This week we’re talking about asteroids. And not just any asteroids, but Near Earth Objects. How do astronomers find these things, why are they buzzing around the Earth, what are the chances we’ll actually get hit, and what would happen if we did get hit? How could we stop them?
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Snowball Earth Probably Had Warm Spots
Planetary geologists propose that our planet once had periods of extreme global freezing nicknamed the “Snowball Earth” eras. During these periods, they supposed, the planet’s temperatures went so low that the oceans froze, and everything was covered in ice. Most sunlight was reflected back into space, perpetuating the icy period.
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Enceladus Might Mask the Length of Saturn’s Day
You’d think it would be an easy question to answer: how long is Saturn’s day? But it’s been a puzzle for astronomers for many years. On other gas planets, astronomers just measure the rotation of their magnetic fields. The problem is that the Ringed Planet’s field rotates slower than the rest of the planet, and it changes.
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Supersonic “Bullets” of Gas Ejected from the Orion Nebula
This beautiful photograph shows a small portion of the star-forming Orion Nebula. The strange, wake-like structures are supersonic “bullets” of gas ejected from the nebula. What actually caused these ejections is still unknown, but astronomers think there was a recent violent event that fired them out.
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Red Jr. Captured By New Horizons
New Horizons captured this image of Jupiter as it zipped past on February 27, 2007 receiving a gravity assisted velocity boost. This photograph was captured when the spacecraft was 3 million km (1.8 million miles), resolving objects as large as 15 km (9 miles) across.
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The Countries Most at Risk to Asteroid Impacts
If you’re planning a move in the next few years, you might want to consider thread from asteroid impact on your list of annoyances. Researchers from the University of Southampton have modeled the consequences of asteroid strikes around the Earth, and figured out which countries would suffer worst.
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Solar System Shipping Routes
Once a permanent base is set up on the Moon, it’s going to need lots of supplies shipped up from Earth. And these shipments, like water, food and air, absolutely, positively have to get there on time, or people die.
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Hinode’s Amazing New Images of the Sun’s Surface
NASA released some absolutely amazing new images of the surface of the Sun today, taken by the Japanese Hinode spacecraft. Just look at the attached image with this story, and you’ll get a sense of why astronomers think this spacecraft will do for solar astronomy what Hubble has done for the visual spectrum.
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Jupiter As Seen From Saturn
It’s not a great picture of Jupiter, but that’s not the point. The point is that the photograph was taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Saturn.
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SpaceX’s Falcon-1 Briefly Reaches Space
It wasn’t a perfect launch, but it wasn’t a disaster either. All in all, SpaceX took a big step on Wednesday with the first launch of its new Falcon-1 rocket.
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