|
Home > News > Tags > planet
|
|
30
More: << previous 50 | next 50 >>
The MESSENGER spacecraft made a successful fly-by of the planet Mercury last week, taking more than 1,200 pictures of the surface, some of them showing what seems to be evidence of past lava flows. Planetary scientist David Rothery said that the lava flow actually sits on top of the original surface crust that formed... |
22 January 2008
03:56 GMT |
 |
|
Imagine staying younger and fit for a longer time just by eating, instead of getting older and fat... if only this process would be available for all of us. Last week took place the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, where astronomers presented the results of some of the latest studies con... |
18 January 2008
08:54 GMT |
|
|
There is another planet beyond the orbit of Neptune, and scientists say it's not Pluto. Ever wondered what the X in the name stands for? The X is the equivalent for unknown, opposed to the general believe that it represents the Roman numeral for 10. And another thing... how do you discover a planet that has neve... |
16 January 2008
06:57 GMT |
|
|
It seems that the shape of the evolving young solar system, forming a 35.2 billion kilometer structure in the form of a moth, is determined by the relative motion of the young stars through the interstellar space. As it is traveling through space, the developing solar system encountered a massive cloud of interstella... |
12 January 2008
04:57 GMT |
|
|
That's like having an 80 year old woman giving birth to a baby. The natural process of planetary formation, as astronomical observations proved in multiple situations, usually takes place in the first 10 to 100 million years of the star's life. However, it seems that this is not always the case. Old stars, ... |
10 January 2008
06:31 GMT |
|
|
Dust is plenty, however more electric power would be pretty nice, since electronics don't run on 'dirt power'. That is true, but so is the following affirmation: 90 is not equal to 1,460! 1,460 days have passed since the Martian rover Spirit landed on the surface of the Red Planet, meaning exactly four... |
4 January 2008
09:32 GMT |
|
|
Compared to the age of our own planet, the Earth, which is about 4.5 billion years old, the newly discovered exoplanet is a baby, estimated to be somewhere between 8 to 10 million years old and orbiting a star very similar to the Sun. Expect no further resemblance to our solar system however, as the new exoplanet ha... |
3 January 2008
02:49 GMT |
|
|
A new method to study the properties of planets outside the solar system has been proposed by Jean-Loup Bertaux from the Service d'Aeronomie du CNRS. The technique is known as stellar occultation and France has suggested using it in ESA missions to study the planetary systems.The phenomenon occurs when light fr... |
6 November 2007
05:25 GMT |
|
|
Google's downloadable mapping tool Google Earth gets a new minor update which affects the Planets and the Moon layers included in the program. According to the Google Earth Blog, "the only problem is that the layers only included three months worth of prediction, so on October 22 they no longer showed future dat... |
5 November 2007
04:56 GMT |
|
|
Mars, planet Earth's smaller sister is thought to have had (just like our own planet) liquid water in a past warmer state. Early observations of the red planet, revealed channels which the researchers thought to be signs of civilization, only to discover later that they were in fact remnants of proof that Mars h... |
29 October 2007
05:31 GMT |
|
|
Saturn is the second planet in size in the Sun System, with a diameter 10 times that of the Earth, but the gas giant is famous for its beautiful ring, whose origin remains an enigma. The ring comprises floating wide, flat discs of ice, varying in size from dust to over 10 ft (3 m) across. Some believe they rooted in ... |
25 October 2007
03:53 GMT |
|
|
New secrets of the giant gas planet have been exposed by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its recent flyby on the way towards the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015. New Horizons was sped on by Jupiter's gravity, saving years of its journey to the icy Pluto. This is the closest encounter with Jupiter since the... |
10 October 2007
03:45 GMT |
|
|
Something that was witnessed for the first time by astronomers wreaked havoc in space: the impact between a comet and a solar hurricane. The cosmic crash was captured by a NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) satellite on April 20 and cut off the Encke comet's plasma tail while moving within Mer... |
8 October 2007
03:34 GMT |
|
|
How did the Earth form? Astronomers have detected a "cooking" process for an Earth-like planet. The huge ring of hot dust surrounding a sun-size star 424 light-years away could be shaped into an Earth-like planet in a time period of maximum 100 million years.The team investigating the infrared light coming from the s... |
5 October 2007
05:51 GMT |
|
|
This weird space object observed repeatedly plunging close to the Sun has been puzzling astronomers: is it a comet or an asteroid? Now, it seems like a comet playing the asteroid. P/2007 R5 was first detected passing near the Sun in 1999 and spotted again in 2003 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) space... |
27 September 2007
05:27 GMT |
|
|
Just when everybody was so excited about recent theories of a former watery Mars, on the contrary, new images of this planet reveal a drier planet, contradicting the so-called geologic records of liquid water near the planet's surface. "It has always been highly unlikely, because it would be hard to maintain liq... |
24 September 2007
03:29 GMT |
|
|
Surprises keep coming from Venus, exposed by Venus Express, which by now has completed 500 tours around the planet in 500 Earth days. The spacecraft maintains excellent conditions, it even receives four times more sun radiation than Mars Express, as the spacecraft design seems to be the right one. With each new orbit... |
4 September 2007
06:56 GMT |
|
|
There were no little green creatures what astronomers discovered, but a burned out white dwarf star with what was left from an Earthlike planet orbiting it. The chemical fingerprinting revealed that these are the remains of a system very similar to the Sun's, and gives hope that these could be common across the ... |
20 August 2007
06:54 GMT |
|
|
A newly discovered planet proved to be the biggest known planet outside of the Solar System. The new planet is located in the Hercules constellation and it was a surprise even for the astronomers. "We continue to be surprised by how relatively large these giant planets can be," says Francis O'Donovan.The planet ... |
10 August 2007
05:09 GMT |
|
|
The two Mars exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are each about the size of a golf cart. Their six-wheel undercarriages are designed in such a way as to allow a rover to climb over small rocks, and rotate in place. Lately, dust storms threatened to kill one of NASA's Mars rovers and stopped its twin in i... |
9 August 2007
09:03 GMT |
|
|
'Red giants' are evolved giant stars of 1000 times the volume of the Sun and with a surface temperature of 2,500 to 3,500 C. In about five billion years, the sun will become a red giant and the planets that are the closest to the Sun (including Earth) will be burnt away.A recent survey of red giant stars ... |
9 August 2007
06:33 GMT |
|
|
There are immediate dangers menacing the human civilization, like terrorism and climate change. We may struggle to fight these issues which are in the end caused by the human race. But what can we do against the Universe? In May 2007, a team led by Mikhail Medvedev at the University of Kansas emitted a novel theory a... |
7 August 2007
14:06 GMT |
|
|
It's a common sight in numerous science fiction stories and movies: a planet with two suns (often of drastically different colors) producing double shadows, multiple sunrises and sunsets and other exotic phenomena that would appear utterly alien to us Earthlings, like Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine... |
26 July 2007
03:32 GMT |
|
|
Astronomers have just discovered another unusual celestial body in our solar system. It's a small asteroid, only 1 kilometer across that seems to follow Mars during its rotation cycle around the Sun. This is the first object of its kind to show this unusual movement.Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which ... |
24 July 2007
05:13 GMT |
|
|
Venus, or the Evening Star, as it is popularly known, will disappear from the night sky near the end of the month, depriving us of the brightest celestial body. Now it reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, but it will go below the horizon in less than three weeks.Being the bri... |
14 July 2007
06:57 GMT |
|
|
Giant planets made of gas are the easiest to find outside our solar system, and more than 230 of them, many times larger than our champion, Jupiter, have been found in recent years. While extrasolar planets in general are hard to spot because light bouncing off these planets is easily lost in the sea of brightness ge... |
13 July 2007
11:12 GMT |
|
|
For the first time in history, an alien planet outside our solar system is proven to have water in its atmosphere. Previous theories said water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets.Curiously, water was thought to be found in the atmosphere of one of the giant's n... |
12 July 2007
02:48 GMT |
|
|
A group of scientists calls for an innovative project to terraform the Red Planet by the end of this century, so that people will be able to live and work on its surface. This technique has been presented in sci-fi productions for some time and could be put in practice by the end of the 21st century.Terraforming li... |
26 June 2007
03:38 GMT |
|
|
Finding a planet beyond our solar system is pretty difficult, because they don't give off light and are eclipsed by the stars around which they orbit. Then how can astronomers find out if such a planet has atmosphere and what is this made of?For example, recently, the whole scientific community was ecstatic beca... |
20 June 2007
11:41 GMT |
|
|
Scientists around the world are disappointed, because the extrasolar planet that was the most likely to have liquid water on its surface, the key ingredient for life, has been found to be a boiling world, where water could never exist in its liquid state.The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and was thought... |
19 June 2007
03:33 GMT |
|
|
Pluto is the ninth planet of our solar system, the smallest and the farthest. No, wait, it's not a planet anymore. Trouble never seems to end for this little fellow, after the "embarrassment" of being degraded to a lower rank.The former planet has been dissed again. As it turns out, it's not even the bigge... |
15 June 2007
02:48 GMT |
|
|
The formation of a star is a long process in which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma, triggering the birth of the sun. Stellar evolution begins with a giant molecular cloud, also known as a stellar nursery.Dust clouds surround the young stars and thin out and dissipate as the star reache... |
14 June 2007
14:01 GMT |
|
|
Mars is a frigid desert and has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. This week, a team of scientists discovered the most compelling evidence of liquid water on Mars. What happened to the lost oceans ... |
14 June 2007
03:55 GMT |
|
|
Now there's an interesting question. What would you do if you knew there are really extraterrestrial beings out there? I think it all depends on how exactly we will find out, but any scenario of this kind will be the breaking news of all history.I'm sure many of you are convinced aliens are really out ther... |
9 June 2007
07:08 GMT |
|
|
This morning, a group of astronomers attended a round-table discussion in London, with the UK science minister Malcolm Wicks, titled "Is there life out there? Other Earth-like or Habitable planets." They boldly predict that we'll find life on Mars in the year 2015, and life in other solar systems in 2020.I don&... |
6 June 2007
08:18 GMT |
|
|
The question is not as silly as it looks, actually. Oscillations are present in many physical processes and sometimes they can have impressive consequences. They occur not only in physical systems but also in biological systems and in human society.For example, earthquakes are one of the most destructive oscillation... |
6 June 2007
06:05 GMT |
|
|
It may sound strange, but it seems some planets are ejected from the solar system where they were born, while still in an early development stage, and set to wander the interstellar space. That's kind of a scary thought, even though actual pictures of such planets may look good.Remember the sci-fi series of the... |
30 May 2007
04:18 GMT |
|
|
A new study performed by astronomers involved in the search for extrasolar planets revealed that there are more chances of a star having Jupiter-like gas giants orbiting around them when the star itself is more massive than our Sun.It seems that the 10 observations of stars which are more massive than our own suppo... |
29 May 2007
09:30 GMT |
|
|
Until now, scientists have used various techniques to detect more than 200 exoplanets. Most of these exoplanets are from five to 4,000 times more massive than Earth, and are too hot, too cold or too much of a giant gas ball to be considered likely habitats for life. So far, no one has managed to capture an image of ... |
29 May 2007
02:48 GMT |
|
|
Mysterious observations of variable stars have recently been made by astronomers. The unusual thing about these stars is the fact that they change in brightness, increasing and then rapidly decreasing it. They think there may be a new category of stars, whose brightening events are dimmer than the cataclysmic explos... |
24 May 2007
08:14 GMT |
|
|
Recently, a team of researchers have been able to recreate the extreme conditions of pressure and temperature found inside our planet to understand how it is forming and evolving. The exotic high pressure inner world may be a window to understand a variety of problems in planetary science.In a workshop entitled Syn... |
22 May 2007
04:21 GMT |
|
|
Surprising new photos were presented by the ESA today, showing one of the most beautiful and unusual features on the surface of Mars. Deuteronilus Mensae is situated North of Arabia Terra, bordering the northern lowlands and the southern highlands.At latitude of 39 North and 23 East, it's glacial formation wi... |
21 May 2007
09:14 GMT |
|
|
Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named after the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass, having 17 times the mass of Earth.One of the coldest planets in the solar system, with an atmospheric temperature close to... |
21 May 2007
08:06 GMT |
|
|
Astronomers have obtained a new image showing another evidence of the heavy bombardment the Moon was subjected to. It's a picture of Oresme, a crater located at the South Pole of the Moon, on the far side, at 42.3 South and 169 East, having a diameter of 76 kilometers, measured from north to south.It has a cr... |
19 May 2007
06:32 GMT |
|
|
European astronomers have just discovered a strange planet roughly the size of Neptune, made of hot, solid water. It has been named GJ 436b and it orbits a cooler red star located about 30 light-years away from Earth.The existence of hot ice is possible, although never encountered in nature on our planet. This could... |
17 May 2007
08:06 GMT |
|
|
The geysers on the Saturn's moon Enceladus are one of the most spectacular shows in our solar system. In 2006, NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered in 2006 plumes of icy water vapors that kept intriguing astronomers ever since.Early theories suggested the geysers could be generated by liquid water under th... |
17 May 2007
02:56 GMT |
|
|
The Sunnyvale company Yahoo debuted a new campaign entitled "Be a Better Planet" that has some interesting prizes for the winners of the competition. Basically, the campaign is meant to fight for the protection of the nature and the climate but it is entirely based on the solutions powered by Yahoo. Let me present yo... |
15 May 2007
03:50 GMT |
|
|
Star Trek fans around the world will be thrilled to know that an upcoming space mission will look for the famous Vulcan homeworld. In the show, Vulcan is a reddish Minshara-Class planet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A, 16 light years from Earth and is the homeworld of the Vulcans. Apparently, this classification also... |
11 May 2007
09:17 GMT |
|
|
A new astronomical find gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "it's a hell hole." The Spitzer Space Telescope has just sent in astonishing new data about the most bizarre extrasolar planet ever photographed. It literally fits the classical descriptions of Hell: the temperatures on the surface of this planet ... |
10 May 2007
04:52 GMT |
|
|
It may sound strange, but Newton's theory of gravity predicts that it would be possible for three planets with equal masses to race around one another in a strange looking orbit the shape of figure 8. Einstein's more accurate theory of gravity, general relativity, was not sure to support such a weird orbit... |
5 May 2007
05:04 GMT |
|
More: << previous 50 | next 50 >> |
|
|
Find us on Google+
