This is a good lecture on why there’s a 1 in 4 chance of life (in Penelope’ Bostons opinion anyway) under the surface on Mars. //

There is a problem with our approach at the moment when looking for alien civilisations. SETI looks for signals that are sent by the electromagnetic spectrum and their are a lot of frequencies to search. If you pair this with the size of the universe you can see how SETI is really looking for a [...]

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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In the previous post I made a mistake about Ceres and its classification as an asteroid or dwarf planet. It’s been a topic of debate for some time, the debate originating with Pluto and its classification from planet to perhaps an asteroid and back to dwarf planet. Everybody was once sitting pretty thinking that Pluto [...]

The solar system formed from dust grains and eventually built up into planets. On the way to making planets some dust grains only formed up to a small size (compared to a planet) and remain at this size today. These rocks are called asteroids. If it wasn’t for these rocks the planets would not have [...]

Volcanoes are one of those great forces of nature that we take almost for granted on Earth. I am not sure that I would take it for granted if I lived right next to a volcano but on the overall scheme of things they are part of the Earth’s make up and mold the Earth [...]

Wouldn’t it be good to know how you got here? Well unfortunately the answer to that is unknown. It has been thought about for a long, long time and one day we will probably know the answer. What we do have good idea about though is how the solar system formed. Throughout the galaxy gigantic [...]

Planet Earth is getting boring. You have seen most of the countries and most of the inhabitants and swam beneath the sea, what else is there to do? Admittedly the oceans haven’t been explored to their full extent and some intense exploration needs to be done but sitting down and watching TV you can see [...]

Last year, when NASA’s IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft discovered a giant ribbon at the edge of the solar system, researchers were mystified. They called it a “shocking result” and puzzled over its origin. Now the mystery may have been solved. //