Posted on by Tammy Plotner

The Sights And Sounds of Saturn’s Super Storm

The huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn's northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

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It’s five hundred times bigger than any anything like it observed by the Cassini Mission in the last two years. It’s encompassing approximately 2 billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers) of Saturn’s surface. It’s releasing lightning bolts at a rate of ten per second and it’s happening ten times more frequently than other storms monitored since 2004. It’s so intense that’s it’s even visible in larger amateur telescopes. Just what is it? A Saturn Super Storm…

“Last December, a remarkable thing happened at Saturn. A massive, hissing, lightning-producing storm violently erupted in the northern mid-latitudes of Saturn’s atmosphere and grew to gargantuan proportions.” says Carolyn Porco. “By the end of January, it had wrapped itself entirely around the planet, developing an enormous degree of wavy, even sensuous, details, reminiscent of the clouds on Jupiter.”

Known as “Great White Spots”, these huge storms aren’t new to Saturn – they are common each Saturnian year. While they are common to the ringed planet’s northern summer, right now it’s northern spring. This makes the Saturn Super Storm an early – and unexpected – arrival.

“Prior to the planet’s August 2009 northern vernal equinox, when the sun was shining in the southern hemisphere, the location of all observed storm activity on Saturn was a band encircling the planet at 35 degrees south latitude that imaging scientists had dubbed `Storm Alley’. Well, to our great puzzlement, this new storm — now 500 times larger than any previously seen by Cassini at Saturn and 8 times the surface area of Earth — has erupted at 35 degrees /north/ latitude.” says Ms. Porco. “The shadow cast by Saturn’s rings has a strong seasonal effect, and it is possible that the switch to powerful storms now being located in the northern hemisphere is related to the change of seasons and the changing position of Saturn’s ring shadow. But why the obvious hemispheric symmetry in storm eruption exists is not yet known.”

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was listening to the sounds of the storm, too. Much like our terrestrial lightning causes a static effect on an AM radio, Saturn creates a phenomena known as Saturn electrostatic discharges. Check out this audio file of the action!

“The storm is also a prodigious source of radio noise, which comes from lightning deep in the planet’s atmosphere. As on Earth, the lightning is produced in the water clouds, where falling rain and hail generate electricity. The mystery is why Saturn stores energy for decades and releases it all at once. This behavior is unlike that at Jupiter and Earth, which have numerous storms occurring at any one time.” explains Dr. Porco.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures a composite near-true-color view of the huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn's northern hemisphere. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Violent, yes… But incredibly beautiful. This false color image reveals clouds at different altitudes as seen by the Cassini spacecraft from a distance of approximately 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometers). Blue represents high and semi-transparent. Yellow and white are optically thick at high altitudes. Green is intermediate, while red and brown are low altitude unobscured by high clouds. Last, but not least is dark blue – a thin haze with nothing but Saturn below it. Scientists theorize the lightning is formed at the base cloud layer where water ice is covered by crystallized ammonia.

“This storm is thrilling because it shows how shifting seasons and solar illumination can dramatically stir up the weather on Saturn,” said Georg Fischer, a radio and plasma wave science team member at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Graz. “We have been observing storms on Saturn for almost seven years, so tracking a storm so different from the others has put us at the edge of our seats.”

Original Story Source: JPL / NASA News.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Dark Energy… And Zombie Stars!

Supernova 1994D. The supernova is the bright point in the lower-left. It is a type Ia thermonuclear supernova like those described by Howell. The supernova is on the edge of galaxy NGC 4526, depicted in the center of the image. Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

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It’s called a Type Ia supernovae and it shines with the luminosity of a billion suns. For all intents and purposes, once they explode they’re dead… But it ain’t so. They might have a core of ash, but they come back to life by sucking matter from a companion star. Zombies? You bet. Zombie stars… And they can be used to measure dark energy.

Why are Type Ia supernovae findings important? Right now they’re instrumental in helping researchers like Andy Howell, adjunct professor of physics at UCSB and staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), take a closer look at the mysteries of dark energy. “We only discovered this about 20 years ago by using Type Ia supernovae, thermonuclear supernovae, as standard or ‘calibrated’ candles,” said Howell. “These stars are tools for measuring dark energy. They’re all about the same brightness, so we can use them to figure out distances in the universe.”

As a rule, white dwarf stars which end their lives as Type Ia supernovae have approximately the same mass. These findings were so regular that they are considered a base rule of physics, but rules are usually made to be broken. In this case there’s a new class of Type Ia supernovae – one that goes beyond the typical mass. These stars that go beyond their limits have scientists confused as to their nature. We know they are part of a binary system… But shouldn’t only the white dwarf be the one to explode?

D. Andrew Howell Credit: Katrina Marcinowski
Howell presented a hypothesis to understand this new class of objects. “One idea is that two white dwarfs could have merged together; the binary system could be two white dwarf stars,” he said. “Then, over time, they spiral into each other and merge. When they merge, they blow up. This may be one way to explain what is going on.” Now astrophysicists utilize Type Ia supernovae to track universal expansion. “What we’ve found is that the universe hasn’t been expanding at the same rate,” said Howell. “And it hasn’t been slowing down as everyone thought it would be, due to gravity. Instead, it has been speeding up. There’s a force that counteracts gravity and we don’t know what it is. We call it dark energy.”

Once upon a time, Albert Einstein introduced the cosmological constant to help justify his theory of relativity, but it only applied to a static state. It didn’t take long before Edwin Hubble corrected him and Einstein later referred to his failure to predict the expansion of the universe as the “biggest blunder” of his life. But it wasn’t. “It turns out that this cosmological constant was actually one of his greatest successes,” said Howell. “This is because it’s what we need now to explain the data.”

We could argue all day about dark energy and its properties, along with whether or not it constitutes three-quarters of our known universe. However, it is Howell’s theory that it just might be a property of space. “Space itself has some energy associated with it,” said Howell. “That’s what the results seem to indicate, that dark energy is distributed everywhere in space. It looks like it’s a property of the vacuum, but we’re not completely sure. We’re trying to figure out how sure are we of that – and if we can improve Type Ia supernovae as standard candles we can make our measurements better.”

Unlike historic supernova observations, today’s technology allows even the backyard astronomer to make discoveries and report them. Take the latest M51 findings for example… It’s not just the eyes of the expert on the skies. Thanks to advances in cameras and equipment, we’re looking further away – and more accurately – than ever before. “Now we have huge digital cameras on our telescopes, and really big telescopes,” said Howell, “We’ve been able to survey large parts of the sky, regularly. We find supernovae daily.”

“The next decade holds real promise of making serious progress in the understanding of nearly every aspect of supernovae Ia, from their explosion physics, to their progenitors, to their use as standard candles,” writes Howell in Nature Communications. “And with this knowledge may come the key to unlocking the darkest secrets of dark energy.”

As we dig through the ditches and burn through the witches… 😉

Original Story Source: UC Santa Barbara.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Martian “Rust” Could Possibly Point To Past Water

Sojourner rover taking its Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer measurement. Credit: NASA

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It’s called a carbonate and it’s a mineral that’s common to water-logged formations… be it here on Earth, or on Mars. Until now only a few carbonate deposits have been found on Mars, but scientists are beginning to suspect it has been hiding all along under a thin layer of iron oxide. Because rust never sleeps…

“The plausibility of life on Mars depends on whether liquid water dotted its landscape for thousands or millions of years,” said Janice Bishop, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center at the SETI Institute at Moffett Field, California. “It’s possible that an important clue, the presence of carbonates, has largely escaped the notice of investigators trying to learn if liquid water once pooled on the Red Planet.”

How did they come to this conclusion? By studying similar conditions on rocks found in the Mojave Desert. Because the arid conditions are similar to the Martian environment, investigators can assume carbonates are hiding behind a veneer of rust – keeping them from view. This new evidence came to light earlier this year when Bishop and Chris McKay – a planetary scientist at Ames – collected samples from an area called Little Red Hill.

“When we examined the carbonate rocks in the lab, it became evident that an iron oxide skin may be hindering the search for clues to the Red Planet’s hydrological history,” McKay said. “We found that the varnish both altered and partially masked the spectral signature of the carbonates.”

But rust wasn’t all they found… there was also a signature of dehydration-resistant blue-green algae. This biologic implication means the iron oxide coating may have also extended the time period that Mars could have supported such a life form. “The organisms in the Mojave Desert are protected from deadly ultraviolet light by the iron oxide coating,” McKay said. “This survival mechanism might have played a role if Mars once had life on the surface.”

Why are these carbonate findings important? Every mineral has a unique absorption bands, spectral frequencies and vibrational modes. Using this information, planetary scientists can identify composition. Because of the layer of rust, many carbonate deposits may have been overlooked because their spectral signatures were masked.

“To better determine the extent of carbonate deposits on Mars, and by inference the ancient abundance of liquid water, we need to investigate the spectral properties of carbonates mixed with other minerals,” Bishop said.

Like all rust, the deposits were so overwhelming that NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, used a motorized grinding tool to “clean” samples before spectral examination. With NASA’s newest and most capable rover, the Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” mission nearing its launch date, we may be able to take another, closer look at possible life on Mars.

Because there’s more to the picture than meets the eye…

Original Stoary Source: JPL/NASA News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Neptune: Rocking The Dreidel

In this image, the colors and contrasts were modified to emphasize the planet’s atmospheric features. The winds in Neptune’s atmosphere can reach the speed of sound or more. Neptune’s Great Dark Spot stands out as the most prominent feature on the left. Several features, including the fainter Dark Spot 2 and the South Polar Feature, are locked to the planet’s rotation, which allowed Karkoschka to precisely determine how long a day lasts on Neptune. (Image: Erich Karkoschka)

When it come to making your head spin, Jupiter revolves on its axis in less than 10 hours. Up until now, it was the only gas planet in our solar system that had an accurate spin measurement. But grab your top and cut it loose, because University of Arizona planetary scientist Erich Karkoschka has clocked Neptune cruising around at a cool 15 hours, 57 minutes and 59 seconds.

“The rotational period of a planet is one of its fundamental properties,” said Karkoschka, a senior staff scientist at the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “Neptune has two features observable with the Hubble Space Telescope that seem to track the interior rotation of the planet. Nothing similar has been seen before on any of the four giant planets.”

Like spinning gelatin, the gas giants – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – don’t behave in an easy to study manner. By nature they deform as they rotate, making accurate estimates difficult to pin down.

“If you looked at Earth from space, you’d see mountains and other features on the ground rotating with great regularity, but if you looked at the clouds, they wouldn’t because the winds change all the time,” Karkoschka explained. “If you look at the giant planets, you don’t see a surface, just a thick cloudy atmosphere.”

Of course, 350 years ago Giovanni Cassini was able to estimate Jupiter’s rotation by observing the Great Red Spot – an atmospheric condition. Neptune has observable atmospheric conditions, too… But they’re just a bit more transitory. “On Neptune, all you see is moving clouds and features in the planet’s atmosphere. Some move faster, some move slower, some accelerate, but you really don’t know what the rotational period is, if there even is some solid inner core that is rotating.”

Roughly 60 years ago astronomers discovered Jupiter gave out radio signals. These signals originated from its magnetic field generated by the spinning inner core. Unfortunately signals of this type from the outer planets were simply lost in space before they could be detected from here on Earth. “The only way to measure radio waves is to send spacecraft to those planets,” Karkoschka said. “When Voyager 1 and 2 flew past Saturn, they found radio signals and clocked them at exactly 10.66 hours, and they found radio signals for Uranus and Neptune as well. So based on those radio signals, we thought we knew the rotation periods of those planets.”

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Using the data from the Voyager probes, Karkoschka went to work studying rotation periods and combined it with available images of Neptune from the Hubble Space Telescope archive. Like Cassini’s work, he carefully studied atmospheric features in hundreds upon hundreds of photographs taken over a time sequence… a period of 20 years. He realized an observer watching the massive planet turn from a fixed spot in space would see these features appear exactly every 15.9663 hours, with less than a few seconds of variation. This led him to surmise a hidden interior feature on Neptune drives the mechanism that creates the atmospheric signature.

“So I dug up the images of Neptune that Voyager took in 1989, which have better resolution than the Hubble images, to see whether I could find anything else in the vicinity of those two features. I discovered six more features that rotate with the same speed, but they were too faint to be visible with the Hubble Space Telescope, and visible to Voyager only for a few months, so we wouldn’t know if the rotational period was accurate to the six digits. But they were really connected. So now we have eight features that are locked together on one planet, and that is really exciting.”

Original Story Source: University of Arizona News.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Eccentric Binary Creates Dual Gamma-Ray Flares

This diagram, which illustrates the view from Earth, shows the binary's anatomy as well as key events in the pulsar's recent close approach. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Francis Reddy

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It’s a gamma-ray flare – the most extreme form of light so far known. So, what could top it? Try a pair of gamma-ray flares. Way off in the southern constellation of Crux, an extreme team of stars gave a real show to NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. In December 2010, they blew past each other at about the distance Venus orbits our Sun. Why was this encounter so unique? Because one member was hot and blue/white… and the other a pulsar.

“Even though we were waiting for this event, it still surprised us,” said Aous Abdo, a Research Assistant Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a leader of the research team.

Astronomers were aware that PSR B1259-63 and LS 2883 made a close pass to each other about every 3 to 4 years and were eagerly anticipating the action. Residing at about 8,000 light years away, the signature signal from PSR B1259-63 was discovered in 1989 by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. It is suspected to be quite small – about the size of Washington, DC and weighs about twice as much as Sol. What’s cool is it rotates at a dizzying 21 times per second… shooting of a powerful beam of electromagnetic energy that sweeps around like a search light. Next door the blue/white companion star lay embedded in gas, measuring in about 9 times larger size and weighing in at about 24 solar masses. Of these “odd couples” only four are known to produce gamma-rays and only this particular system is known to contain a pulsar… one that punches through the gas disk both coming and going during orbit.

“During these disk passages, energetic particles emitted by the pulsar can interact with the disk, and this can lead to processes that accelerate particles and produce radiation at different energies,” said study co-author Simon Johnston of the Australia Telescope National Facility in Epping, New South Wales. “The frustrating thing for astronomers is that the pulsar follows such an eccentric orbit that these events only happen every 3.4 years.”

On December 15, 2010, all “eyes” and “ears” were turned the system’s way in anticipation of the dual gamma-ray burst. The observatories included Fermi and NASA’s Swift spacecraft; the European space telescopes XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL; the Japan-U.S. Suzaku satellite; the Australia Telescope Compact Array; optical and infrared telescopes in Chile and South Africa; and the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), a ground-based observatory in Namibia that can detect gamma rays with energies of trillions of electron volts, beyond Fermi’s range.

“When you know you have a chance of observing this system only once every few years, you try to arrange for as much coverage as you can,” said Abdo, the principal investigator of the NASA-funded international campaign. “Understanding this system, where we know the nature of the compact object, may help us understand the nature of the compact objects in other, similar systems”.

While the EGRET telescope aboard NASA’s Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory had been observing this rare pair since the 1990s, no gamma-ray emission in the billion-electron-volt (GeV) energy range had ever been recorded. But, as the time of passage approached, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard Fermi began to pick up faint gamma-ray emission. “During the first disk passage, which lasted from mid-November to mid-December, the LAT recorded faint yet detectable emission from the binary. We assumed that the second passage would be similar, but in mid-January 2011, as the pulsar began its second passage through the disk, we started seeing surprising flares that were many times stronger than those we saw before,” Abdo said.

To make this strange scenario even more unusual, radio and x-ray readings were nominal as the gamma-rays flared. “The most intense days of the flare were Jan. 20 and 21 and Feb. 2, 2011,” said Abdo. “What really surprised us is that on any of these days, the source was more than 15 times brighter than it was during the entire month-and-a-half-long first passage.”

It won’t happen again until May, 2014… But you can bet astronomers will be tuned in to catch the action!

Original Story Source: NASA / Fermi News.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Neutron Star Burps Up Stellar Gas

This animated sequence of images illustrates the partial ingestion of a clump of matter by the neutron star hosted in the Supergiant Fast X-Ray Transient, IGR J18410-0535. The ingestion of the clump material produced a dramatic increase in the X-rays released by the neutron star, which was detected with XMM-Newton. The peak in the X-ray luminosity corresponds to the period when the accretion rate was at its maximum. Credits: ESA/AOES Medialab

During a routine twelve and a half hour observation of star system IGR J18410-0535, the XMM-Newton caught an event that would make Emily Post proud… a not-so-discreet burp from a neutron star. Continue reading “Neutron Star Burps Up Stellar Gas”

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Fermilab Unravels More About Neutrino Mystery

When operating at highest intensity, the NuMI beam line transports a package of 35,000 billion protons every two seconds to a graphite target. The target converts the protons into bursts of particles with exotic names such as kaons and pions. Like a beam of light emerging from a flashlight, the particles form a wide cone when leaving the target. A set of two special lenses, called horns (photo), is the key instrument to focus the beam and send it in the right direction. The beam particles decay and produce muon neutrinos, which travel in the same direction. Photo: Peter Ginter.

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Right when you thought that Fermilab was a thing of the past, new work with neutrinos are exciting us all over again. The scientists associated with the MINOS experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory just announced their findings of a rare phenomena – the transformation of muon neutrinos into electron neutrinos.

On June 14 the Japanese T2K experiment also found clues to this type of transformation. These dual reports could have a profound impact on the way we understand how neutrinos impacted the evolution of our Universe. What burning question do the results answer? Try why there is more matter than anti-matter. If muon neutrinos transform into electron neutrinos, neutrinos could be the reason.

“The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) at Fermilab recorded a total of 62 electron neutrino-like events. If muon neutrinos do not transform into electron neutrinos, then MINOS should have seen only 49 events.” says Fermilab. “The experiment should have seen 71 events if neutrinos transform as often as suggested by recent results from the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment in Japan.”

Using entirely different methods, the two neutrino experiments went to work. To measure the transformation of muon neutrinos into other neutrinos, the MINOS experiment sends a muon neutrino beam 450 miles (735 kilometers) through the Earth from the Main Injector accelerator at Fermilab to a 5,000-ton neutrino detector, located half a mile underground in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in northern Minnesota. The nearly twin detectors have different purposes. At Fermilab the purity of the muon neutrino beam is calibrated while Soudan detects electron and muon activity. It’s a fast trip, too…but just one four hundreths of a second is all it takes for these incredibly tiny particles to transform.

“Science usually proceeds in small steps rather than sudden, big discoveries, and this certainly has been true for neutrino research,” said Jenny Thomas from University College London, co-spokesperson for the MINOS experiment. “If the transformation from muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos occurs at a large enough rate, future experiments should find out whether nature has given us two light neutrinos and one heavy neutrino, or vice versa. This is really the next big thing in neutrino physics.”

For more information read the Fermilab Press Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

3D Galaxies – Coming Straight On For You

As we’ve recently learned, the ATLAS3D project was able to study 260 individual galaxies and do some very amazing things. By imaging in both red and blue shift, astronomers were able to take stellar measurements and give us a clear picture of galaxy rotation. But looking at a computer generated image gives a picture just like you reading the text in this article – no dimension. By superimposing the velocity of the stars over the plane of the image, a new breakthrough in simulation can be made. And it’s coming straight on for you… Continue reading “3D Galaxies – Coming Straight On For You”

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Magnetic Ropes Skip To Solar Storms

On the left, SDO AIA image at the wavelength of 131 angstroms observing the Sun’s atmosphere at a temperature of about ten million degrees. The magnetic rope is seen as the thick looped structure extending above the edge of the Sun. On the right, SDO AIA image at wavelength 171 angstroms observing the corona at a temperature of about one million degrees, showing surrounding cool magnetic field lines are pushed away by the intruding magnetic rope seen on the left. Both images are taken almost simultaneously (within three seconds of each other) at 03:41 UT. (Credit: NASA and George Mason University).

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It is our current understanding that the Sun’s magnetic fields and field lines are the cause of solar storms. However, there is no solid evidence as to what form magnetic field lines may take ahead of an energetic outbreak. We know there can be loops connected to the surface – but normally they take the sting off an eruption, rather than cause one. Thanks to a discovery made by associate professor Jie Zhang and his graduate student Xin Cheng using images from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft, we’re shedding a little light on a solar mystery.

An event called a magnetic rope is assumed to be the progenitor of solar storms – but its existence was far from certain. The phenomena may consist of many magnetic field lines wrapping around a center axis – possibly twisting around each other – and producing an electric current. The current might then be able to generate enough electromagnetic force to overpower the withholding magnetic field lines and cause the rope to move outward at speeds we so far haven’t been able to document… Until now.

Thanks to the images taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) telescope on board the SDO, Zhang was able to isolate an area of the Sun where a magnetic rope was forming. What the images provided was a unique look at an active region ahead of an eruption. Revealed was a long and low-lying channel which produces temperatures up to 10 million degrees – and continues heating. When it reaches a critical point this “hot channel” reveals a never before seen feature unlike the surrounding magnetic field lines… possibly the theoretical magnetic rope.

“The magnetic rope triggers a solar eruption. Scientists have been debating whether or not this magnetic rope exists before a solar eruption. I believe that the result of this excellent observation helps finally solve this controversial issue,” says Zhang.

As we’re all aware, it would be a boost to understand and predict solar storms. While our Earth’s “magnetic shield” protects us from the majority of direct exposure, we have satellites, astronauts and terrestrially-based power sources which could benefit from an early warning scenario.

“Understanding the eruption process of these storms will definitely help us better predict them,” says Zhang. “We cannot prevent solar storms, just like we cannot prevent earthquakes or volcanoes. But the development of prediction capacity can help mitigate adverse effects. For instance, satellite operators can power-down key systems to prevent the possible damage to the systems.”

Original Story Source: MSNBC.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Genesis Sheds Light On Sun And Solar System Formation

Artist Concept of Genesis Courtesy of JPL/NASA

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For 886 days between 2001 and 2004, a tiny spacecraft named Genesis sat parked at Lagrange Point L1 quietly collecting solar wind samples. On Sept. 8, 2004, the spacecraft released a sample return capsule which bashed its way onto the Utah desert carrying its little payload. Despite the disastrous crash, solar-wind ions were found buried beneath the surface of the collectors and what they have to tell us about the possible formation of our solar system is pretty amazing.

In March 2005 the international scientific community was given the collectors to study – and one of their prime targets was the evolution of our solar system. How could these tiny particles give us clues as to our origin? According the bulk of evidence, it is surmised the outer layer of the Sun hasn’t changed in several billion years. If we are to agree this is a good basis for modeling our solar nebula, we could begin to understand the chemical processes which formed our solar system. For most rock-forming elements, there appears to be little fractionation of either elements or isotopes between the sun and the solar wind. Or is there?

“The implication is that we did not form out of the same solar nebula materials that created the sun — just how and why remains to be discovered,” said Kevin McKeegan, a Genesis co-investigator from the University of California, Los Angeles and the lead author of one of two Science papers published this week.

Using the deposits found on the collector plates, scientists found a higher rate of common oxygen isotopes and a lowered rate of rare ones – different from Earth’s ratios. The same held true of nitrogen composition.

“These findings show that all solar system objects, including the terrestrial planets, meteorites and comets, are anomalous compared to the initial composition of the nebula from which the solar system formed,” said Bernard Marty, a Genesis co-investigator from Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques in Nancy, France and the lead author of the second new Science paper. “Understanding the cause of such a heterogeneity will impact our view on the formation of the solar system.”

While more studies are in the making, this new evidence provides vital information which may correct how we initially perceived our beginnings. While these elements are the most copious of all, even slight differences make them as distinctive as salt and pepper.

“The sun houses more than 99 percent of the material currently in our solar system so it’s a good idea to get to know it better,” said Genesis principal investigator Don Burnett of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “While it was more challenging than expected we have answered some important questions, and like all successful missions, generated plenty more.”

Original Story Source: JPL Genesis Mission News.