Geology News
Astronomy Current Events

“For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. [...] They’ve just seen the biggest explosion in the history of the program.”

Why Natural Gas Cars are Selling Slowly

What is Sunstone?

Natural Gas Could Kill Fuel Diversity

Large Hurricane on Saturn

Who Becomes Dominant After a Mass Extinction?

Diamond Dust over Saskatoon

The Bone Worm

In just the past few years astronomers have discovered over 800 exoplanets. Now they are working on methods to evaluate their atmospheres.

As recently as 1979, astronomers only knew about 12 sungrazing coments. Now they have discovered about 2500.

“A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet’s famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound’s features suggests.” Quoted from the Princeton University press release.

“NASA scientists don’t often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, 2012, she found herself facing this precise situation.” Quoted from the NASA video release.

Diamonds Do Not Form From Coal

The Falling Gold Price

What is a Maar?

Monitoring the Fire Below Yellowstone

Capturing an Asteroid

Giant Snails Invade Florida

Bingham Canyon Mine Landslide

Measuring the Size of Explosive Volcanic Eruptions

“NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole. [...] The hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth.

“NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“Comet ISON is potentially the “comet of the century” because around the time the comet makes its closest approach to the Sun, on November 28, it may briefly become brighter than the full Moon.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“Since 1957, more than 4,900 space launches have led to an on-orbit population today of more than 22,000 trackable objects, with sizes larger than 10 cm. Approximately 1,000 of these are operational spacecraft. The remaining 94% are space debris, i.e. objects which no longer serve any useful purpose. [...] In addition, an estimated 700,000 objects larger than 1 cm and 170 million objects larger than 1 mm are expected to be in Earth orbits.” Quoted from the ESA Conference on Space Debris.

NASA image.

“NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“NASA’s FY2014 budget proposal includes a plan to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable lunar orbit where astronauts can visit and explore it. The proposed mission would combine the efforts of three NASA mission directorates: Human Exploration and Operations, Science and Space Technology.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

The University of Hawaii at Hilo has received a permit to construct a $1.3 billion telescope with a 30-meter aperture on the summit of Mauna Kea.

“A new study tracks the “rain” of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and finds there is more of it and it falls across larger areas of the planet than previously thought.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa exposes material churned up from inside the moon and also material resulting from matter and energy coming from above.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“This image shows the first holes into rock drilled by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, with drill tailings around the holes plus piles of powdered rock collected from the deeper hole and later discarded after other portions of the sample had been delivered to analytical instruments inside the rover.”

“NASA’s Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“Life as we know it needs liquid water, elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, and it needs some form of chemical or light energy to get the business of life done. [...] Europa has the liquid water and elements, and we think that compounds like peroxide might be an important part of the energy requirement. The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

Related Story: Life on Europa?

A green meteorite found in Morocco is believed to have originated either from the planet Mercury or from an unknown body in the solar system.

“Animation depicting the ‘life’ of a photon as it travels across space and time, from the very early universe to the Planck satellite.” Quote from the NASA/JPL video release.

“Astronomers have found some of the youngest stars ever seen, thanks to the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

Ever since planets have been observed through telescopes Mars has been considered to be the best candidate for life beyond earth. Now some researchers believe that Jupiter’s moon Europa is the most promising place to easily find evidence of extraterrestrial life.

CNN has a gallery of photos showing Comet Pan-STARRS in the sky over several US locations. The video below about Comet Pan-STARRS is from NASA.

USA Today has a two-minute video that recounts five important discoveries already made by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover.

“A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the sun. [...] The duo is the closest star system discovered since 1916. [..] They are very cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the sun.” Quoted from the Penn State press release.

“An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — some of the key chemical ingredients for life — in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“If you could lick the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath. [...] Salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath Europa’s frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“Peering over the shoulder of giant Saturn, through its rings, and across interplanetary space, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spies the bright, cloudy terrestrial planet, Venus. The vast distance from Saturn means that Venus only shows up as a white dot.” Quoted from the NASA image release.

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder is a new radio telescope that will produce so much data that a supercomputer capable of one quadrillion floating point operations per second will be needed to support it. The project leaders have decided to cool the supercomputer with a closed-circuit geothermal cooling system that will operate on ground water.