For more information about solar system check the Wikipedia article here
To boldly go where no man has gone before: a spacecraft launched from Earth, Voyager I has pushed into the great unknown, leaving behind our solar system. For years, astronomers have been discussing about when Voyager will finally leave the solar system – and it’s actually pretty hard to draw a line and say that [...]
Mon, Jul 30, 2012
Planetary scientist Kelsi Singer initially studied satellite photographs of Saturn’s icy moon Iapetus‘ surface looking for stress fractures in the moon’s ice, what she found in process however was far more interesting. Huge landslides, stretching across tens of miles across the moon’s surface were observed, not in one, but multiple locations, hinting this is a common phenomenon [...]
Wed, Jul 11, 2012
Astronomers have discovered a new moon orbiting the dwarf planet of Pluto – its fifth – only a year after the former planet’s forth satellite was discovered. In the past decade alone, four out of Pluto’s five moons known thus far have been discovered. The latest addition, provisionally titled S/2012 (134340) 1 or P5, is only between 6 [...]
Mon, Apr 9, 2012
Our solar system is special for two reasons: the first one, obviously – is us. Our solar system is the only one we know of so far that hosts life. The second one is the number of planets – no other solar system that we’ve seen until now had as many planets as ours, but [...]
Mon, Feb 20, 2012
Unexpected new findings from University of Maryland researchers show that a portion of our planet’s mantle survived Earth’s rough formation, including a collision with a planet-sized body which many believe led to the creation of the Moon, as we see it today. “It is believed that Earth grew to its current size by collisions of [...]
Fri, May 13, 2011
Discovered deep in the farthest reaches of our solar system, Haumea is a tiny dwarf planet which has been fascinating scientists for years now since its discovery in 2004, not only because of its peculiar rugby-ball shaped form, but also because of its surface structure. According to the European Southern Observatory, 75 per cent of [...]
Tue, Apr 5, 2011
Our solar system appears to exist inside a “bubble”, inside a network of cavities inside the interstellar medium, which was probably created by massive star explosions millions billions of years ago. Interstellar medium (ISM) is a term coined for the matter that exists in galaxies, between solar systems. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, [...]
Thu, Mar 24, 2011
There’s nothing Russian about the above fantastic featured photo, but what one can be pretty certain about is that it’s darn right fantastic! Dubbed the “red square nebula”, the phenomena was observed after infrared exposures from Earth-based telescopes in Hawaii and California were superimposed revealing a fantastic geometry. Scientists are still not sure how the [...]
Sun, Sep 19, 2010
A probe that has been launched no less than 30 years ago has come across a force that has baffled the scientific world and could rewrite the laws of physics. In 1983, Pioneer 10 took some photos of Jupiter, then left the solar system. However, it’s being pulled back to the Sun by a force [...]
Wed, Feb 24, 2010
There are many things we have yet to find out about Saturn, but the Cassini probe has definitely shed some light on the planet, and will surely do the same in the following years. The most recent flyby showed a significant number of geysers just waiting to pop out from under the surface – even [...]
Fri, Dec 18, 2009
As I was writing in a previous post, Titan is quite unique, in that aside from our planet it’s the only place in our solar system where significant quantities of liquid are to be found (though most are liquid ethane and methane). That doesn’t seem to make much of a difference considering the chemistry of [...]
Fri, Mar 14, 2008
Nature published these findings of scientists from Houston, Texas, about the original proportion of oxygen isotopes in the Sun. This problem is still not fully solved, and it has even split the science world into two groups, which published contradictory results from analyses of lunar soils, believed to contain embedded solar oxygen because the Moon [...]
Some photos of the amazing sun halo hovering over NYC
Record level atmospheric CO2. Reaches 400 ppm for the first time in 3 million years
Your brain detects grammar errors even when you’re not aware of them
First mathematical proof that prime numbers come in infinite pairs
CT scan images caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis in 3-D
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Wed, Mar 20, 2013
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