Voyager 1; Humans Peak; Distant Black Hole
JPL Fires Up Voyager 1 Thrusters after 37 Year Rest Imagine you’ve discovered a rare gem of a car that’s been tucked away in a barn for the last 37 years. The barn’s owner says it’s yours if you can drive it away. But if you’ve ever tried to start a motor vehicle and keep it […]
Light Pollution Increasing; No Flowing H20 on Mars; Keeping Cows Happy
Light Pollution Continues to Ruin View of Night Sky More of us are becoming unable to witness the full breathtaking beauty and majesty of the sparkling Milky Way because of a growing problem called light pollution. According to oxforddictionaries.com, light pollution is defined as the brightening of the night sky caused by street lights and […]
Researchers Doubt the Existence of Dark Energy
According to NASA, the universe is composed of three things. About 4.6% of it is normal (visible) matter, 24% is dark matter and the remaining 71.4% is made up of dark energy. In other words, hypothetically speaking, around 95% of everything in the universe can’t even be seen. Now a Hungarian and American team of […]
Where are Ceres Large Craters?
After NASA’s Dawn spacecraft had passed by the asteroid Vesta, on its way to rendezvous with Ceres, mission scientists noticed that its surface was banged up with a lot of very large craters. Its biggest impact crater is Rheasilvia, which measures 505 km in diameter. They expected that Ceres would also be seriously pitted with giant impact basins too. […]
Astronomers Find a Bunch of ‘Monster Stars’ in Star Cluster
A group of astronomers probing a young star cluster within the ultraviolet section of the light spectrum just found a bunch of huge ‘monster stars.’ The R136 star cluster, located in the Tarantula Nebula, inside the Large Magellanic Cloud, is about 157,000 light years from Earth. They chose to explore in the ultraviolet range since there are […]
Astronomers Spot 80 of the Oldest Galaxies
Advancing technology is making it possible for scientists to investigate the early universe. About 200 million years after the Big Bang, it is thought that clumps of condensed primordial cold gas clouds provided material for the first stars to be born. As stars were created they formed small galaxies. An international team of researchers are […]
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 […]
A Blast of Gamma Rays from Halfway Across the Universe Detected
Back in April 2015, a surge of high-powered gamma rays from half-way across the universe crashed into Earth’s atmosphere. But, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the burst of gamma rays didn’t put any of us in danger and produced no noticeable effects since the high-energy rays are blocked by Earth’s atmosphere. Astronomers, using […]
Scientists Spot Cosmic Bartender
For the first time, an international team of researchers has discovered a cosmic cocktail maker hurtling through space at a speed of around 21.8 kilometers per second. The researchers discovered that Comet Lovejoy is pumping out large amounts of the same kind of alcohol (ethyl) used in alcoholic beverages and a type of sugar into […]
A Close Look at Saturn Moon’s North Pole; Imitation Skin Senses Pressure
Cassini Explores North Pole Area of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been sending back spectacular images and providing scientists with valuable data about the Saturn and its many moons since its arrival there in 2004. On October 14th, Cassini returned to Saturn’s ice-covered and 6th largest moon Enceladus, the latest of many trips […]