"Alien" Particles Found Invading Our Solar System—A First

For the first time, a NASA spacecraft has directly observed “alien” particles that came from beyond our solar system, astronomers announced today.

The discovery not only gives us a glimpse of what exists in the so-called interstellar medium—the matter between stars—but also offers clues to the anatomy of our local galactic neighborhood.

Orbiting Earth some 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) away, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft was able to snag samples of hydrogen, oxygen, and neon that came from interstellar space.

“It’s exciting to be able to have these first observations of alien matter—stuff that didn’t come from our sun or the planets, but came from the outside of our solar system, from other parts of the galaxy,” David McComas, team leader for the IBEX program, said during a NASA news conference Tuesday.

“We think these are really important measurements, because these elements are the fundamental building blocks of stars, planets, and people.”

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Posted on Monday, 14 November 2011.

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Extra Giant Planet May Have Dwelled in Our Solar System

Within our solar system, an extra giant planet, or possibly two, might once have accompanied Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
Computer models showing how our solar system formed suggested the planets once gravitationally slung one another across space, only settling into their current orbits over the course of billions of years.
During more than 6,000 simulations of this planetary scattering phase, planetary scientist David Nesvorny at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., found that a solar system that began with four giant planets only had a 2.5 percent chance of leading to the orbits presently seen now. These systems would be too violent in their youth to end up resembling ours, most likely resulting in systems that have less than four giants over time, Nesvorny found.
Instead, a model about 10 times more likely at matching our current solar system began with five giants, including a now lost world comparable in mass to Uranus and Neptune. This extra planet may have been an “ice giant” rich in icy matter just like Uranus and Neptune, Nesvorny explained.

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Posted on Tuesday, 1 November 2011.

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Discovery: Cosmic Dust Contains Organic Matter from Stars

A new look at the interstellar dust permeating the universe has revealed hints of organic matter that could be created naturally by stars, scientists say.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong observed stars at different evolutionary phases and found that they are able to produce complex organic compounds and eject them into space, filling the regions between stars. The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble the makeup of coal and petroleum, the study’s lead author Sun Kwok, of the University of Hong Kong, said.
Such chemical complexity was thought to arise only from living organisms, but the results of the new study show that these organic compounds can be created in space even when no life forms are present. In fact, such complex organics could be produced naturally by stars, and at an extremely rapid pace.
“What impressed me most is that complex organics are easily formed by stars, they are everywhere in our own galaxy and in other galaxies,” Kwok told SPACE.com in an email interview. “Nature is much more clever than we had imagined.”

Posted on Monday, 31 October with 348 notes.
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Posted on Friday, 14 October 2011.

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Debris of ‘Doomsday’ Comet Elenin to Pass by Earth Sunday

The moment long feared by conspiracy theorists is nearly upon us: The “doomsday comet” Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth Sunday (Oct. 16). Or what’s left of it will, anyway.
Comet Elenin started breaking up in August after being blasted by a huge solar storm, and a close pass by the sun on Sept. 10 apparently finished it off, astronomers say. So what will cruise within 22 million miles (35.4 million kilometers) of our planet Sunday is likely to be a stream of debris rather than a completely intact comet.
And the leftovers of Elenin won’t return for 12,000 years, astronomers say.

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Posted on Tuesday, 11 October 2011.

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Giant Asteroid Vesta Has Mountain Taller Than Anything on Earth

A NASA spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Vesta is revealing new details about the huge space rock’s surface, including a massive mountain that rises taller than Mt. Everest on Earth.
NASA’s Dawn probe has been circling Vesta since mid-July, when it arrived in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. So far, Dawn has beamed back surprising views of Vesta that revealed an enormous mountain in the asteroid’s southern hemisphere and show that its crater surface is incredibly diverse place. [Latest Photos of Asteroid Vesta]
“We are learning many amazing things about Vesta, which we call the smallest terrestrial planet,” Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, said in a statement. “Like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury, Vesta has ancient basaltic lava flows on the surface and a large iron core … The south polar mountain is larger than the big island of Hawaii, the largest mountain on Earth, as measured from the ocean floor. It is almost as high as the highest mountain in the solar system, the shield volcano Olympus Mons on Mars.”

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Posted on Monday, 10 October 2011.

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The life of Sun-like stars

Born from clouds of gas and dust, stars like our Sun spend most of their lifetime slowly burning their primary nuclear fuel, hydrogen, into the heavier element helium. After leading this bright and shiny life for several billion years, their fuel is almost exhausted and they start swelling, pushing the outer layers away from what has turned into a small and very hot core. These “middle-aged” stars become enormous, hence cool and red — red giants. All red giants exhibit a slow oscillation in brightness due their rhythmic “breathing” in and out, and one third of them are also affected by additional, slower and mysterious changes in their luminosity. After this rapid and tumultuous phase of their later life, these stars do not end in dramatic explosions, but die peacefully as planetary nebulae, blowing out everything but a tiny remnant, known as white dwarf.

Watch a comet smash into the Sun, followed by a massive solar explosion

What you see in this amazing video really is just a coincidence. A comet smashed into one side of the Sun just as a massive explosion ignited on the other side. Two entirely unrelated events…but they sure look awesome together.

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Posted on Sunday, 9 October 2011.

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Comets created Earth’s Oceans, study concludes

The dirty snowballs known as comets might be the sources of Earth’s water after all, scientists say.
Water is critical to life on Earth — life is found virtually wherever there is water on our planet. Researchers have spent decades debating where Earth’s water and other key ingredients of life came from.
Prior studies had suggested that early Earth was dry, lacking water and other so-called volatile materials.
Now Earth-like water has been discovered in the small oddball comet Hartley 2, which the Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft flew by in November 2010. This comet originated in the disk-shaped Kuiper belt, a region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune, suggesting this is ultimately where much of Earth’s water came from.

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Posted on Friday, 7 October 2011.

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How Uranus got knocked on its side

Uranus is unique among all the planets of the solar system because it essentially orbits on its side, with its axis tilted nearly perpendicular to the Sun. Now astronomers have finally solved the mystery of why Uranus looks so strange.

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Posted on Thursday, 6 October 2011.

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‘Jaw-Dropping!’ Crab Nebula’s Powerful Beams Shock Astronomers

When astronomers detected intense radiation pumping out of the Crab Nebula, one of the most studied objects in space, at higher energies than anyone thought possible, they were nothing short of stunned.
The inexplicably powerful gamma-rays came from the very heart of the Crab Nebula, where an extreme object called a pulsar resides.
“It was totally not expected — it was absolutely jaw-dropping,” Andrew McCann, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a co-author of the new study, told SPACE.com. “This is one of the hottest targets in the sky, so people have been looking at the Crab Nebula for a long time. Now there’s a twist in the tale. High-energy rays coming from the nebula are well-known, but coming from the pulsar is something nobody expected.”

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Watch a comet smash into the Sun, followed by a massive solar explosion