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Physics

Saturn’s Moons Are Bustin’ Out All Over
June 16, 2007
Add Tethys and Dione to the party blowers around Saturn.  Cassini found that these two moons are active, like Enceladus and Titan, though on a lesser scale.  Cassini scientists discovered the effects of outbound particles from these moons by studying the plasma fields with the Cassini plasma spectrometer (CAPS) instrument.  The results suggest surface activity, […]
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Solar System

How Old Are Sand Dunes?
June 4, 2007
The Namib Desert has some of the largest sand dunes in the world.  How old are they?  Three scientists from the University of London decided to find out.  They took cores out of some dunes in Namibia and analyzed the sand, using multiple high-tech methods.  Their conclusion, just published in Geology: the dunes are much […]
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Astronomy

Think Fast: News Briefs
May 21, 2007
Of the many news items that cross the CEH desk, many are noteworthy but go unreported due to lack of time.  Here are a few that deserve honorable mention lest they pass into oblivion. Cosmology: Dark future – Several sources like Science Now and Space.com commented on the dark future of the universe if cosmic acceleration […]
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Physics

Tweaking Mercury to Keep it Old
May 4, 2007
Mercury has a magnetic field.  That’s odd.  It shouldn’t.  If it were 4.6 billion years old, the little planet should be solid stiff by now.  Planetary scientists have published a new model of its interior with the required molten outer core that allows a dynamo to generate the observed magnetic field.  What’s interesting are the […]
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Cosmology

Hubble Explodes Star-Formation Assumption in Globular Clusters
May 3, 2007
The Hubble Telescope found three episodes of star formation in a globular cluster.  While this announcement might make a layman yawn, what’s interesting are the expressions of grief and anguish coming from astronomers about what this does to their theories.  For many years, astronomers had prided themselves on their understanding of globular clusters.  These massive, […]
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SETI

Are the Red Dwarfs Ready for SETI?
April 16, 2007
There are oodles of M-type red dwarf stars.  Before now, most SETI researchers didn’t pay them much attention, because their habitable zones are narrow.  Also, because the habitable zones are closer in, any planets in the lucky radius would most likely be tidally locked to the star, leaving one hemisphere in darkness and the other […]
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Astronomy

Cosmology: Crisis or Confidence?
April 13, 2007
What is it with cosmology these days?  On the one hand, astronomers seem more confident than ever.  They speak of this as the era of “precision cosmology,” when the only task remaining seems to be refining the decimal points; e.g., the first refinements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) won John Mather and George Smoot […]
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Solar System

Binary Asteroid “Formidable Challenge to Theory”
April 2, 2007
Two asteroids found orbiting each other in the asteroid belt are found to be mere rubble piles.  They are composed of rocks loosely held together by gravity, says an article on Science Daily.  French astronomers measured the rotation of the pair and their density with better accuracy, and modeled how the pair might have split […]
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Solar System

The Hot Moon Epidemic Spreads to the Suburbs
March 31, 2007
A planetary symptom we might call “Enceladus fever” is apparently an epidemic.  Now, we’ve found that it infects some of the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) beyond the orbit of Neptune.  More and more small bodies are being found with internal heat that has broken out onto the surface.  This is a big surprise.  Small bodies […]
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Origin of Life

Is Hardy Life Evidence of an Evolutionary Origin?
March 29, 2007
Salt-tolerate species of unicellular organisms are found in all three kingdoms of life, says an article on Space.com.  “Astrobiologists, those cross disciplinary scientists dedicated to investigating the broad question of life in the universe,” writes Lisa Chu-Theilbar of the SETI Institute, “often study extremophiles, organisms that live at the edges of what life is known […]
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Physics

Saturn Still Serving Surprises
March 28, 2007
The Cassini Spacecraft, three-fourths of the way into its 4-year prime mission, is not running out of new things to see.  Some of the latest discoveries are both awesome and strange. A Hex on the Pole:  As if the south pole of Saturn, with its earth-sized hurricane (picture) were not dramatic enough, the north pole […]
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Health

Lunar Dust Is Deadly
March 22, 2007
A significant fraction of lunar dust could pose deadly risks to future astronauts stationed on the moon, a BBC News report says.  About 1-3% of moon dust particles are too small to be coughed up or removed by the cilia lining the respiratory tract.  These would lodge in the lungs and become inflamed.  As in […]
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Solar System

Did Mars Have a Global Flood?
March 18, 2007
There’s enough ice under Mars’ southern polar cap to flood the entire planet under 36 feet of water, reports Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  The MARSIS radar instrument on the ESA-NASA Mars Express determined that the ice cap is more than 2 miles thick in places.  According to the report on National Geographic News, traces of possible […]
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Physics

The Enceladus Problem Heats Up
March 13, 2007
How can a small icy moon produce hot-water geysers?  That is the Enceladus problem: for a small moon assumed to be 4.5 billion years old to be forcefully gushing out water from its south pole was a great surprise when the Cassini spacecraft first detected the geysers in 2005 (11/28/2005).  Ever since, scientists have been […]
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Cosmology

Deconstructing Darwinese:  Delighting in Ignorance
March 8, 2007
When is ignorance a good thing?  When is confidence in one’s answers a bad thing?  One science writer expressed his desire for mystery over explanation – as long as the mysterious allowed room for lucky breaks without design.     Science writer Ben Shaberman got to share his views on the last page of the […]
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