While none of the interplanetary missions have found traces of life on Mars, both the Viking and China’s Zhurong rovers have discovered astonishing features of the Red Planet that could provide insight into its history and evolution. When Zhurong, China’s first-ever Mars landing mission, orbited the Red Planet for a year, it saw something surreal … Read more
There is no sight in the universe as dazzling as the moon, but medieval lore says that the radiant beauty also possessed mystical powers. In European mythology, people believed in a myth that a full moon could turn people into werewolves. The Greek philosopher Aristotle and the Roman historian Pliny the Elder suggested that the … Read more
Unlike “black holes,” which pull in and swallow surrounding cosmic matter, a “gravity hole” pushes surrounding material away due to the lack of gravity. When formed in an ocean, a gravity hole pushes water away and creates air pockets where water should have been, causing sea levels to drop. Take the example of the world’s … Read more
NASA’s Viking was the first American spacecraft to land on Mars, sending back images of craters, massive volcanoes and giant canyons from its surface. In the 1970s, NASA launched two identical robots — Viking 1 and Viking 2, each equipped with landers and orbiters — to the Red Planet. After the mission, NASA reported that … Read more
The closer you look at the universe, the more mysterious it seems. NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission recently revealed bizarre C- and X-shaped structures floating in the electrified layer of the ionosphere. “Who knew Earth’s upper atmosphere was like alphabet soup?” NASA wrote about the sighting on its website. The … Read more
Grenades have fascinated humans for millennia. The ancient Egyptians decorated their jewelry with garnets, and the Greeks called them “lamp stones” because they believed they could help them see in the dark. Recently, crystallized garnet particles have highlighted a fascinating geological link between Australia and Antarctica, uncovering an ancient Antarctic mountain range now under ice. … Read more
There is rarely a mountain as majestic as the Himalayas, which rise so high into the sky that people feel like a dot standing in front of them. But it is a lesser known fact that the Himalayas are not only scenic but also a field considered important for the study of geology. A 2023 … Read more
Flying over 15 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 is the first man-made object to move through interstellar space. Traveling at about 60,000 kilometers per hour relative to the Sun, Voyager 1 is currently the farthest human object. It is a technological marvel that has been zooming around the orbits of the planets for almost … Read more
The dark abyss of space is seemingly endless to explore. There are countless celestial bodies floating in this dark ocean of space. For centuries, scientists and astronomers have classified various objects into lists and categories. This time, however, a team of researchers has discovered an object at the center of the Milky Way that does … Read more