Origins of Life on Earth & Beyond --Harvard Research Reveals New Discoveries
Updated: 2011-11-08 09:30:00
Astrobiologists have discovered regions in our galaxy which might have the greatest potential for producing very complex organic molecules, the starting point for the development of life. We’ve heard before about “follow the water” in the search for life; in this case it may be “follow the methanol”… (...)Read the rest of ‘Sweet Spots’ for [...]
After an absence of almost two decades, Russia is at last on the cusp of resuming an ambitious agenda of interplanetary science missions on Tuesday Nov. 8 (Nov. 9. Moscow Time) by taking aim at Mars and scooping up the first ever soil and rocks gathered from the mysterious moon Phobos. Russia’s space program was [...]
Sweets, Sex, or Self-Esteem? Comparing the Value of Self-Esteem Boosts with Other Pleasant Rewards. “Many people ascribe great value to self-esteem, but how much value? Do people value self-esteem more than other pleasant activities, such as eating sweets and having sex? Two studies of college students (Study 1: N=130; Study 2: N=152) showed that people [...]
NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 as it begins its close pass by Earth. The image above was taken on Nov. 7 at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the asteroid was approximately 1.38 million kilometers (860,000 miles) or about 3.6 lunar [...]
Perhaps the single greatest feeling in the world — better than winning the lottery, better than seeing your baby being born, better than having fresh batteries in the TV remote — is waking up to find out you’re in the latest Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic. Click the panel here to read the whole thing. [...]
Beijing smog as seen from the China World Hotel, March 2003. While top Chinese government officials have many advantages in terms of wealth, education, and status compared to most of their countrymen, the consolation remained that the rich had to breathe the same polluted air as the poor in smog-ridden cities like Beijing. But as [...]
A brand new Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang from Next Big Future. Click here to read the Carnival of Space #222. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email [...]
Tomorrow, November 8, the 400-meter-wide asteroid 2005 YU55 will glide past the Earth, missing us by a very comfortable margin of 320,000 kilometers (200,000 miles). This distance is three-quarters of the way to the Moon, and is in fact so far that you’ll need a decent telescope to see it at all. However, I’m starting [...]
Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Radio : Friday 10 am PST 1 pm EST on KQED scienceink update : The New York Times does a slide show , and New Scientist approves The Toughest Bear in the Universe scienceink Spencer Debenport , a plant pathologist at Ohio State University , sports a tattoo of a tardigrade , a microscopic animal known as the water bear . I have always loved microscopic critters , and there is none other as intriguing as the tardigrade , 8221 he writes . The fact that they are so hardy , yet still that odd mixture of ugly cute drew me to them and the more I read up on them , the more I wanted one
In less than 48 hours, Russia’s bold Phobos-Grunt mechanized probe will embark on a historic flight to haul humanities first ever soil samples back from the tiny Martian moon Phobos. Liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome remains on target for November 9 (Nov 8 US EDT). For an exquisite view of every step of this first-of-its-kind [...]
You can now find out just where in the Universe this image was taken and find the answer for last week’s WITU Challenge back on the original post. And check back later this week for another test of your visual knowledge of the cosmos. © nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment [...]
As the Sun rotates roughly once per month, we see different features come into view… and the latest is an enormous sunspot system which just came around the limb of the Sun: [Click to magneticfieldentanglenate.] That shot was taken by the Mexican "amateur" astronomer César Cantú, and shows the spots — called Active Region 1339 [...]
What’s the news: Viking legend has it that sailors could hold up crystal sunstones to the sky to help them find their way. Turns out the legend could be true. In a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a team of researchers found that a type of crystal [...]
Last week I posted a picture of the fiery re-entry of a Progress re-supply ship as seen by Mike Fossum on board the space station. It was one of several pictures he took, and via Universe Today is a video of the descent of the spacecraft! Holy wow! You can see the trail of plasma [...]
Speaking of solar storms causing gorgeous auroral displays… In late October, a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a violent explosion of subatomic particles erupting from the Sun at high speeds — blasted away from our star, impacting the Earth, and setting off aurorae seen as far south as Arkansas. It was cloudy here in Boulder, [...]
Immediate effects of chocolate on experimentally induced mood states. “In this work two hypotheses were tested: (1) that eating a piece of chocolate immediately affects negative, but not positive or neutral mood, and (2) that this effect is due to palatability. Experiment 1 (48 normal-weight and healthy women and men) examined the effects of eating [...]
Our solar system is a fantastically bizarre place. There are worlds as varied as our imagination can grasp — in fact, they exhibit features we never imagined before we saw them up close. Storms larger than planets, moons with undersurface oceans, lakes of methane, worldlets that occasionally swap places… … and that’s just at Saturn. [...]
After meticulously stitching together images that were gathered over six years by a NASA spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, astronomers have created a global map of the surface of Titan, the ringed planet’s largest moon, and it features some surprisingly Earth-like geological features. An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Nantes in France, created the striking mosaic of ...