NASA Goes Big and Bold for Exoplanet Science
A United States federal agency is not necessarily the first place you think of when it comes to answering some of the deepest existential questions for our species...
"Solar System"
Space & Physics
Where Would you Leave a Message From the Stars?
A recent article by Samuel Arbesman in the science magazine Nautilus discusses the extraordinary sounding possibility that – just perhaps – a search for extraterrestrial intelligence could be made by looking at our DNA...
Space & Physics
The Grand Texture of Planets
In an idle moment, while staring at a set of solar system data, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to display a set of planetary surfaces on an equal footing, where the overall texture of these worlds was visible (although topography is probably a more [...]..
Space & Physics
Have We Got Solar System Habitability Backwards?
Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Triton, Pluto, Eris…they may all have, or have had, large oceans of liquid water trapped beneath a frozen crust.
A Blizzard of Astrobiology
Astrobiology has one key advantage when it comes to tooting its own horn – it can lay claim to a diverse range of scientific research as being relevant to the study of life in the universe...
Space & Physics
Jupiter's Moons Ascending [Images]
Some natural phenomena need few words to explain why they’re fascinating. Eclipses, transits, and phases in astronomy tend to fall into that category.
Space & Physics
NASA's Dawn Mission Captures New Image of Dwarf Planet Ceres
NASA’s Dawn mission, having performed remarkably at the asteroid Vesta, is homing in on Ceres. The spacecraft’s ion engines will bring it to a capture orbit around this 590 mile diameter dwarf planet on March 6th, 2015 – at a distance some 2.5 times further from the Sun than the Earth...
Lost And Found On Mars
Lost, presumed crashed, the Beagle-2 lander is finally located on Mars. Back in December 2003 a bold and decidedly British robotic device was released from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter...
Comet 67P Only Looks Gray, It’s Actually Black
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission has now released the first narrow-angle color composite image of Comet 67P – taken through a set of red, green, and blue filters.
Never Mind Philae’s Topsy-Turvy Touchdown, Its Brief Mission Advances Comet Science
Even the lander’s missteps generated valuable data
Space & Physics
Recent Lunar Discoveries Reveal a "New Moon"
Think you know about the Moon? I did, but then I started reading ‘The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation‘ (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and realized that my knowledge amounted to a teensy scrap of lunar dust...
Space & Physics
NASA Mission Captures Orbital Waltz of Pluto and Charon
After a ten year journey, NASA’s New Horizons mission is still 420 million kilometers from the Pluto system – but that’s close enough to begin to see the orbital dance of an icy world and its major moon...
Space & Physics
Heads Up! Thirteen Years Of Asteroid Impacts On Earth
Since the Chelyabinsk event in early 2013, when a brilliant meteor fireball streaked across Russian skies and exploded with the energy of thirty Hiroshima bombs, humans have paid slightly more attention to the potential danger of asteroids than before...
Space & Physics
What do NYC Streets and Asteroids Have in Common?
Fatigue, that’s what. As a particularly frigid winter recedes across the north and east of the United States (we’ve become accustomed to milder weather in past years), the abuse suffered by asphalt roads is becoming apparent...
Biology
The Unstoppable Extinction And Fermi’s Paradox
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the evidence that we are currently within a period of mass extinction, the kind of event that will show up in the fossil record a few million years from now as a clear discontinuity, a radical change in the diversity of life on the planet...
Your Friendly Neighborhood Asteroid Swarm
The solar system is full of bits and pieces, remnants of its heyday of activity 4.5 billion years ago. Planets are the most noticeable fossil leftovers, with giant Jupiter being two and a half times more massive that the sum total of the other major worlds...
Voyager Has Entered The Interstellar Medium
After many claims and statements over the past few years that Voyager 1, our most distant operating spacecraft, has ‘left the solar system’ (it hasn’t, as I explain here), it does now seem that as of August 2012 this extraordinary vehicle has entered the interstellar medium...
Greeks, Trojans, and a Temporary Companion for Uranus
A telescopic survey looking for trans-Neptunian objects has chanced across a 37 mile wide chunk of rock and ice that instead moves around the sun in the same orbit as Uranus, just further ahead of the planet...
Evolution
Summer Astrobiology Roundup #3: The Ripening Of The Planets
Although NASA’s planet hunting mission Kepler seems unlikely to return to a fully functioning state, after another reaction wheel failure, it has already yielded an extraordinary crop of new worlds...
A little perspective on our place in the universe
Here are some things that will give whatever might be on your mind at the moment a little perspective. You’ve probably seen these images plastered all over the Internet already.
