Moon Born from a Violent Head-On Collision
It’s been theorized by a number of scientists that the moon was formed as the result of a collision between an early Earth and a protoplanet known as Theia, named after the mother of the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology, some 4.5 billion years ago (around 100 million years after Earth formed). But scientists seem […]
Science Images of the Week
Science Scanner: Leonardo da Vinci Might be Wrong and is Planet Mercury a Hit-and-run Victim?
Scientists Catch Photosynthesis in Action Researchers have snapped the very first images of photosynthesis as it happens. Photosynthesis is the process which plants use to convert light energy into chemical energy, which is then stored as sugar. Using the U.S. Department of Energy’s LCLS x-ray laser, the world’s most powerful, the researchers imaged the part […]
NASA Lunar Explorer Has Smashing End
NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE mission had a smashing ending early Friday morning when the US space agency crashed the spacecraft into the moon’s surface. The ground controllers, monitoring the spacecraft’s operations from NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, confirmed that it impacted the lunar surface as planned sometime […]
Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Dead at 82
Neil Armstrong, the first man to step onto the surface of the moon, died Saturday from heart-surgery related complications. He was 82. It was more than 40 years ago that Armstrong uttered the now-iconic words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” forever sealing his place in history. He spoke the […]
Forty Years Later, US Flags Remain on Moon
Some of the most iconic moments in American history occurred when the Apollo astronauts planted U.S. flags on the lunar surface in the 1960s and 70s. It’s been nearly 40 years since Apollo 17, the final manned U.S. mission to the moon, left the last of six American flags on the its surface. What happened […]
Water on the Moon
Looking up at the Moon from our blue planet Earth, it’s hard to see anything other than a barren landscape. Devoid of any life, it’s a visual study in dusty shades of gray. But recently scientists from Case Western Reserve University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Brown University have found that parts of the […]