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Model Suggests Ocean Currents Shape Europa’s Icy Shell in Ways Critical for Potential Habitats

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2013Scienceaustin, biological life, britney schmidt, chaos terrains, circulation patterns, current patterns model, europa, galileo spacecraft, georgia institute, icy shell, juice mission, jupiter, krista soderlund, magnetometer readings, max planck institute, model, moon europa, ocean currents, potential habitats, solar system, solar system research, subsurface ocean, Technology, three dimensional convection, university of texas

AUSTIN, Texas — In a finding of relevance to the search for life in our solar system, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have shown that the subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa may have deep currents and circulation patterns with heat and energy transfers capable of sustaining biological life.

Scientists believe Europa is one of the planetary bodies in our solar system most likely to have conditions that could sustain life, an idea reinforced by magnetometer readings from the Galileo spacecraft detecting signs of a salty, global ocean below the moon’s icy shell. (more…)

‘Freakish’ asteroid discovered, resembles rotating lawn sprinkler

By Guest PostNovember 12, 2013Scienceasteroid belt, asteroid rotation rate, astrophysical journal letters, comet like tails, common phenomenon, david jewitt, dust radiating, episodic eruptions, freakish asteroid, Germany, harold weaver, hubble, jessica agarwal, jupiter, lindau, mars, massive, max mutchler, max planck institute, nucleus, pan starrs, rotational breakup, solar system research, stephen larson, ucla

Astronomers have discovered a “weird and freakish object” resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The find, reported online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, has left them scratching their heads and searching for an explanation for the strange asteroid’s out-of-this-world appearance.

Normal asteroids appear simply as tiny points of light. This bizarre asteroid has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel. (more…)

You’re Beautiful, Vesta

By Guest PostMay 11, 2012Scienceancient roman goddess, beauty, berlin, building blocks, ceres, christopher t russell, crater on vesta, dawn mission, dlr institute, dwarf planet, earth, freie universitaet, gamma ray, Germany, gravitational field, gravity, hearth, ion propulsion, iron, iron core, jet propulsion laboratory, jpl, jupiter, katlenburg, los angeles, mars, max planck institute, monterey, moon, mount everest, NASA, neutron spectrometer, orbit, planetary, protoplanet vesta, radiation, regolith, san francisco, Science, solar nebula, solar system, solar system models, solar system research, south polar region, ucla, vesta, vestoids, wavelengths

NASA’s UCLA-led Dawn mission shows protoplanet’s surprising surface

When UCLA’s Christopher T. Russell looks at the images of the protoplanet Vesta produced by NASA’s Dawn mission, he talks about beauty as much as he talks about science.

“Vesta looks like a little planet. It has a beautiful surface, much more varied and diverse than we expected,” said Russell, a professor in UCLA’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission’s principal investigator. “We knew Vesta’s surface had some variation in color, but we did not expect the diversity that we see or the clarity of the colors and textures, or their distinct boundaries. We didn’t find gold on Vesta, but it is still a gold mine.”

Dawn has been orbiting Vesta and collecting data on the protoplanet’s surface since July 2011. Vesta, which is in the doughnut-shaped asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is currently some 321 million miles from Earth. (more…)

Tag Archives: solar system research

Model Suggests Ocean Currents Shape Europa’s Icy Shell in Ways Critical for Potential Habitats

‘Freakish’ asteroid discovered, resembles rotating lawn sprinkler

You’re Beautiful, Vesta