Astronomers Discover A Dozen New Jovian Moons
As a team of astronomers was looking beyond Pluto for the mysterious Planet 9. So far they haven’t located the giant hypothetical planet, but they did wind up discovering a dozen new moons orbiting Jupiter. “Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System […]
Eek! Spiders and Snakes; Interstellar Visitor; Sugar Boosts Cancer Growth
Why We Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes Two of the most common fears among people from around the world are arachnophobia, which is a fear of spiders and ophiophobia, the fear of snakes. Whether they live in rural communities or in the heart of a big city, most people generally get, at least, a little […]
September 2017 Science Images
Goodbye Cassini; Shape-Shifting Bacteria; New Horizons Wakes Up
NASA Cassini Mission to Saturn Comes to Fiery End English Poet Geoffrey Chaucer once said, “all good things must come to an end”. And so it goes with NASA’s Cassini mission, which provided a close-up look of Saturn, its moons and famous rings over the last 13 years, came to a blazing end on September […]
Kepler Discovers More Exoplanets / Scientists Classify Types of Planets
NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission recently released what it calls the most comprehensive and detailed catalog of candidate exoplanets. Exoplanets or extrasolar planets are planetary bodies that exist outside of our solar system. The new and final Kepler catalog from data gathered from the spacecraft’s initial patch of sky view within the Cygnus constellation includes 219 […]
Solar System Mimics Ours; The Big Empty; Closest Human Relative?
Nearby Planetary System Mimics our Solar System A group of scientists using NASA’s airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy or SOFIA recently completed a study that confirmed their previous findings of a young and nearby planetary system. The researchers found that the system surrounding the star Epsilon Eridani, which is about 10.5 light years away […]
January 2017 Science Images
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Is the Universe Connected By a Cosmic Web?
Some people think that the universe is just a hodge-podge of various celestial objects, such as planets, stars and galaxies. But over the years, scientists have found more evidence that the universe may be anything but random, and is actually more organized and interconnected—like an enormous spider web. Our place in the web Let’s start […]
Is Planet 9 Causing Our Solar System to Wobble?
A new study from researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that Planet 9, the huge and so far unseen planet said to be lurking in the far reaches of the solar system, might be causing our group of planets to wobble a little and giving an impression that the sun is slightly tilted. […]
NASA Will Have Cassini Working Hard Right Up to Fiery Finish
As the saying goes all good things must come to an end and the same will go for the Cassini mission to Saturn as it begins its final year of operation. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has big plans for the orbiter as it makes its year-long swan song. Dubbed the Grand Finale, the space agency […]