We live on an Earth that from day to day seems permanent and stable. We go to work, school and perhaps the pub every day and it seems like things will never change dramatically. Unfortunately as we are all beginning to realise things in the universe are forever changing which when looked at from the [...]
Extremophiles on Other Celestial Bodies?
Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in harsh environments where you would think nothing could live. When looking at extremophiles on Earth and the environments they live in it does make you wonder why organisms haven’t been found on other planets yet. Extremophiles may have been the first life that existed on Earth. They don’t exist, [...]
How to Talk to Aliens
Lots of signals have gone into space such as TV, radar and radio. The signals have been betraying our presence for 60 years and have passed over about 6000 star systems and are reaching new systems every day. This would seem to be enough, even though we haven’t received anything back yet, but what if [...]
Preventing Contamination from Reaching Planetary Bodies and from Contaminating the Earth
We have been looking for alien life elsewhere in the universe for quite awhile now. Mars has been the main focus of attention and it looks like in the future Europa and Titan will also attract a lot of attention. But how do we know that what we have found is alien life and that [...]
Viking’s Search For Life on Mars Leaves Echos
The first mission to Mars that was to make a successful landing consisted of Viking 1 and Viking 2. It was an exciting mission with the orbiter picking landing spots for the lander to make a landing. Both spacecraft launched in 1975. They both made a successful landing and have lasted for about six years [...]
Kepler Mission Releases New Planets the Size of Earth and Above
Kepler is a mission to study 156,000 stars using the Kepler telescope up there in space. 706 target data has been released in a report but 400 have not. The exoplanets found have sizes from as small as Earth to as large as Jupiter. They have also found five multi planet systems which sound quite [...]
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Closer Views on a Growing Solar System
I wrote an article on the formation of the solar system and other planetary systems throughout the galaxy a few weeks ago. New information is coming to light all the time and this is a field that has a lot of discoveries left to find. The new discoveries were published in the astrophysical Journal. Astronomers [...]
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Take a Peek inside the Space Shuttle after Landing
Ever wondered what happened after a space shuttle landing? NASA have released a video (below) which shows the winding down of the shuttle and the tow back to its hangar. After landing it takes 150 workers to pull the crew out and to carry out the necessary checks and procedures. Shuttle Atlantis will be ready [...]
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How Did Those First Organic Molecules Get to Earth?
How did life start? You would be talking to a Nobel prize winner if I could tell you that. Unfortunately nobody knows. There are a few theories around and a few advances have been made in this field but I will talk about the one that is most widely accepted in scientific circles. The starting [...]
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Commercial Rocket Falcon 9 Launches from Cape Canaveral into Orbit
Falcon 9 built by SpaceX reached orbit on Friday. This commercial venture is hoped by NASA to replace the government rockets that are presently taking satellites etc into orbit. Commercialisation of space was put forward as a major aim by the United States when president Obama came into power. This is one of those small [...]
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Good Evidence for Life on Saturn’s Moon Titan
The Cassini spacecraft has noticed on Titan, Saturn’s moon, that hydrogen molecules flow down through the atmosphere and disappear when they reach the surface (Icarus Journal). Also the hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan have been mapped and show that there is a lack of acetylne (Journal of geophysical research). The lack of acetylne could [...]
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Jupiter Has Another Impact
Just the other month Jupiter was hit by something, possibly an asteroid, and this month seems to be just the same. An amateur astronomer yesterday noticed a large flash when looking at Jupiter which lasted about two seconds. We are quite lucky to have Jupiter in the solar system, not just for looking at, but [...]
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The Longest Hypersonic Flight
The longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight took place on may 26. The engine is a scramjet engine that broke the time spent over mach 5 by the previous flight. It was only over mach 5 for 200secs but at mach 5 that’s quite a distance. //
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Japanese Corporation Aims to Build a Solar Ring on the Moon
The world’s energy needs are coming to a crisis point but technology could solve this in a Japanese plan to put solar cells around the moon’s equator. That’s 11,000 km of solar cells twinkling on the moon. The electricity from the solar cells would be converted to microwaves and lasers would beam the power to [...]
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A Debate on the Existence of Intelligent Life
The great debate is held at Berkley university and this one is on SETI, it’s worth a listen. SETI debate //
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The New Horizons Spacecraft Halfway to Pluto
The new Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006 for a trip to Pluto and beyond. Unfortunately for this mission there is a little controversy about Pluto as you probably know. Pluto, to put a long story short, has been deemed a dwarf planet by the IAU and this doesn’t really suit the image that NASA [...]
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A Robotic Japanese Lunar Base Is Planned for 2020
Japan (a government panel of Waseda University) has recently announced that it is going to send robots to the moon to create a moon base. This obviously has come after America announces that it is not going to bother with the moon just yet and I expect that Japan will take full advantage of the [...]
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Evidence Builds up for Life in Europa’s Ocean
Europa is one of my favourite moons around Jupiter as it keeps throwing up little titbits of what could be underneath that icy surface. Underneath the thin layer of ice that encompasses Europa there is speculated to be a 100 km deep ocean. This would be ice if it wasn’t for the tidal forces of [...]
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Flying Telescope Takes to the Skies
Nasa’s stratospheric Observatory for infrared astronomy (SOFIA) or if you don’t want to be smart airborne telescope, took its first flight yesterday. As you can see from the image a door opens in the 747 so that the telescope can see the sky. It may sound odd to be flying around with a telescope hanging [...]
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Supermassive Black Hole Not at the Centre of a Galaxy
The Hubble telescope has been looking for black holes and studying in particular the supermassive black hole in the most massive galaxy (M87). The supermassive black hole is not in the position that it is supposed to be in which is odd as supermassive black holes are supposed to be at the centre of galaxies. [...]
