft that’s been circling the Red Planet for a little over two years conducted a motor burn that give it a slight […]
Odd Feature from Galactic Collision; Crack in the Magnetosphere; Smartphones Make Us Trust Less?
Galactic Fender-Bender Produces Eye-Lid Shaped Feature A team of astronomers say what started as a fender-bender between two galaxies has sent a torrent of stars and gas crashing through the center of one, which then produced a rare eyelid shaped star formation. Working with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in Chile, the astronomers identified […]
Don’t Smoke; Space Blob Mystery; Near Earth Asteroid Watch
Yet Another Reason Not to Smoke The American Heart Association released a new study that uncovers yet another reason not to smoke. The study, published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, suggests that smoking can have a wide-ranging and long-term effect on our DNA. The research shows that smoking leaves a “footprint” on the human […]
Space Snow Spotted; Frankenstein Galaxy; Fewer Allergies for Thumb Suckers
Astronomers Spot Snow Circling New Star For the first time, astronomers have been able to get a glimpse of a water “snowline” in a protoplanetary disk, which is the material surrounding a new star that may later form into planets. This water “snowline” marks the point within these left overs of star formation where the temperature […]
Ancient Oxygen Found; Biggest Tatooine-Like Planet Spotted; 2nd Gravitational Wave Detected
Astronomers Find Really Really Old Oxygen in Distant Galaxy Astronomers say they have spotted some of the oldest oxygen in the universe. Using the European Southern Observatory’s ALMA or Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of radio telescopes, the scientists say they’ve picked up a strong signal that indicates oxygen in a galaxy about 13.1 billion light-years […]
Milky Way Might Have Formed From Inside-Out
The Milky Way Galaxy may have formed from the inside-out, according to data from the Gaia-ESO Survey. Using data gathered by the ESO’s 8-meter Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in Chile’s Atacama desert, astronomers were able to make their findings by tracking and studying the amounts of elements, such as magnesium, within the chemical composition of stars […]
Hubble Helps Astronomers Solve 40 Year-Old Mystery
Astronomers finally have been able to solve a 40-year mystery thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope. For over four decades astronomers have been trying to find the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of hydrogen gas clouds that stretch almost halfway around our own Milky Way galaxy. The Magellanic Stream is connected to […]