Sunlight Can Hinder Oil Spill Cleanup Efforts
A 2003 report by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences estimated that more than 1.3 million metric tons of petroleum make it into the sea each year. Among the tools used to lessen the impact of oil spills are chemical dispersants which break up the floating oil into small droplets. But […]
ESA Mars Orbiter Gets A Software Upgrade
If you own any kind of computing device, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer, you know sooner or later that you’re going to have to update or install new software to keep it functioning. The same thing can also be said about spacecraft that have been in service for a while. The […]
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, […]
Radioactive Material Found in Fracking Waste; Searching Space for H20
Radioactive Isotopes Found in Fracking Waste US oil and natural gas production, has been boosted in recent years by a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, commonly called “fracking.” But this practice has also been criticized for its possible impact on the environment because of the wastewater this method generates. A new study published in […]
Oh! No Flowing H2O on The Red Planet?
Last September, with much hoopla, NASA confirmed evidence of liquid water flowing on present-day Mars. But a new study using data from the space agency’s Mars Odyssey mission throws some cold water on those findings. About a year ago, the space agency’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter identified […]
Space Snow Spotted; Frankenstein Galaxy; Fewer Allergies for Thumb Suckers
Astronomers Spot Snow Circling New Star For the first time, astronomers have been able to get a glimpse of a water “snowline” in a protoplanetary disk, which is the material surrounding a new star that may later form into planets. This water “snowline” marks the point within these left overs of star formation where the temperature […]
NASA Seeks Astronauts; Good Sleep = Good Mood; Device Finds Water in Space
Help Wanted – NASA As NASA continues to prepare to resume human spaceflight launches and readies its ambitious ‘Journey to Mars’, it is putting out its “help wanted” sign. The space agency announced that it will soon begin to accept applications for its next class of astronauts who will fly from the Space Coast of […]
Study: Lakes On Ancient Mars; Scientists Say They Know Why Elephants Rarely Get Cancer
New Caltech Study Finds That Mars Once Had Lakes A couple of weeks ago the science world was all a twitter after NASA announced that its scientists had found evidence of flowing water on Mars. The excitement raised expectations that life may exist on the Red Planet since, as some say, where there’s water, there’s life. […]
Scientists Find Jupiter’s Younger Sibling
A group of scientists have discovered a new exoplanet they say resembles a young Jupiter. Called 51 Eridani b, the gas giant is about 100 light years away, has twice the mass of Jupiter, orbits its star – 51 Eridani – at a distance comparable to between Saturn and Uranus in our solar system and […]
Science Scanner: All Systems ‘Go’ for Comet Touchdown, Cigarette Ash Removes Arsenic from Water, Is Earth’s Magnetic Field Ready to Flip?, Building the World’s Biggest Cosmic Ray Detector
Rosetta’s Philae Lander Given Green Light for Comet Touchdown in November The European Space Agency announced that all systems are ‘go’ for the Rosetta Mission to send its Philae lander to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. This will the first-ever attempt of a soft touchdown landing on a comet. A month […]