Space and astronomy news
Can one type of planet become another? Can a mini-Neptune lose its atmosphere and become a super-Earth? Astronomers have found two examples of mini-Neptunes transitioning to super-Earths, and the discovery might help explain a noted “gap” in the size distribution of exoplanets.
Continue reading “Mini-Neptunes can Lose gas and Turn Into Super-Earths”
The global climate is warming, and Earth’s polar regions are feeling the effects. A new study of the South Orkney Islands shows that the region has warmed significantly since the 1950s. The rise in warming in the South Orkneys exceeds the overall global warming.
As the islands warm, plant life is spreading.
Continue reading “As Temperatures Rise, Antarctica is Turning Green”
The existence of water on Mars is a contentious subject. We know there used to be water on the surface of the planet, though it’s long gone now. We know there’s frozen water underground in the world, and we know there’s water vapour in the air. But life needs liquid water.
Could there be liquid water on Mars?
A new study shows how salty water could emerge from the atmosphere onto Mars’ surface under the right conditions.
Continue reading “There are Places Where Salty Water Could Emerge Onto the Surface of Mars”
Is Mars home to an underwater lake? Different researchers are reaching different conclusions. Some say remote sensing from the Mars Express orbiter shows liquid water in an underground lake at Mars’ south polar region. Other researchers say clays or minerals explain the data better.
Who’s right? Maybe none of them.
A new study says that volcanic rock can explain the Mars Express data and that it’s a more plausible explanation.
Continue reading “Is the Underground Lake on Mars Just Volcanic Rock?”
There’s no surface water on Mars now, but there was a long time ago. If you ask most people interested in Mars, what’s left of it is underground and probably frozen.
But some previous evidence shows there’s a lake of liquid water under the planet’s South Pole Layered Deposits (SPLD). Other evidence refutes it. So what’s going on?
Science, that’s what.
Continue reading “The Scientific Debate Rages on: Is there Water Under Mars’ South Pole?”
What causes an otherwise unremarkable star to become over 100 times brighter? That’s a question astronomers have been pondering since 1936, when a star in Orion brightened from 16th magnitude to 8th magnitude in a single year.
The star, named FU Ori, is still bright to this day. Astronomers have come up with different explanations for the star’s brightening, but none of them provides a complete explanation.
Now we might have one.
Continue reading “Astronomers See a Star Crash Through the Planetary Disk of Another Star”
Mercury is the speed champion in our Solar System. It orbits the Sun every 88 days, and its average speed is 47 km/s. Its average distance from the Sun is 58 million km (36 million mi), and it’s so fast it’s named after Mercury, the wing-footed God.
But what if instead of Mercury, Jupiter was closest to the Sun? And what if Jupiter was even closer to the Sun than Mercury and far hotter?
Continue reading “Astronomers Find a Planet That Orbits its Star in Just 16 HOURS!”
There’s nothing easy about searching for evidence of life on Mars. Not only do we somehow have to land a rover there, which is extraordinarily difficult. But the rover needs the right instruments, and it has to search in the right location. Right now, the Perseverance lander has checked those boxes as it pursues its mission in Jezero Crater.
But there’s another problem: there are structures that look like fossils but aren’t. Many natural chemical processes produce structures that mimic biological ones. How can we tell them apart? How can we prepare for these false positives?
Continue reading “Is That a Fossil on Mars? Non-Biological Deposits can Mimic Organic Structures”
It’s one of nature’s topsy-turvy tricks that the deep interior of the Earth is as hot as the Sun’s surface. The sphere of iron that resides there is also under extreme pressure: about 360 million times more pressure than we experience on the Earth’s surface. But how can scientists study what happens to the iron at the center of the Earth when it’s largely unobservable?
With a pair of lasers.
Continue reading “There’s So Much Pressure at the Earth’s Core, it Makes Iron Behave in a Strange Way”
Mars is still quite mysterious, despite all we’ve learned about the planet in recent years. We still have a lot to learn about its interior and surface evolution and how changes affected the planet’s history and habitability. Fortunately, an impact on the red planet sent clues to Earth in the form of meteorites.
The geological information contained in these meteorites would be even more valuable if we knew exactly where they came from. A team of researchers say they’ve figured it out.
Continue reading “We Now Know Exactly Which Crater the Martian Meteorites Came From”