A future civilization on Mars could be accompanied by a very special and resilient plant. A type of moss found in the desert – called Syntrichia caninervis—may be able to survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of Mars, according to a new paper in the journal Mars The innovation. This moss can grow in … Read more
Jupiter has long been famous for its Great Red Spot, but only recently did scientists learn more about how and how long ago it formed. The enormous vortex on the side of the solar system’s largest planet is a massive storm, long thought to have raged for more than 300 years, and larger than the … Read more
“The James Webb Telescope: Are We Alone?” about the whole story with Anderson Cooper offers a glimpse into the most powerful telescope ever built. The show premieres Sunday, June 16 at 8 PM ET/PT on CNN. A collision between giant asteroids has likely occurred in recent years in a neighboring galaxy called Beta Pictoris, and … Read more
Strange holes in the surface of our neighboring planet could one day provide areas where astronauts can take shelter. A mysterious pit on Mars captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has reignited interest in the potential of these features to support future human missions to the Red Planet. The pit, which is only a … Read more
This image shows Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano not only on Mars but in the entire solar system. … [+] The volcano has a diameter of about 600 kilometers. The image was captured in the early morning (07:20 local solar time, LST) by the high-resolution stereo camera on board ESA’s Mars Express, and included as … Read more
Nearly twenty years ago, astronomers observed a huge cloud of fine dust particles around a young star just 63 light-years away from Earth. From recent observations of the Webb Space TelescopeHowever, the dust cloud had mysteriously disappeared. Now a new paper suggests that the dust cloud may have been caused by a violent event that … Read more
The Pleistocene Epoch – with its glaciers, woolly mammoths and Neanderthals – still looms large in Earth’s rearview mirror, having ended just 12,000 years ago. Now a team of researchers proposes that those hundreds of thousands of years of our planet’s history may have been cold due to a cloud in space that briefly removed … Read more
Astronomers have discovered an unusual exoplanet that has managed to maintain its atmosphere despite intense nearby radiation from a giant red star. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that the rare planet, which should have been stripped to rock by radiation from its nearby host star, instead developed a puffy, less dense atmosphere. The planet, … Read more
A powerful solar flare has spewed from the same sunspot that produced the spectacular Northern Lights displays on May 10. The May 29 solar flare was measured as a class X1.4 eruption, one of the most powerful types of solar flares, and caused radio blackouts in the US and Western Europe. The sunspot that caused … Read more
NASA’s mission to the metal kingdoms asteroid 16 Psyche has started its ion engines and is now sailing over the solar system under the power of solar-electric propulsion. The launch of the spacecraft, which is also called Psycheon October 13, 2023, it provided enough initial momentum to carry it through more than 300 million kilometers … Read more