It might sound hard to believe, but dozens of spacecraft have crashed themselves onto the surface of the Moon. All in the name of science. The first was the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2, which smashed into the lunar surface in 1959. Well, an upcoming mission is all set to do it again. NASA’s Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will launch in 2008 together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Its booster rocket will smash into the Moon first, carving out a large crater, and then the smaller Shepherding spacecraft will smash into the same spot, analyzing the debris cloud before it’s destroyed too.
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Strange Difference Between Gamma Ray Bursts and Quasars
Look at a quasar and a gamma ray burst – two of the most luminous objects in the Universe – and you’re 4 times more likely to see intervening galaxies in front of the burst. This conclusion was reached by astronomers from UC Santa Cruz, who studied more than 50,000 quasars, and a handful of gamma ray bursts. There shouldn’t be a connection between the quasar or burst in the background, and the number of galaxies in the foreground… but there is, and right now that relationship is a complete mystery.
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Electrical Dust Storms Could Make Life on Mars Impossible
New research is suggesting that planet-wide dust storms on Mars could create a snow of corrosive chemicals toxic to life. These Martian storms generate a significant amount of static electricity, and could be capable of splitting carbon dioxide and water molecules apart. The elements could then reform into hydrogen peroxide molecules, and fall to the ground as a snow that would destroy organic molecules associated with life. This toxic chemical might be concentrated in the top layers of Martian soil, preventing life from surviving.
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No, Mars Won’t Look as Big as the Moon in August
Have you gotten a copy of the email yet? If you haven’t, you probably will. Forwarded from a friend, forwarded again and again until the original source is lost in the murky cloud of the Internet, it encourages you to get set for the experience of a lifetime. When MARS WILL LOOK AS LARGE AS THE FULL MOON!!!!! Is this going to happen? No. But there’s a strange gem of truth at the heart of this misunderstanding/hoax. I’ll give you the history and then everything you need to explain what’s going on to your excited but misinformed email forwarding friends.
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Saturn’s Ring Spokes are Back
Nope, that’s not an error in the photograph. The ghostly white stripe in Saturn’s rings was captured by Cassini on July 23, 2006. This is the first time that Cassini has seen spokes in Saturn’s rings in nearly a year, and the first time from the sunlit side of the rings. Some scientists think the spokes might be caused by meteoroid impacts onto the rings. Others suggest they’re created by an instability in Saturn’s magnetic field.
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The Largest Structure in the Universe
Astronomers have used the Subaru and Keck telescopes to discover gigantic filaments of galaxies stretching across 200 million light-years in space. These filaments, formed just 2 billion years after the Big Bang, are the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. The filaments contain at least 30 huge concentrations of gas, each of which contains 10x the mass of the Milky Way.
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Liquid Methane Drizzles Down on Titan
New research from NASA, published in the journal Nature suggests that it’s always raining on Titan. Not thunderstorms, but a low level liquid methane drizzle that never stops. When Huygens landed onto the surface of Titan, it came down with a splat, presumably into mud. Scientists estimate that the amount of rain amounts to about 5 cm (2 inches) a year of accumulation – the same amount that falls in Death Valley on Earth. But this rain falls steadily, keeping the ground relatively damp.
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Starburst Galaxy NGC 908
This photograph of galaxy NGC 908 was taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. This spiral galaxy was first discovered in 1786 by William Herschel, and is considered a starburst galaxy. Clusters of young, massive stars pepper its spiral arms indicating regions of furious star formation. NGC 908 must have had a recent encounter with another galaxy; the gravitational interaction between the galaxies caused gas clouds to collapse, igniting star formation.
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The Search for Hidden Black Holes
Look into the sky with X-ray instruments, and you’ll see a background radiation in all directions. Astronomers think these X-rays are produced by the supermassive black holes at the centres of most galaxies. But astronomers can’t find these black holes, which should be bright in the most energetic range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe they’re hiding; shrouded in thick clouds of gas and dust. Or maybe something else is generating all the X-ray background radiation.
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New View on Pulsars
Pulsars are the rapidly spinning corpses of massive stars. And although they were discovered nearly 40 years ago, they still hold many mysteries. One such mystery: why do pulsars have million-degree hotspots around their poles? New data from ESA’s XMM-Newton X-Ray observatory have cast doubt on the theory that charged particles are colliding with the pulsar’s surface at its poles. XMM-Newton failed to see the X-ray emissions in several old pulsars that should have been very bright if particles were continuously colliding.
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