Mercury’s Surface ‘Painted’ With Carbon from Comets
A first glance, the planet Mercury looks a lot like our Moon, both gray and pockmarked with craters after being bombarded with meteorites and blasted by the solar wind over the millennia. Some take the similarity further, referring to them as “twins.” The color of Mercury’s surface though is much darker than the moon, so […]
Science Scanner: Milky Way Bigger than Thought, Hydrothermal Activity on Saturn Moon, New Way to Fight Cavities & Gum Disease, Dwarf Galaxy Surprises Scientists
Milky Way May Be Much Bigger than Thought Our galaxy, the Milky Way may be much bigger than previously thought, up to 50 light-years further across, say researchers. Researchers from the United States, China and the United Kingdom came to the conclusion after reviewing data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing […]
The Best Science Images – February 2015
Extrasolar Object’s Ring System is 200 Times Larger Than Saturn’s
One of our solar system’s most fascinating planets is Saturn. It’s the 2nd largest planet, after Jupiter. But what makes Saturn stand out from the others is the dazzling system of rings that surround it. Recently, a Dutch and an American astronomer found that an extrasolar object, discovered back in 2012, is surrounded by a […]
Science Images of the Month – January, 2015
Meteorite Reveals Early Solar System Information, Greenland’s Ice Sheet is Melting & Smart Keyboard Adds Layer of Cybersecurity
Meteorite’s Magnetic Memory Reveals its Secret Message A team of British geologists has developed a new way to learn something about the early days of our solar system. Since meteorites are fragmented pieces of asteroids that have fallen to Earth, testing the magnetic field of the meteorite can provide some information about its parent asteroid. […]
NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Begins Approach to Dwarf Planet Ceres
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is getting set for the final segment of its planned ten-year mission after entering the approach phase of its visit to the dwarf planet Ceres. This dwarf planet, with an average diameter of 950 kilometers, is the largest object in the asteroid belt, a region of space located between the orbits of […]
Rosetta Mission Fuels Argument About Origin of Earth’s Water
The debate about the origin of Earth’s water just got deeper. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) comet-chasing spacecraft Rosetta has sent back some interesting information regarding water vapor it detected and analyzed on its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. According to the ESA and an international group of scientists, the analysis shows that the chemical composition of […]
Saturn Moon’s Wobble Could Be Clue to What’s Inside
Scientists with NASA’s Cassini Mission, which has been studying Saturn since 2004, were trying to figure out just how much one of its moons, Mimas, wobbled as it orbits the ringed planet. After reviewing and analyzing copious images snapped by the robotic probe and running several models, the scientists think the moon’s wobble could be […]
About Half of the Water You Drink is Older than the Sun
New research reveals that as much as one half of all of Earth’s current water supply is older than the Sun. An international team of scientists led by Ilse Cleeves at the University of Michigan looked back into creation of Earth and our solar system to find out where all of the water came from. […]