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 […]
Cosmic Cannon; Mars Dust Storm Forecast; Dione’s Subsurface Ocean
Astronomers Find a Cosmic Cannon Astronomers have spotted super-hot blobs of plasma blasting into space like cannonballs near a dying red giant star, some 1,200 light years away. Using the Hubble Space Telescope to make their discovery, the scientists found that the balls of hot gas are flying so fast a trip from the Earth […]
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 […]
Astronomers Spot Square-shaped Hole in Sun
NASA astronomers recently noticed an odd looking, square shaped hole in the sun. What they saw is called a coronal hole, something that occurs on a regular basis. Dean Pesnell, project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says the coronal hole is an area within the corona […]
Scientists See Processes Behind Major Solar Events
Over the past several years, NASA spacecraft studying the sun have sent back some spectacular images of it exploding with solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Now, scientists say that two of these spacecraft — the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) — have detected a phenomenon […]
NASA Wants to Speed Journey to Mars
NASA wants to shorten the journey to Mars. It took about eight months for its Mars rover, Curiosity, to reach the red planet. And now, the US space agency is looking for ways to cut the travel time for future manned missions there. Researchers in Washington State say that might be possible through a unique […]