How Will Our Sun Die?
Scientists say our Sun has been shining for about the last 4.6 billion years. They also say the Sun is expected to have enough hydrogen to fuel nuclear fusion in its core to allow it to continue shining as it has for about another 5 billion years. Along with creating solar energy, the Sun’s hydrogen […]
First Detection of Helium in an Exoplanet Atmosphere
Scientists say for the first several hundred thousand years or so after the Big Bang, there were virtually only two elements in the universe, hydrogen, and helium. A hydrogen atom is made of only one proton and one electron, and a helium atom has two each of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Hydrogen and then helium are […]
Astronomers Search for the Sun’s Long-Lost Solar Siblings
While a family reunion is highly unlikely, Australian and European astronomers are still trying to find our Sun’s long-lost solar siblings which are now scattered throughout the sky. To do so, the scientists examined the of some 350,000 stars in the Milky Way – as though they were mapping each star’s DNA. The sun was […]
First Stars Formed in Universe 180 Million Years After Big Bang
A group of researchers led by Judd Bowman, an astronomer at Arizona State University, recently made a remarkable discovery by spotting the impressions of the earliest stars in the universe. Soon after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, the universe expanded, cooled and became very dark. Stars and other cosmological objects hadn’t formed yet. […]
Widespread Water on Moon But Not Easy to Retrieve
A new study, led by Joshua Bandfield of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, suggests that water is widely spread across our moon’s surface. It can be found day or night and in many locations and types of terrain. The findings reported in this study were found to contradict previous research. But the study, […]
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 […]
June 2016 Science Images
January 2016 Science Images
Where Does Rain Go; Ocean Organics Form Cloud Ice; Hot Peppers May Fight Cancer
What Happens to Precipitation After it Falls to Earth? Have you ever wondered what happens to rain or snow once it falls on Earth? Researchers from the University of Utah and Oregon State University analyzed measurements, taken by the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) on NASA’s Aura satellite, of the two forms of hydrogen contained within […]
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 […]