Exobiology

"Could There be Life in the Universe Far Older Than Ours?" --Planetary Building Blocks After Big Bang Suggest: "Yes"

Updated: 2012-08-31 15:45:00

The raw materials for building terrestrial planets were available very soon after the Big Bang, raising the possibility that there could be life in the Universe far older than we. Perhaps they reside around long-lived red dwarf stars, or have...

Opportunity Rover Tops 35 Kilometers of Driving

Updated: 2012-08-31 15:03:19

The Opportunity Mars rover looks back at the tracks left along the rim of Endeavour Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Meanwhile, back in Meridiani Planum … the Opportunity rover keeps on trucking, and has now exceeded over 35 kilometers (21.75 miles) of driving on its odometer! Quite an accomplishment for the Energizer Bunny of Mars rovers, now [...]

Getting Closer! New SuperEarth Found in Red Dwarf Habitable Zone

Updated: 2012-08-31 14:29:24

A new superterran exoplanet (aka Super-Earth),a rock-water world, was found in the stellar habitable zone of the red dwarf star Gliese 163 by the European HARPS team. The planet, Gliese 163c, has a minimum mass of 6.9 Earth masses and...

Researchers Send Mars Some Radar Love

Updated: 2012-08-31 04:53:48

A radar map of Mars’ major volcanic regions created by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (John Harmon et al., NAIC) Even though we currently have several missions exploring Mars both from orbit and on the ground, there’s no reason that robots should be having all the fun; recently a team of radio astronomers aimed [...]

Time lapse: When the Moon ate Venus | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-31 01:30:00

: 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 I’m going to Space Camp Time lapse : When the Moon ate Venus On the morning of August 13 14 depending on where you were in the world the Moon slipped directly in front of Venus in the sky , an event called an occultation . It was cloudy here in Boulder so I missed it , but halfway across the world in Korea , astrophotographer Kwon O Chul had a magnificent view , and made this lovely time lapse video of the . event Occultations like this are relatively rare . If all the planets and moons orbited the Sun in exactly the same plane that is , if you looked at the solar system from

Curiosity’s Laser Leaves Its Mark

Updated: 2012-08-31 00:37:32

Before-and-after images from Curiosity’s ChemCam micro-imager show holes left by its million-watt laser (NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGN/CNRS) PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW! Curiosity’s head-mounted ChemCam did a little target practice on August 25, blasting millimeter-sized holes in a soil sample named “Beechey” in order to acquire spectrographic data from the resulting plasma glow. The neat line of holes is called a five-by-one [...]

NCBI ROFL: Why you overspend on Ebay. | Discoblog

Updated: 2012-08-31 00:00:51

: . 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 NCBI ROFL : The fluid mechanics of coffee . rings NCBI ROFL : Why you overspend on . Ebay The value of victory : social origins of the winner’s curse in common value . auctions Auctions , normally considered as devices facilitating trade , also provide a way to probe mechanisms governing one’s valuation of some good or action . One of the most intriguing phenomena in auction behavior is the winner’s curse the strong tendency of participants to bid more than rational agent theory prescribes , often at a significant . loss The prevailing explanation suggests that humans have

Watch This: 12 Years of Fires Burn Across the Globe | 80beats

Updated: 2012-08-30 20:48:03

: 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 1,700 Yosemite Visitors May Have Been Exposed to Hantavirus Watch This : 12 Years of Fires Burn Across the Globe Fire maps show the locations all over the world where wild and man-made fires are going on , based on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer And when you combine fire maps from the past 12 years , you get a video where flames trace recurring patterns across the globe , from summer wildfires in Canada to agricultural burning in Africa and Southeast . Asia The colors in this video , from NASA Earth Observations indicate not intensity , but

I’m going to Space Camp! | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-30 18:00:04

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 Bill Nye : creationism is bad for children Time lapse : When the Moon ate Venus I’m going to Space Camp I am very excited to invite everyone to a fantastic event : RocketFest a field day at Space Camp in Huntsville , Alabama Rocketfest is a celebration of Space Camp and what it does to inspire kids to explore space . It’s open to families and kids of all ages , and it’ll be on Monday , September 3rd , 2012 from 10:00 a.m . to 4:00 p.m . at Space Camp itself . All proceeds raised go to the U.S . Space Rocket Center . Foundation I’ll be giving a short talk there about space

1,700 Yosemite Visitors May Have Been Exposed to Hantavirus | 80beats

Updated: 2012-08-30 17:23:56

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 Eat Your Words : Restricting Calories Does Not Necessarily Extend Monkeys’ Lives Watch This : 12 Years of Fires Burn Across the Globe 1,700 Yosemite Visitors May Have Been Exposed to Hantavirus Humans can contract hantavirus when they inhale particles from the waste of an infected mouse Between hantavirus first documented appearance in 1993 and the end of 2011, the CDC counted a total of 587 cases , with 211 deaths , more than a third of those infected . So you can see why recent visitors to Yosemite National Park were dismayed and frightened when the park recently warned

What Has the Kuiper Belt Taught Us About The Solar System?

Updated: 2012-08-30 17:07:37

Over 4 billion miles (6.7 billion km) from the Sun, the Kuiper Belt is a vast zone of frozen worlds we still know very little about. Image: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) Today marks the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the first Kuiper Belt Object, 1992QB1. KBOs are distant and [...]

Image of the Day: Stunning New Views of Saturn's Titan

Updated: 2012-08-30 15:45:00

A wide-angle view in today’s package captures Titan passing in front of Saturn, as well as the planet’s changing colors. Upon Cassini’s arrival at Saturn eight years ago, Saturn’s northern winter hemisphere was an azure blue. Now that winter is...

Eat Your Words: Restricting Calories Does Not Necessarily Extend Monkeys’ Lives | 80beats

Updated: 2012-08-30 15:27:23

: 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 Discovered : The First Binary Star System With Multiple Planets 1,700 Yosemite Visitors May Have Been Exposed to Hantavirus Eat Your Words : Restricting Calories Does Not Necessarily Extend Monkeys’ Lives A calorie-restricted diet can extend the lives of organisms from yeast to fruit flies to rodents , as well as improving their health and preventing disease . But just because cutting calories helps animals with short lifespans doesn’t mean that humans will reap similar benefits . So the 2009 discovery that calorie-restricted diets also increase the longevity of

NASA Launches Twin Probes to Study Earth’s Radiation Belts

Updated: 2012-08-30 14:47:24

After nearly a week of weather and technical delays, NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) launched in the early morning skies from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:05a.m. EDT (08:05 GMT) on Thursday, August 30, 2012. This will be the first twin-spacecraft mission designed to explore our planet’s radiation belts. “Scientists [...]

Mars Trek begins for Curiosity

Updated: 2012-08-30 06:43:27

Image Caption: Martian Soil caked on Curiosity’s right middle and rear wheels after Sol 22 Drive. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Mars Trek has begun for NASA’s Curiosity rover. The mega rover has departed from her touchdown vicinity at “Bradbury Landing” and set off on a multi-week eastwards traverse to her first science target which the team has [...]

Bill Nye: creationism is bad for children | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-30 01:30:40

: 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 Hurricane Isaac menaces the Gulf coast I’m going to Space Camp Bill Nye : creationism is bad for children Bill Nye speaks the truth Video credit : Big Think In science , it’s rare that you can actually state with certainty that something is wrong . Young-Earth creationism is . wrong The Universe is old However , I’ll disagree with Bill over one thing , and I’ll throw Neil Tyson into the mix too . First , here’s something Neil said about adults , children , and nonsense from an image that’s gone around the web a few times Funny , Neil and Bill are saying the same thing ,

NCBI ROFL: The fluid mechanics of coffee rings. | Discoblog

Updated: 2012-08-30 00:00:46

: . 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 NCBI ROFL : Curvy vs . straight which glass ups your drinking rate NCBI ROFL : Why you overspend on . Ebay NCBI ROFL : The fluid mechanics of coffee . rings Formation of coffee stains on porous . surfaces During the drying of drops of nanoparticle suspensions , segregation can occur by internal fluid flows toward the contact line , if the contact line is pinned . This leads to a characteristic ring deposit or coffee stain . On solid substrates coffee staining can be eliminated through the use of solvent mixtures that promote Marangoni flows to oppose these drying-induced .

Nasa’s Curiosity rover broadcasts will.i.am song from Mars

Updated: 2012-08-29 22:43:57

The first ever song transmitted back from Mars by Nasa featured a tune by Grammy-winning US musician will.i.am, as part of efforts to inspire young people into science. The extraordinary feat was among several astonishing achievements by US space agency’s £1.6 billion Curiosity rover, which landed on the surface of the Red Planet earlier this month. The Black Eyed Peas ...

Hurricane Isaac menaces the Gulf coast | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-29 20:03:26

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 Kepler finds a planet in a binary star’s habitable zone Bill Nye : creationism is bad for children Hurricane Isaac menaces the Gulf coast Hurricane Isaac is hitting the Gulf coast of the US right now , battering the area with 120 kph winds . Just after local midnight on August 28, the Suomi NPP Earth-observing satellite took this eerie and beautiful picture of Isaac when it was still a growing tropical : storm Click to encoriolisenate bigger versions are available on Flickr This picture is a combination of several images taken in different filters , including is in the visible

arXiv Find: Reasons Not to Believe in the String Theory Landscape | Cosmic Variance

Updated: 2012-08-29 19:32:14

Tom Banks has long been skeptical of the popular picture of the string theory landscape — the idea that there is some extremely large (10500 or more) number of phases of string theory, representing different ways to compactify the extra dimensions, and that all these phases are dynamically connected to each other, possibly by cosmological [...]

Kepler finds a planet in a binary star’s habitable zone | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-29 18:16:14

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 BAFact Math : The Sun is mind-crushingly brighter than the faintest object ever seen . . Seriously Hurricane Isaac menaces the Gulf coast Kepler finds a planet in a binary star’s habitable zone Oh , this is too cool : scientists have found a planet orbiting a binary star a pair of stars in tight orbit around each other that is at the right distance to have liquid water Let me be clear : this planet is much bigger than Earth , and is likely to be a gas giant . So it’s not Earth-like , and probably not itself habitable . But it might have moons Note : this image is artwork based

Discovered: The First Binary Star System With Multiple Planets | 80beats

Updated: 2012-08-29 17:52:22

: 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 Pot Dependence in Adolescence is Linked to a Long-Term Drop in IQ Eat Your Words : Restricting Calories Does Not Necessarily Extend Monkeys’ Lives Discovered : The First Binary Star System With Multiple Planets Artist’s rendering of binary system Kepler-47, with outer planet Kepler-47c in the foreground and inner planet Kepler-47b in the bottom right corner Growing up in a binary star system can be tough . As the system’s two suns orbit each other , they exert strong gravitational pressures capable of pushing away young planets or sending them careening into one another . It

EcoAlert: New Climate-Change Threat? Immense Amounts of Methane Locked Under Antarctic Ice

Updated: 2012-08-29 17:45:00

A new study demonstrates that old organic matter in sedimentary basins located beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet may have been converted to methane by micro-organisms living under oxygen-deprived conditions. The methane could be released to the atmosphere if the ice...

BAFact Math: The Sun is mind-crushingly brighter than the faintest object ever seen. Seriously. | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-29 17:10:24

: . . 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 Saturn’s shadow slices the rings Kepler finds a planet in a binary star’s habitable zone BAFact Math : The Sun is mind-crushingly brighter than the faintest object ever seen . . Seriously BAFacts are short , tweetable astronomy space facts that I post every day . On some occasions , they wind up needing a bit of a mathematical explanation . The math is pretty easy , and it adds a lot of coolness , which I'm passing on to you You're welcome . Today’s BAFact How much brighter is the Sun than the faintest object ever seen About Avogadro’s number times . brighter Yesterday

"A Lunar Paradox" --Was the Moon Created by a Collision with Earth by a Mars-Sized Object?

Updated: 2012-08-29 16:30:00

The Moon is believed to have formed from a collision, 4.5 billion years ago, between Earth and an impactor the size of Mars, known as "Theia." Over the past decades scientists have simulated this process and reproduced many of the...

New 1st-Time Discovery of Key Building Block for Life in the Universe

Updated: 2012-08-29 15:45:00

A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star. This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery...

Why Debunking ESP Can Be Interesting | The Loom

Updated: 2012-08-29 15:26:11

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 Hello , Norway Two talks in Oslo next week Why Debunking ESP Can Be Interesting Last year , a Cornell University psychologist named Daryl Bem published a study which he claimed showed that events in the future can influence our minds at the present . I wrote about the study in an essay for the New York Times on the workings of science–how science relies on replication to move forward , and how scientists often struggle to make this happen . When other scientists replicated Bem’s experiments , they failed to get his results . But they found it difficult to get their results

Image of the Day: Billions of Years of Mars' History Etched into Mount Sharp's Layers

Updated: 2012-08-29 14:00:00

The "layers of ancient life?" This photo from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the layered geologic history of the base of Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-high mountain rising from the center of Gale Crater, Curiosity’s ultimate destination. Image taken on Aug....

The 'Daily Galaxy' Twitter Followers Top 200,000

Updated: 2012-08-29 08:00:00

Join the 200,000 Daily Galaxy fans around the world who follow us via their Twitter page. Our followers include many of the planet's leading astronomers and scientists, astronauts, space observatories, news organizations, universities, and governmental space organizations such as NASA,...

NASA Infrared Mission Reveals Millions of Hidden Supermassive Black Holes

Updated: 2012-08-29 07:00:00

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies. Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the...

Saturn’s shadow slices the rings | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-29 01:30:54

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 Dragon Con 2012 BAFact Math : The Sun is mind-crushingly brighter than the faintest object ever seen . . Seriously Saturn’s shadow slices the rings There is a whole lot of awesome in a picture of Saturn and its rings just released from the Cassini spacecraft Check this : out Mmmmm , . ringalicious Cassini was about 2 million kilometers 1.2 million miles from Saturn when it took this picture , so we’re seeing a decently wide-angle view . At the time , the spacecraft was below the plane of the rings , looking north up , if you like The Sun is off mostly to the left and up a . bit

NCBI ROFL: Curvy vs. straight – which glass ups your drinking rate? | Discoblog

Updated: 2012-08-29 00:00:23

: . 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 Watch These Technicolor Squid Cells Dance to Insane in the Brain” NCBI ROFL : The fluid mechanics of coffee . rings NCBI ROFL : Curvy vs . straight which glass ups your drinking rate Glass Shape Influences Consumption Rate for Alcoholic Beverages Background High levels of alcohol consumption and increases in heavy episodic drinking binge drinking are a growing public concern , due to their association with increased risk of personal and societal harm . Alcohol consumption has been shown to be sensitive to factors such as price and availability . The aim of this study was to

Dragon*Con 2012 | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-28 21:22:46

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 OK , one more Curiosity descent video Saturn’s shadow slices the rings Dragon Con 2012 Now that I’ve properly recovered from Comic Con in July , it’s time for Dragon Con Woohoo D C is another huge fan convention , held in Atlanta , and this year it’s Friday August 31 to Monday , September 3. As usual , I’ll be running around doing a million things and wondering if a human can survive on Tootsie Rolls and 4 hours of sleep every night answer : yes If you’re attending , here’s my official schedule for this year : Title : Quiz-o-Tron 2000 Time : Fri 10:00 pm Location :

OK, one more Curiosity descent video | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-28 18:25:00

, 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 BAFact Math : The Sun is 12 trillion times brighter than the faintest star you can see Dragon Con 2012 OK , one more Curiosity descent video I know , I’ve posted a few of these , but a new video came out showing the descent of Curiosity to the surface of Mars that’s worth a look . YouTube user hahahaspam did a clever thing . The Mars Descent Imager MARDI is a camera that points straight down , past the rover , so engineers on Earth could later see the exact path Curiosity took on its way down to the Martian surface and also get an overview of the area . It took a series of

BAFact Math: The Sun is 12 trillion times brighter than the faintest star you can see | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-28 17:00:05

: 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 Curiosity looks Sharp OK , one more Curiosity descent video BAFact Math : The Sun is 12 trillion times brighter than the faintest star you can see BAFacts are short , tweetable astronomy space facts that I post every day . On some occasions , they wind up needing a bit of a mathematical explanation . The math is pretty easy , and it adds a lot of coolness , which I'm passing on to you You're welcome . Today’s BAFact The Sun is 12 trillion times brighter than the faintest star you can see with your naked . eye In yesterday’s BAFact I showed how the Sun is about 400,000 times

Watch These Technicolor Squid Cells Dance to “Insane in the Brain” | Discoblog

Updated: 2012-08-28 16:13:40

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 NCBI ROFL : Smilies , emoticons scientifically proven not . worthless NCBI ROFL : Curvy vs . straight which glass ups your drinking rate Watch These Technicolor Squid Cells Dance to Insane in the Brain” Insane in the Chromatophores from Backyard Brains on Vimeo The folks at Backyard Brains a DIY-neurobiology project , made these pigment-producing cells in a dead squid pulse to the base beats of Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain . 8221 Go watch that thing right . now Done Wowed Prepare to be more wowed : They did it by exploiting the fact that electrical current is key to both

First Recorded Human Voice from Earth to Another Planet and Back --NASA Mars' Curiosity Mission

Updated: 2012-08-28 15:00:00

In historic spoken words radioed to the rover on Mars and back to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) on Earth, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted the difficulty of landing a rover on Mars, congratulated NASA employees and the agency's commercial...

Did DNA Exist Before Life Began on Earth? New Study Suggests "Yes"

Updated: 2012-08-28 14:45:00

Scientists are close to demonstrating that the building blocks of DNA can form spontaneously from chemicals thought to be present on the early Earth. If they succeed, their research implies that DNA could have predated the birth of life. “The...

Caught in Time: The Oldest Bugs Ever Preserved in Amber | 80beats

Updated: 2012-08-28 01:35:57

: 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 Neil Armstrong , First Man on the Moon , 1930-2012 Pot Dependence in Adolescence is Linked to a Long-Term Drop in IQ Caught in Time : The Oldest Bugs Ever Preserved in Amber A 230-million-year-old mite preserved in amber An insect trapped in amber , perfectly preserved for millions of years : the image is familiar to fans of Jurassic Park but in fact , few insects got stuck in sticky tree resin until about 130 million years ago—long after the Jurassic period ended . That’s when trees first began to produce enough of it to ensnare flies and . mites Or so paleontologists

Curiosity looks Sharp | Bad Astronomy

Updated: 2012-08-28 01:30:37

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 Update : New NASA map of sea ice minimum BAFact Math : The Sun is 12 trillion times brighter than the faintest star you can see Curiosity looks Sharp The Curiosity rover is still going through its shake down phase , using new equipment and making sure all is well . A few days ago , engineers fired up its 100 mm camera a telephoto that has a bit more zoom to it than the cameras from which we’ve been seeing pictures . They pointed it to the base of Mount Sharp , the big mountain in the center of its new home of Gale Crater . And what it saw is , simply , : breath-taking Holy

Getting Closer! --Kepler Mission Captures 41 New Planets in 20 Star Systems

Updated: 2012-08-27 15:44:53

Two newly submitted studies verify 41 new transiting planets in 20 star systems. These results may increase the number of Kepler's confirmed planets by more than 50 percent: to 116 planets hosted in 67 systems, over half of which contain...

China's Antarctic Astronomy Base in Active Search for Alien Life

Updated: 2012-08-27 14:20:00

Chinese astronomers are actively searching for Earth-like planets using survey instruments in Antarctica, as they believe efforts to seek an extra-solar planet that that harbors life will soon be rewarded. "It's highly possible that human beings might find such a...

1st Ever Death Star Discovered (Weekend Feature)

Updated: 2012-08-25 15:45:00

The first evidence of a planet's destruction by its aging star has been discovered by an international team of astronomers. The evidence indicates that the missing planet was devoured as the star began expanding into a "red giant" -- the...

"Saturn's Titan is Capable of Creating the Molecules that Make Up DNA"

Updated: 2012-08-25 15:00:00

Saturn's moon Titan has many of the components for life without liquid water. But the orange hydrocarbon haze that shrouds the planet's largest moon could be creating the molecules that make up DNA without the help of water – an...

Image of the Day: "Auriga's Wheel" --A Strange Ring Galaxy

Updated: 2012-08-25 10:00:00

The serendipitous discovery of a collision ring galaxy, identified as 2MASX J06470249+4554022, dubbed 'Auriga's Wheel', was found in a SUPRIME-CAM frame as part of a larger Milky Way survey. The ring has a radius of about 10 kpc and a...

NASA Asks "How Did Phosphorus Become a Key Building Block of Life on Earth?"

Updated: 2012-08-24 13:00:00

Phosphorus is not abundant in the universe or in molecular clouds as seen above the Lagoon nebular that create the building blocks of life, yet it is vital to life on Earth, even though our planet doesn’t provide us with...

The Complete Mars Science Lab Descent in HD Video

Updated: 2012-08-24 12:00:00

This is a full-resolution version of the NASA Curiosity rover descent to Mars, taken by the MARDI descent imager. As of August 20, all but a dozen 1600x1200 frames have been uploaded from the rover, and those missing were interpolated...

Curiosity's Powerful Laser Pulse Kick-Starts Search for Evidence of Mars Life

Updated: 2012-08-24 07:16:49

Much to the delight of NASA/JPL's Mars Science Lab team, the laser instrument has fired nearly 500 shots so far that have produced strong, clear data about the composition of the Martian surface. "The spectrum we have received back from...

Mar's Curiosity Mission Gale Crater Landing Site Named in Honor of Ray Bradbury

Updated: 2012-08-23 21:08:42

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced yesterday that it has dubbed the landing site of the Mars rover Curiosity “Bradbury Landing” in honor of sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, who's most popular work was The Martian Chronicles, which portrayed a human invasion...

pewpew! NASA rover Curiosity shoots a Mars rock with laser

Updated: 2012-08-20 22:12:25

NASA’s Curiosity rover has zapped its first Martian rock, aiming its laser for the sake of science. During the target practice on Sunday, Curiosity fired 30 pulses at a nearby rock over a 10-second window, burning a small hole. Curiosity’s social media team made a reference to Austin Powers when it tweeted, "Yes, I’ve got a laser beam attached to my head. ...

Scientists discover one of the biggest structures in the Universe

Updated: 2012-08-17 21:14:33

Scientists have found a cosmic supermom. It’s a galaxy that gives births to more stars in a day than ours does in a year. Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year. The galaxy is about 5.7 ...

Looking Around

Updated: 2012-08-10 16:36:28

You've no doubt heard about some of the images coming from the newly landed Curiosity device on the Martian surface. Above is a 360 degree panorama (from NASA/JPL) assembled from lots of smaller images, showing its surroundings in the [...]