Sometimes, you can’t go to Starbucks , so you buy their coffee beans and make it at home. You have Starbucks come to you. Well, scientists did the same thing, but with the planet Venus.
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Scientists recreating the atmosphere of Venus on Earth
The New York Times has an interesting read about Beth O’Leary, an anthropology professor at New Mexico State University, who along with her students has fought to have humanity’s (specifically America’s) presence on the moon protected. A “please don’t disturb the footprints” sign isn’t going to cut it.
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Should our moon be protected like America’s national parks?
The U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) has just won a grant from NASA to pursue creating Mars rovers powered by microbes. Researchers are hoping this would tackle the problem of providing a safer and more reasonably sized fuel cell to handle the long term needs of powering a rover and sending data all the way back to Earth.
Quasicrystals are a weird type of asymmetrical crystalline mineral that was only discovered a few decades ago, and it’s only ever been produced in a laboratory under very carefully controlled conditions. At least, that’s what we thought, until outer space chucked a meteor full of the stuff right at us.
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Quasicrystals from outer space shouldn’t exist, do anyway
I know with the holidays coming up you’ve probably been worrying about the sun expanding into a red giant, engulfing the Earth, and turning us all into a swirling mass of vaporized rock. A newly discovered planetary system suggests that Earth may actually be able to survive this last dying gasp of our star. Mostly. Sort of. Well, maybe at least a little bit.
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Good news, everyone: Earth may kinda survive when the sun eats us
We’re not entirely sure what’s out there beyond our solar system , but NASA is betting that it’s going to be full of zebras or something, and they want to spend a special telescope out there to take a look around.
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NASA wants to send a ZEBRA telescope to outer solar system
Meteorites traveling towards the surface of Mars can often be traveling at several times the speed of sound as they hit the planet’s thin atmosphere. A new study of images taken from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) suggests the hurtling rocks trigger shockwaves that roll through the air actually triggering avalanches on the dusty surface before they strike.
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Study suggests Martian avalanches occur before meteor strikes
The Kepler planet hunting space telescope has done pretty well finding planets that exist in the “habitable zone” around alien stars, but so far, all of these planets have been significantly larger than Earth. Today, NASA announced that Kepler has discovered the first Earth- sized planets orbiting another star.
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Why these two uninhabitable exoplanets are the most exciting yet
Of all the places in our solar system (besides Earth) where life has a real shot at being lifeish, Europa is probably at the top of the list. This is why, in defiance of the warnings in 2010: Odyssey Two , NASA may send a pair of landers to Europa in 2020.
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NASA ignores Arthur C. Clarke, may attempt landings on Europa
The Voyager 1 space probe is currently about 11 billion miles from the sun. This is really, really far away: it’s three or four times farther away from the sun than Pluto is. Astronomers have been expecting Voyager to to make the transition between our solar system and the rest of our galaxy, and it looks like that may have just happened.
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Voyager 1 becomes first man-made object to taste galactic space
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