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Iapetus Is Losing Its Dry Ice

May 5, 2008

How long can a moon afford to leak? Iapetus is losing its dry ice (carbon dioxide) through sublimation at a prodigious rate, say scientists in a paper in Icarus this month.1 “One can see that the long-term stability of CO2 is problematic.” Solving the mystery of the dark side on this mystery moon […]

Astronomy

First Galaxies Fast and Compact

May 3, 2008

The old picture: after the big bang, matter is diffuse. Out of the darkness, stars slowly begin to form, as the first galaxies take shape. Galaxies start out large and slowly grow more dense and structured over billions of years. The new picture: the first galaxies are very compact and dense, spinning rapidly, with stars […]

Origin of Life

Astrobiologists Pool Their Ignorance at AbSciCon

May 1, 2008

A big conference on Astrobiology was held in Santa Clara, California last month. It was the fifth AbSciCon (Astrobiology Science Conference), a bi-annual cross-disciplinary event. This one pulled together 675 researchers from 28 countries across a variety of disciplines, all interested in life in space. Naturally, evolution was an overarching theme. From Edna DeVore’s account […]

Astronomy

Hubble Snaps Colliding Galaxies

April 24, 2008

A new catalog of colliding galaxy images has been released by the Hubble Space Science Institute. The 59 images show “close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing sites of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes.” The release coincided with the 18th anniversary of the Hubble Space […]

Astronomy

Findings vs Surmisings in Astronomy

April 21, 2008

The Galex satellite (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) found “bright features” with an ultraviolet glow in the outskirts of a spiral galaxy, reported the BBC News. What are they? Scientists “think” they are large clusters of stars. How much is known, and how much is interpreted? The region imaged is the dark area around spiral […]

Cosmology

Is Inflation Theory in Trouble?

April 18, 2008

For more than a quarter of a century, “inflation” has been viewed as the savior of the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang was in trouble in the late 1970s because of the flatness problem and the horizon problem: our universe appeared to be too homogeneous and isotropic to be an accident. If a runaway […]

SETI

Imagination as Science

April 17, 2008

Can a science exist without evidence? Astrobiology, and its subcategory “the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” involve a great deal of scientific equipment, trained researchers, and funding, but still have no observational evidence to support their reason for being: extraterrestrial life. Where is the line between imagination and reality in these fields? Some insight […]

Health

Mars Lacks Safety Shield for Humans

April 3, 2008

Forget all those optimistic, futuristic sci-fi tales of humans landing on Mars. It isn’t safe, said Space.com. NASA’s space radiation program doubts that a human body could survive prolonged exposure to space. This is a problem for long stays on the moon, too. “The magnetic field of Earth protects humanity from radiation in […]

Dumb Ideas

Fooling Oneself About Aliens

April 1, 2008

Would you give a Bible to a Neanderthal, or invite a porpoise to your church? Who would ask such questions? Seth Shostak would – director of the SETI Institute. On Space.com, he speculated about “alien sociology.” Shostak wrote the weekly SETI column for Space.com to answer critics who think that broadcasting our presence […]

Origin of Life

Enceladus: Hotter Chemical Plume Found

March 26, 2008

Initial results of Cassini’s March 12 flyby of Enceladus have been published. You can watch a replay of today’s press briefing, read the blog, and read illustrated bulletins about the organic material, chemical signatures, hot spot locations, the stellar occultation (see also the Quicktime animation). Another article shows the plume locations. An astrobiologist (Chris McKay) […]

Physics

Crater Dater Deflator: Impactors Can Be Recycled

March 25, 2008

They came from outer space – that was the old paradigm about impactors that made craters on planetary bodies. Then, we learned how secondary craters can confuse a surface’s history (06/08/2006, 09/25/2007). Now, two papers in Icarus show that moons can do a lateral pass. Alvarellos et al,1 showed that Jupiter’s moon Io […]

Solar System

March Moon Madness

March 25, 2008

Moons of our planetary system are supposed to behave themselves. They were expected to just quietly orbit their host planets like nice, cold, frozen, inactive chunks of rock and ice. It seems like whenever we get a close look at them, they are madly at work destroying theories – just like their planets have been […]

Origin of Life

Simple Molecules: The Building Blocks of Lie

March 19, 2008

At a physical level, everything in the universe is made of atoms and molecules. Life, being a subset of everything in the universe, is composed of a subset of all molecules that exist. It could be said that any atom or molecule present in a living thing is a building block of life, but how […]

Bible and Theology

How to Address an Alien

March 17, 2008

How would you like this job: your assignment is to be the speechwriter for planet earth. You are to figure out what our first message is to the aliens – to give them a good first impression as we introduce the human species to the galactic community. “No kidding? What does it pay?” […]

Astronomy

Astrobiology Justifying Itself

March 16, 2008

Is astrobiology a legitimate science? Seth Shostak, director of the SETI Institute, tried to answer that question in the weekly SETI Thursday column on Space.com. He estimates there are “approximately a thousand scientists who would be proud to print ‘astrobiologist’ on their business cards.” Astrobiology still gets a cool reception in some quarters. Shostak likened […]

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