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Dr. Milton Wainwright is trying to convince the world that the found alien life floating some 25 miles in our planet’s atmosphere – but while tabloids gobbled up his story like no tomorrow, the scientific community is much more reluctant to accept his results. Is there any truth to these claims? Let’s have a look. If […]
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, if one galaxy is located directly behind another, then the front one would bend the light of the more distant one, in such a way that you'd only see the behind one as a ring. Less than 100 years ago, many researchers thought we'd never see one, but astronomers have managed to take several pictures that confirm it - as is the example you see below.
Eight colonies of common ants were shipped to the International Space Station last December to study how microgravity might affect the creatures. So, how did the ants fare? Well, surprisingly good actually. The dexterous ants clung to the surface of the station and migrated freely (under supervision of course) despite weightlessness. Of course, their movements weren't as coordinated as on Earth and since they rely on a sort of hive mind to coordinate the colony, researchers believe studying their mishaps in microgravity might aid in building better robots.
It almost sounds too cheesy to be true: NASA wants to send a shuttle to an asteroid, pluck a piece of it, then make it return to the Moon and orbit it. Then, brave astronauts will go and retrieve the sample, bringing it back to Earth for study. But that's exactly what astronomers and engineers at the space agency want to do.
When you gotta eat... well you gotta eat, even in space. On March 23, 1965 astronaut John Young launched to Earths' orbit aboard the Gemini 3. With him was crewmate Gus Grissom and a two days old corn beef sandwich, smuggled without permission on the spacecraft.
A chance discovery has provided experimental evidence that stars may generate sound. While he was examining the interaction of an ultra-intense laser with a plasma target, John Parsley from the University of York found that interfering plasma generates a series of pressure pulses - in other words, sounds.
A new shocking theory suggests that Jupiter may have sweeped through our solar system much like a wrecking ball, knocking planets out of the solar system our moving them outwards, to the position we see them in today. If this is true, then it might explain why our solar system is a rarity and why life emerged the way it did.
A shocking image went viral a few days ago, with an 11th-century French abbey completely surrounded by water following a super tide. Naturally, many similar photos followed, and many "explanations" emerged, most vaguely referencing the solar eclipse, something about gravitational cycles, and some even stated it was caused by the "tide of the century", although the "tide of the century" comes by every 18 years. So let's take a look at what actually happened.
Everything is made of stardust - but some things are made of more stardust than others. A new study has found that a single supernova is capable of producing large enough quantities of dust to create thousands of planets like Earth.
With spring starting to settle in, snow is likely the last thing on people's minds - but NASA is taking snow really seriously. They want to put satellites in orbit to understand how the frozen lands in the polar areas are developing and adapting to climate change.
Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, is no stranger to staggering photos. His most famous shot includes the first ever selfie in space. Now, while visiting Stonehenge, Aldrin posted on Twitter a photo of him sporting a t-shirt with a stylized Mars logo a la NASA, which read "Get your ass to Mars". A long time supporter of inter-planetary exploration, both publicly during his numerous TV appearances or press editorials and institutionally during his stints in front of Congress, this latest publicity shot aims to inspire the public and garner support for a manned mission to Mars.
They're considered a hybrid between asteroids and comets, but still, they're called minor planets; they also bear the name of the fabled man-horse creatures in Greek mythology - centaurs. Now, scientists have found that a Centaur in our solar system, Chiron, might have rings just like those of Saturn.
According to Danish and Australian researchers, there are billions of the stars in the Milky Way located in the "habitable zone", where liquid water might exist, and with it, life as we know it.
A pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) emitted by the sun last Sunday have now triggered a severe geomagnetic storm around the globe. At first, only a mild geomagnetic storm was registered after the first wave hit our planet's magnetosphere. Quickly, however, the storm has intensified to G4 status, or only one notch below the highest level solar storm, according to the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. This is the most severe solar storm of the current solar cycle.
The Moon's geologic past was much more interesting and active than previously thought, results from the Chinese lunar rover indicate. The Yutu moon rover found evidence of at least nine distinct rock layers deep beneath its wheels, something which seems to indicate a more complex setting.
NASA has announced its plans to implement smart glasses in their future missions. The space agency will work together with Osterhout Design Group (ODG) in order to develop the technology which will be used for virtual reality and augmented reality applications during human spaceflight, including repairs and other technical tasks.
Extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got a lot more likely: NASA has found convincing evidence that Ganymede and Enceladus, moons of Jupiter and Saturn respectively, might both harbor salty oceans beneath their frozen surface. Scientists estimate that the oceans are over 50 miles thick (80 km), which greatly increases the chances of alien life.
It is generally accepted that our galaxy has a diameter of nearly 100,000 light-years. However, findings of a new research, published in the Astrophysical Journal, suggest that the Milky Way may actually be 50% larger than previously thought. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy containing our solar system. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a […]
Using high sensitivity radar telescopes, astronomers have managed to take a glimpse at the surface of Venus, piercing through its thick clouds.
At the core of a newly found dwarf galaxy, astronomers discovered a mysterious source of gamma rays that may signal the presence of the mysterious dark matter. If this is confirmed, then it would be the first time we see dark matter through anything else than its gravitational pull.
Exoplanet GJ581d is the first potentially habitable world astronomers have discovered, but some astronomers believed that the planet wasn't actually there - it was all an observational flaw mixed with some noise in the signal. However, British researchers recently released a study which confirms that the planet does exist and further underline the matter of habitability. This is one of the planets outside our solar system most likely to harbor life.
Astronomers have discovered a star racing at a incredible pace of 2.6 million miles an hour (4.2 million kilometers an hour), making it the fastest moving star discovered thus far. It's so fast that it should exit our galaxy and turn into an intergalactic rogue. It doesn't stop here. Such celestial oddities are believed to be spurred in motion by the extreme gravitational tugs found in the vecinity of supermassive black holes, such as the one found at the core of the Milky Way. The new found road runner, however, was most likely flung outward by a Type Ia supernova, one of the most powerful and brightest bursts of energy in the universe. Little is know about such stellar explosions, and the hypervelocity star might submit some valuable clues.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, the internet's favorite astrophysicist doesn't have high hopes for Mars One - the private enterprise that plans to send people on a one way trip to Mars. Mars One, plans to create a Martian outpost with a crew to land in 2024, sending people 2 by 2; they recently announced the 100 finalists to be the first Martian astronauts.
Scientists have found tantalizing evidence regarding Mars' wet past - according to new research, the Red Planet may have once had a huge ocean, containing 5 million cubic miles of water with a depth of over a mile.
For the second time, astronomers have discovered a planet in a solar system with four stars! While most solar systems only have one star, two stars are pretty rare, three are very rare, and four stars… that almost never happens – or at least this is what we thought. The planet wasn’t newly discovered, but […]
According to a new report, a team of astronomers has observed a supernova explode - split into four different images. It's a "needle in the hay stack" scenario which astronomers were hoping to find for a long time... and now they finally did.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is expected to remain stationary for at least a couple of days after a shortcircuit has rendered its arm useless for the time being. The engineering problem occurred on February 27 as the rover was preparing to start drilling in the Martian soil.
NASA's Towed Glider Air-Launch System will launch small payloads, like mini-satellites, into space more efficiently and at a fraction it currently costs, according to officials. In a spree of ingenuity, researchers have devised a launch system comprised of a double piggyback of sorts. First, a drone will fly off the ground and into the upper atmosphere, carrying a glider. The glider in turn carries a rocket, which ultimately carries the payload meant for Earth's orbit. Once the drone reaches 40,000 feet, it decouples the glider which immediately turns on its on-board booster. Once, again, high enough, the glider will decouple the rocket which fires for the final climb into space.
Many people change a lot after their youth... and so to did our Universe. Nowadays, galaxies contain both dust and gas, but back in the early Big-Bang days, the earliest galaxies had no dust, only gas. Now, a team of astronomers has discovered a very young galaxy with lots of dust - the equivalent of a white-bearded young man.
There's something so eerily exciting about spacewalks... the idea of walking into outer space with only a cable connection you to a ship rotating at 7 km/s some 400 km above the Earth is just... out of this world - literally! Now, two astronauts have completed ISS upgrades is what can only be described as a picture perfect spacewalk. This entire spacewalk took one hour less than planned for.
After an exhaustive analysis conducted over a year and a half, NASA's Curiosity Rover has finally confirmed the existence of methane on Mars, somewthing which indicates that life may have existed (or still exist) on Mars.
Astronomers have discovered a humongous supermassive black hole that’s 12 billion times as massive as the Sun. What’s peculiar about it isn’t necessarily its mass – some even bigger black holes have been found – but rather its age. Observations suggest that the black hole 12.8 billion light-years away, which means what scientists are reading […]
The Curiosity Rover, currently on Mars, took another selfie in the "Mojave" area, where it is preparing to have a second taste of Mount Sharp, the central peak within Gale crater. The selfie scene is assembled from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's robotic arm.
The Sahara Desert and the Amazon area have few things in common - one is a dry, barren wasteland, while the other is the most fertile area on Earth. But according to a new NASA study, there may be more than meets the eye when it comes to the two - dust from the Saharan area makes the trans-Atlantic journey, fertilizing the Amazonian rainforest with phosphorus.
Jupiter's satellite Europa is definitely one of the most interesting places in our solar system - despite being really far from the Sun and frozen on the surface, NASA researchers actually believe it is the best bet to search for extraterrestrial life. Now, scientists and engineers have actually planned a mission aimed to reveal whether life on Europa exists or not.
Dark matter and black holes are some of the most mysterious things in the Universe, so a connection between the two is absolutely thrilling. In a new study, astronomers report a strange link between the amount of dark matter in a galaxy and the size of its supermassive black hole. That’s an amazing new black […]
Too close for comfort – a team of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa concluded that a dim star passed through the Oort cloud, our solar system’s distant cloud of comets. The star missed the Earth by less than one light year, and passed five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima […]
The team behind Interstellar's awesome special effects meant business when they set out to emulate space, celestial objects and black holes as scientifically accurate as possible. In a paper published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the special effects crew describe at length the innovative computer code they used to generate stunning imagery, but also make new scientific discoveries. Whenever a SciFi movie spews new scientific advancement, well, you know it's a good one!
Selected from more than 200,000 applicants, 50 men and 50 women have become the final contenders for the one-way trip to Mars. A Dutch not-for-profit company is planning to send groups of four people on a one-way trip to the red planet in about a decade to start a permanent human settlement - now, we can take a better look at those people.
Mysterious cloud-like formations hovering over Mars challenge our understanding of the Red Planet's climate. Interestingly, amateur astronomers spotted the bizarre feature rising off the edge of the red planet in March and April of 2012 and since then, no satisfying answer regarding to their formation has been put forth. Now, scientists have concocted a new theory, but there's only one problem - it poses more questions than it answers.
At this years' Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium, NASA's Glenn COMPASS Team discussed at large the possibility of exploring Titan, Saturn's largest moon, with a robotic submarine that would dive deep inside the oceans of liquefied natural gas. Such a mission, if ever funded, could help answer some important questions like what are the defining chemical building blocks required to birth and sustain life. Titan is very similar to Earth in terms of cycling systems, elemental composition and terrestrial geography, so there's much insight to be gained.
Just like a deep fried scoop of ice cream, comets, such as the much heralded Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko which saw a spaceship land on it last year, are thought to be frozen on the inside, wheres the surface is hard and crystallized. The team of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) believe the findings further expand our knowledge on comets. Some suggest that life on Earth first emerged thanks to key organic molecules and compounds brought forth by comets colliding with our planet. The more we know, the better we can assess these sort of ideas and, if found viable, how often such events might happen in the Universe.
Because the moon is tidally-locked to Earth, we’re used to seeing our cosmic neighbor like a stationary lonesome figure. Now, NASA released an animated simulation of the moon’s phase from its so-called dark side, offering an insightful glimpse from the other side of the coin. Far side of the moon – not so dark after […]
NASA is requesting 30 million dollars to begin working on a mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, hoping to unlock some of the secrets of alien life. Despite having a frozen surface, the satellite is one of the likeliest candidates for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. Europa is a weird place. At a first […]
The next Mars exploration rover will likely feature a helicopter drone, which is expected to act as scouting drone to improve navigation. According to officials at NASA JPL, the drone could help the rover cover three times the distance Curiosity drives on a daily basis. We have Curiosity to thank for loads of new insights […]
A suborbital rocket carrying six research payloads was successfully launched into the Aurora Borealis. The probe will allow scientists to better understand the energy of the aurora and how this affects the Earth.
According to a new study, water once flowed on the surface of Vesta, the second-largest asteroid in the solar system. This took astronomers by surprise, as no one was really expecting to find this.
For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planetary ring system outside the solar system - and it's one of enormous proportions - 200 times bigger than Saturn's rings.
It's a remarkable day for NASA and space observations: the Solar Dynamics Observatory has taken its 100,000,000th photo! The mission, which has been in continuous operation since 2010 has greatly contributed to our understanding of the Sun and the Sun-Earth relationship.
Based on latest evidence and calculations, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, might be a a huge wormhole, stable and navigable. Astrophysicists combined the equations from general relativity with a distribution of dark matter to reach this conclusion
