gear Push settings
It’s really not too late to catch the spectacular show offered by Venus and Jupiter; on Monday and Tuesday evening, the two planets will appear in the sky at a distance of only three degrees – a distance which has been narrowing since early March, and is now reaching its minimum values. The two planets […]
The largest solar flare since 2006 occurred Tuesday, when a massive amount of plasma was ejected at a speed of over 4 million miles per hour, causing some significant problems on Earth, forcing planes to reroute, knocking out power grids and blacking out a number of radios. “Super Tuesday? You bet!” joked Joseph Kunches, a […]
A recently published study suggests that the Earth might have been visited by a giant space rock 13,000 years ago, an event which might have sparked an unusual cold period in the planet’s climate history. The Younger Dryas, also known as the Big Freeze, was a brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred […]
A lot of people were left disheartened when the iconic space shuttle program was canceled last year. Though it’s now been turned into a museum exhibit, the shuttle has remained in the minds and hearts of millions as a symbol of man’s journey towards the stars. Romanian Raul Oaida made his own tribute, and put a […]
Faster than light travel is not only an exciting SciFi concept which has spurred the imagination of countless geek generations since the first Star Trek season aired on television, it’s also a necessity if mankind is ever to surpass its condition and truly aim for the stars. Warp-drive technology has been on the forefront of […]
NASA admitted to something pretty scary: they were hacked 13 times last year alone, and several times hackers had “full, functional control” of the space agency’s information. According to Inspector General Paul K. Martin, the most powerful attack came from an IP in China, which broke into the network of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one […]
For almost 100 years it carried the blame of sinking the world’s most famous ship, but now, the ill-famed iceberg may be cleared, after some researchers claim they’ve found the true culprit – the Moon. Now don’t get the wrong idea, it was the collision with the ice mass that ultimately brought the demise of […]
Cassini has sent some new remarkable pictures which brilliantly illustrate the difference in size between Saturn and Titan, its largest moon. Saturn dwarfs its moon easily, even though Titan, at 3,200 miles across, is bigger than Earth’s moon, which has a diameter of only 2159 miles. If you look really closely above Saturn’s rings, there […]
Strange, huge explosions apparently fueled by solar energy are detonating just above the surface of Venus, a surprising new study concludes. Explosive Venus This is not the first time this unusual phenomenon, called ‘hot flow anomaly’ (of HFA) was observed; such events have been previously spotted above Earth, and possibly Saturn and Mars – but […]
It’s been less than a month since we published the last thing about the Cassini probe, and the amazing spacecraft has done it again; this time it detected a thin, oxygen atmosphere, on a moon of Saturn – Dione. The study was published in the Geophysical Research Letters At 1122 km in diameter, Dione is […]
The term Mars opposition basically refers to a geometric event. Thus on the 3rd of March, Mars will appear exactly opposite the sun in Earth’s sky, 180 degrees away from it, as well as come at one of the closest distances to Earth, making it easy observable even with the naked eye. This event takes […]
Located beneath the three stars that form the belt of Orion the Hunter, the Orion Nebula is one of the dearest sights for amateur astronomers in the night sky, due to its great visibility, being one of the few nebulae visible with the naked eye. Also known under the name of the Sword of Orion, […]
So we heard you like the International Space Station, so we made an ISS inside the ISS. Humor aside, I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read that Lego teamed up with NASA to assemble a scale model of the International Space Station in space. Flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa, which we featured earlier on ZME […]
According to a recent study published by researchers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), our galaxy may be ‘infested’ with nomad planets, which wander aimlessly instead of orbiting a star. Furthermore, the study concluded there may actually be 100,000 times more “nomad planets” in the Milky Way than stars. If this […]
NASA recently issued a call-out to all those interested in joining a special, four-month long study, in which a stay on a Martian outpost would be simulated. The main objective is that of assessing space food, namely whether it’s better if astronauts are provided with meals made out of “shelf-stable” ingredients such as flour, beans, rice […]
Last week, the U.S. Air Force released a report in which it outlines its technological and energy plans for the forthcoming 15 years. Among others, the Air Force means to deploy a space-based solar power station, which would serve energy wirelessly to both Earth and space satellites, as well as a new generation of spacecraft […]
This is the kind of engineering feat that sounds so preposterous, so crazy, so … foolish, that it might actually work. A Japanese construction company plans to build an elevator that can lift tourists in space, up to a quarter the distance between Earth and the moon. While entrepreneurs like Richard Branson or Paul Allen […]
The hunt for the second Earth, a similar life-bearing paradise like our own, rages on, and while no candidate came any close so far, scientists have made some extraordinary discoveries in the process. The latest exciting find is a super-Earth, a planet larger than Earth, but no bigger than Neptune, that represents the first of […]
Astronomers at NASA‘s Chandra X-ray Observatory have come across a true astronomical oddity at the outskirts of the Milky Way, a stellar-mass black hole which exerts the fastest winds ever observed so far in its class – so fast that it rivals those blown by supermassive black holes, which often are billion times more massive. […]
There are currently an estimated 19,000 individual space debris swirling around Earth’s orbit at 17,000 miles/hour, posing great threat to current active satellites, telescopes, future launches in orbit, the International Space Station and even astronauts out on space walks. It’s very clear that something must be done, before the Earth gets one of its own […]
Exactly two years ago, NASA launched a $850 million spacecraft, called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, on a five-year long mission to record high-definition videos of the sun, which should help astronomers better understand its weather cycle and how and how it might affect life on Earth. To celebrate SDO’s 2nd anniversary, NASA has released a […]
The Robonaut 2, an autonomous NASA robot commissioned to ease the lives of astronauts on board the International Space Station by taking over some complex tasks and, also, cure boredom, has finally been booted to move a limb, although he’s been on the station since February 2011 – a whole year. The Robonaut recently went […]
Around 1843, on the night sky all of a sudden a new luminous star made its appearance. That luminous star, which at the time was actually the 2nd brightest star, after Sirius, was actually the result of a explosion in Eta Carinae system – the brightest star in the Milky Way. The eruption spewed a […]
Perhaps the most famous thing left behind on the Moon is a footprint, a boot-shaped impression in the moon dust, photographed and viewed by millions of people. If everything goes according to plan, in the future, many people visiting the Moon will look at it and refer to it as ‘the first’. But about 100 […]
After two decades of drilling in the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, Russian researchers have finally managed to drill down to lake Vostok, which has been sealed under kilometers of ice for over 15 million years. When they first announced they reached the water, biologists were ecstatic; not only did they get a unique chance to […]
Some black holes are just meant to survive, regardless of what they go through. This is probably the case with the HLX-1 black hole, 20.000 times more massive than the Sun, which is practically floating on the outskirts of a galaxy. The problem with this supermassive black hole is that judging by its size, should […]
When we started putting satellites on orbit, few could have pondered the idea of space junk, and even fewer would have guessed that a time will come when we will have to clean up after our spatial enterprises. But the time came, and really soon, and space junk is a real problem. This is why […]
NASA is trying to push an idea that has been around for quite a while: a “human-tended waypoint” near the far side of the moon, a mission perfect for an international partnership and with a huge scientific value. I really, really recommend going to NASA’s page for a lovely inside scoop. NASA declared that they […]
The financial problems for NASA continue to deepen, as the Obama budget slashes another $226 million from the US space agency’s Mars exploration program, relying on a possible but uncertain partnership with Europe; and this is not the worst news. The biggest budget cuts are aimed at robotic exploration. The budget stated that “support for […]
Night is quick to sound the alarm for most of us that it’s time to hit he sack. While you’re peacefully sleeping and dreaming away, up stairs things are a bit different. For the brave men and women stationed at the International Space Station there is no night or day, and considering the station orbits […]
This incredible photo of the Carina Nebuna, a massive star formation , was taken by the The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), in the infrared spectrum. Even the astronomers from the ESO, who are privileged enough to witness some of the most amazing sights in the Universe, claim in a recent press release that […]
Space offers incredibly fascinating experimental conditions for various scientific studies, otherwise very hard or practically impossible to replicate on Earth. Microgravity is something of great interest to scientists, and even simple experiments with fire are extremely insightful. Combustion in space occurs at much lower temperatures and with a lower amount of required oxygen, and to […]
Whenever a massive object, with an equally massive gravitational pull, like black holes or galaxy clusters, falls between an observer, say a telescope, and a distant target in the background to be observed, than a gravitational lens is formed. Light emitted from the distant object gets twisted by the massive object, and ends up distorted […]
The Russian space agency recently announced that they’ll be soon launching a campaign to recruit cosmonauts for upcoming missions to the Moon, slated for the next ten years. Interestingly enough, the announcement comes just one day before the much expected February full moon, called Snow Moon – yes there’s actually snow on the moon this time of […]
For the past three years, scientists have been analyzing data fed back by the 2008 NASA Phoenix mission to Mars, which touch landed on the planet’s northern poles. Even though there was ice, soil analysis showed that the planet has been suffering from a massive, 600 million years long drought, providing inhospitable life supporting conditions on its […]
The hunt for finding another Earth is making progress every day, as scientists are constantly adding new viable candidates to the list. It’s estimated that in our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there are between 200 and 400 billion stars – out of all of these, from a statistical point of view, the chances of […]
Have you ever seen a model of the solar system? They’re just great! But most of them have one big fault – they’re not to scale. But that’s not the case with the biggest model in the world, located in Sweden, which stretches around the entire country and represents everything to scale. The Sun is […]
For the first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system – matter that drifted from some other part of our galaxy right to us. This interstellar material was spotted by Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft with the purpose of studying the outskirts of our solar system from its orbit […]
Most of the aurora borealis videos we’ve featured on ZME Science, besides the fact they’re absolutely gorgeous, are time lapsed. Because of this, I’ve always thought the beautiful, wobbly dance of the Northern Lights is actually a tad slower, maybe not even perceivable. Photographer Alistair Chapman went all the way to Tromso, Norway for last […]
Last year NASA permanently retired the iconic shuttle program, since it became obsolete, too expensive, difficult to maintain and no longer resonated with the agency’s goals. Its successor is no other than the Orion capsule, a spacecraft capable of deep-space exploration missions developed by Lockheed Martin in collaboration with NASA. So far, it’s more or […]
We were telling you a few days ago about a solar storm set to hit Earth, but as it turns out, this isn’t all bad news. In its way towards our planet, the storm also hit Mars, with the NASA Mars rover, revealing some interesting information regarding the amount of radiation an astronaut would be […]
Canadian duo, Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both only 17 years old, have managed to put the infamous Lego man, attached with the Canadian flag, into space. They managed to achieve this with extremely limited resources, using items bought off craiglist, and unlimited ingenuity. The plastic figurine was attached to a styrofoam box, which also contained […]
A while ago NASA launched its next generation weather satellite, the Suomi NPP satellite, into low-orbit, on a mission to collect critical data set to improve short-term weather forecasts and increase understanding of long-term climate change. Besides, valuable scientific measurements, the NPP satellite also provides some incredible glimpses of our planet in great detail. We showed you […]
Black Holes are the least understood entities, so far, in the Universe. However, if there’s one thing scientists know for sure about them, it’s that they’re the most extreme environment in cosmos. Black Holes have such a powerful, relentless gravity pull that it swallows absolutely everything in its vicinity, even light gets absorbed with zero […]
Using a technique called ‘gravitational lensing’, astronomers were able to spot a dwarf galaxy, some 10 billion light years away, which they believe is made out mostly of dark matter. It is only the second ‘black dwarf’ ever found – why there are so few of them is one of the biggest questions in astronomy. […]
In our very own Milky Way galaxy alone, astronomers estimate there are between 200 billion and 400 billion stars. Of these, there are many that exoplanets within their solar systems. Still, what are the odds planets, more or less similar to our one, capable of supporting life, microscopic or otherwise, exist? This is the exact […]
The Phobos Grunt probe, which was supposed to head for Phobos, a satellite of Mars but instead got stuck on Earth’s orbit, found its inglorious ending, crashing into the Pacific, marking an ill-fated bid of restoring the glory to the Russian space program. Russian officials declared they will find and punish the officials responsible for […]
The ever scientifically productive Hubble just came out with another gem that will help scientists unravel the mysteries of the Universe, after the telescope snapped a photo of a couple of galaxy far, far away, wrapped together in a cosmic dance which most likely led in in the forming of a galaxy cluster – the […]
Galaxy clusters are the biggest stable structures in our Universe that we know of, typically containing 50 to 1000 galaxies. El Gordo Seven billion light years away and two million billion times heavier than our Sun lies El Gordo – which is Spanish for ‘the fat one’. Astronomers reporting at the 219th American Astronomical Society […]
Astronomers have created the most accurate and comprehensive map yet of the universe’s dark matter, finding it spread in a spider web around areas which would otherwise seem not interesting. It has long been theoretized that the Universe is made out of 85% dark matter, because judging only by the amount of visible matter… the […]
