A new study published in Nature this week describes the forces that control the jets of water and organic material that erupt from the icy surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. UA scientists contributed data to the study.
The intensity of the jets of water ice and organic molecules that shoot out from Saturn’s moon Enceladus depends on the moon’s proximity to the planet, according to data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The finding, detailed in the journal Nature this week, is the first clear observation that shows the Enceladus plume varies in a predictable manner. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — New findings from NASA’s Curiosity rover provide clues to how Mars lost its original atmosphere, which scientists believe was much thicker than the one left today.
“The beauty of these measurements lies in the fact that these are the first really high-precision measurements of the composition of Mars’ atmosphere,” said Sushil Atreya, professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, took a black-and-white image from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of the planet. (more…)
A solar tsunami observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Japanese Hinode spacecraft has been used to provide the first accurate estimates of the Sun’s magnetic field.
Solar tsunamis are produced by enormous explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). As the CME travels out into space, the tsunami travels across the Sun at speeds of up to 1000 kilometres per second.
Similar to tsunamis on Earth, the shape of solar tsunamis is changed by the environment through which they move. Just as sound travels faster in water than in air, solar tsunamis have a higher speed in regions of stronger magnetic field. This unique feature allowed the team, led by researchers from UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, to measure the Sun’s magnetic field. The results are outlined in a paper soon to be published in the journal Solar Physics. (more…)
There is only one planet we know of, so far, that is drenched with life. That planet is Earth, as you may have guessed, and it has all the right conditions for critters to thrive on its surface. Do other planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, also host life forms?
Astronomers still don’t know the answer, but they search for potentially habitable planets using a handful of criteria. Ideally, they want to find planets just like Earth, since we know without a doubt that life took root here. The hunt is on for planets about the size of Earth that orbit at just the right distance from their star – in a region termed the habitable zone. (more…)
Larger habitable zone suggests 60 billion planets could sustain water, life
A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of star in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.
Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the estimated habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — Data from Voyager 1, now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, suggest the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.
Research using Voyager 1 data and published in the journal Science today provides new detail on the last region the spacecraft will cross before it leaves the heliosphere, or the bubble around our sun, and enters interstellar space. Three papers describe how Voyager 1’s entry into a region called the magnetic highway resulted in simultaneous observations of the highest rate so far of charged particles from outside heliosphere and the disappearance of charged particles from inside the heliosphere. (more…)
Life as we know it has certain properties that are consistent regardless whether you’re looking at a bacterial colony in a petri dish or a primate colony in South America. Rick Michod, UA professor and department head of ecology and evolutionary biology, has received $1.3 million from NASA to investigate what properties of biology define an individual organism.
Many things in life are not fair. But some things are at least consistent.
For example, all life as we know it has certain universal properties, which presumably define how life would be organized anywhere it evolved in the universe, said Richard Michod, professor and head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. (more…)
