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Astronomy

Upset Update: Globular Clusters, Atmospheric Methane Tear Up Textbooks
August 28, 2006
Here are a couple of updates to stories we reported earlier in the category “Everything we thought was wrong.” Globular cluster ages:  Our 10/05/2003 entry reported that beliefs about globular cluster ages were undergoing a radical revision.  You can almost feel the rumblings in a related story on News@Nature; “In a complex Universe, astronomers thought […]
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Astronomy

Early Large Spiral Galaxy Resembles Milky Way
August 18, 2006
Astronomers using adaptive optics at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Paranal, Chile took spectra of a galaxy at red-shift 2.38 described as an “early young galaxy” that must have, according to current theory, formed very rapidly, because it looks like the Milky Way.  The observations by Genzel et al., published in Nature,1 were described […]
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Solar System

Mars Annually Pops Its Polar Cork
August 17, 2006
A unique geological phenomenon has been found on Mars.  Every year, when the southern polar cap heats up, carbon dioxide gas forms underneath a layer of translucent ice.  This gas levitates large portions of the ice cap until it finds weaknesses, and bursts out at over a hundred miles an hour in spectacular fumaroles (see […]
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Astronomy

Stellar Habitable Zones: Don’t Forget the Sunscreen
August 15, 2006
Astronomers concerned with the origin of life on earth have long thought about the “habitable zone” (sometimes called continuously habitable zone, or CHZ) of our solar system.  They’ve discussed this aerobee-shaped zone around our sun – or any star – mainly in terms of locations where the temperature would permit water to exist as a […]
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Cosmology

Cosmologists Dragged Kicking and Screaming to the Anthropic Principle
August 11, 2006
Those who view science as a dispassionate, logical pursuit of the truth should savor the emotions in two articles by Tom Siegfried about cosmology in Science this week.1,2  He reported on the passionate rivalry between theoretical physicists who embrace superstring theory as the eventual “theory of everything” and those who oppose it because of its […]
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Solar System

It’s Tough to Get a Date, but Fun to Keep Trying
August 8, 2006
Geochronology is a perverse sort of game.  Like the proverbial clock shop apprentice who went crazy trying to get all the grandfather clocks to tick together, the scientist trying to interpolate earth’s past climate patterns from geochronometers has so many uncooperative variables, he can never hope for anything better than partial conformity to accepted visions […]
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Origin of Life

Ten Years Later: Mars Rock Was a Useful Lie
August 6, 2006
Almost nobody believes any more that the Martian meteorite ALH84001 contained evidence of life, but the iconic rock launched the science of astrobiology (see 04/17/2006).  So said Matt Crenson for AP (see Space.com and Chron.com) on the tenth anniversary of the highly-publicized NASA announcement that purported to show bacteria-like fossils, magnetites and PAHs thought to […]
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Solar System

More Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Live on Mars
August 2, 2006
Electric charges in dust devils on Mars may generate toxic chemicals, says a report on Space.com (see also later story posted on National Geographic News). According to two recent reports in Astrobiology journal, “Small dust devils and planet-wide storms – combined with static electricity – may lead to the formation of hydrogen peroxide and other […]
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SETI

SETI: Shut Up and Keep Looking
July 25, 2006
On Space.com, Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute answered the critics who think they’re “barking up the wrong tree.”  Well-meaning people send him emails explaining why there is “still no confirmed chitter from the cosmos” after 46 years of looking.  The top four include: (1) aliens use more advanced technology, (2) the Fermi Paradox means […]
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Amazing Facts

Titan’s Land-o’-Lakes Found
July 24, 2006
The Cassini spacecraft has found features that look like methane lakes in the northern latitudes of Titan (see JPL press release).  The large dark patches, some about 30 miles across with rounded edges, appear to be associated with fluid channels.  Radar echoes cannot determine for sure whether the surface is liquid (dark means smooth, light […]
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Cosmology

Theory Battles Observations in Near-Field Cosmology
July 23, 2006
Which is more important in science: a consistent model, or a good fit with observations?  Clearly both would be the ideal.  A report in Science1 this week revealed that astronomers are having trouble holding the two together.  The problem is especially acute for near-field cosmology that deals with nearby galaxies.     It may seem […]
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Amazing Facts

Saturn E-Ring Oxygen Bubble Blown by Enceladus
July 11, 2006
From a distance, the little moon Enceladus at Saturn looks for all the world like a leaking water balloon.  The Cassini Mission just released a new photo of Enceladus that fits that description well.  The plumes are faintly visible emanating from the south pole of the 300-mile-across moon as it orbits beyond the rings.  A […]
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Astronomy

Paper View:  Why SETI Hears Only a “Great Silence”
June 30, 2006
Enrico Fermi posed a curious question in 1950: “Where is everybody?”  If life emerges on planets as a consequence of evolution, there should be other intelligent civilizations out there, and some of them must have colonized other worlds.  He thought there must have been plenty of time for galactic colonizers to achieve technologies far beyond […]
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Solar System

Update:  Crater-Count Dating Squabble Unresolved
June 8, 2006
Remember the revelation last year that many craters on Mars used to infer ages may have been secondary impacts from fallback debris? (see 10/20/2005 entry).  Well, a microsymposium on this subject was held in Houston in March, and Richard Kerr in Science1 said that “125 planetary scientists deadlocked over how to apply crater-dating techniques to […]
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Cosmology

The Universe Is Made Out of… Fudge!
June 7, 2006
[Guest article]  According to the July issue of Astronomy magazine, the Universe is comprised mostly of fudge – or at least fudge factors, anyway.  The article by James Trefil from George Mason University describes the current thinking among astrophysicists as to the eventual fate of the universe.  Since the Big Bang, there has been an […]
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