Space and astronomy news
More than half the stars in our galaxy are small, dim M-class stars. Until now, researchers looking for extraterrestrial civilizations have passed over them, since they probably don’t give off enough light to support life. But SETI researchers now think that they might be good candidates after all. A planet in orbit around an M-class star would have billions and billions of years orbiting its slow-burning star for life to evolve.
New high-resolution images of Mars have revealed several glaciers in the planet’s mid-latitudes, far away from its polar ice caps. Scientists had speculated that many of Mars’ mid-latitude features looked like they had been formed by shifting ice, but there wasn’t any sign of the actual glaciers. New images from Mars Odyssey show features, such as debris lines on valley floor, which are amazingly similar to Earth glaciers.
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! I’d like to thank all of you who took the time to write to me about this year’s Mars apparition and this week we’ll look at both the “fact” and the “fiction”. Now it’s time to start our explorations as we check in on the planets, visit the “Lagoon”, have a look at the M25, journey to the “Small Sagittarius Star Cloud”, and track down the “Trifid”. So, get your telescopes and binoculars ready, because…
Here’s what’s up!
A new theory from researchers at Arizona State University challenges the traditional view of the formation of our Solar System. Instead of forming within an out-of-the-way cloud of interstellar gas and dust, they believe we formed in the intense environment that typically creates more massive stars. The core of their argument is the recent discovery of iron-60 in meteorites; this isotope can only be found in the heart of massive stars. This could mean that the Sun formed while a more massive star was nearby, blasting our environment with intense ultraviolet radiation.
Image credit: John Rowe The search for Earthlike planets begins with the search for Sunlike stars. At the top of the list is a reasonably nearby star called 37 Gem; located in the Gemini constellation. Astronomer Maggie Turnbull was asked to make a short list of thirty candidate stars that closely matched our own Sun …
Image credit: NASA Scientists have believed that the tilt of the Earth’s axis is very important to supporting life on our planet, but a new simulation from Pennsylvania State University seems to indicate that life could arise on our planet, even if it was severely tilted. Even when the planet was tilted past its current …
Continue reading “Planetery Tilts Might Not Be a Big Problem”