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Origin of Life

Mars Life Hopes Suffer Double Disappointment
May 29, 2008
Just when the new Phoenix lander was flexing its arm and going to work (see JPL), hoping to determine the habitability of Mars, two papers came out expressing doubt it will find anything. Toxic salty stew:  Space.com summarized a new paper in Science1 that concluded Mars has way too much salt.  Although some earth organisms […]
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Solar System

The Phoenix Lands on Mars
May 26, 2008
The Phoenix Spacecraft successfully landed on Mars Sunday night.  Its mission is to look for water and the potential habitability of life in the northern latitudes of the red planet near its polar cap for the next 3 months.  This is the first soft landing on Mars in 32 years, and the third in history […]
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Solar System

Moon Still Feeling the Impact
May 21, 2008
Craters on the moon seem so old.  Astronomers count them to try to figure out how long ago the surface was battered by impacts.  Although amateurs have claimed to see flashes on the moon’s surface through backyard telescopes, serious astronomers dismissed many of the reports as stories from the lunatic fringe.  “Not any more,” says […]
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Health

Beware of Starstuff
May 19, 2008
Stars can be dangerous.  They spew out deadly particles, unless you are protected from them in a safety bubble – like Earth has.  The Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere only let in the life-giving part of sunlight.  Studies of other stars, and our own moon, show that things could be far worse. Record flare:  A […]
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Origin of Life

Earth’s Core Values Questioned
May 11, 2008
Geologists have long assumed that iron attracted certain elements toward the earth’s core during its formation.  The amounts of them we find today were added by meteorites and comets as a veneer on the surface later.  A press release from Florida State University is questioning those core values.  New research “calls into question three decades […]
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Solar System

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 […]
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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 […]
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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) […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Physics

Falling Rocks Leave Holes in Science
March 13, 2008
Hard data in astronomy is hard to come by, except when it comes by special delivery – as with meteorites.  If there is any class of phenomena that should be well understood, it should be space debris and the craters they form, because the processes involved can be watched in real time.  Meteorites adorn many […]
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Solar System

Saturn Moons Continue to Surprise Scientists
March 10, 2008
Just days before a long-awaited dive into the plume of Enceladus (see PhysOrg and JPL press release, flyby stats and news release), Cassini found another surprise in the Saturn system: a moon with rings.     A Jet Propulsion Lab press release on March 6 reported that the large moon Rhea may have rings – […]
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Origin of Life

Mars Life Hung Out to Dry in Salt
February 18, 2008
Scientists have just about hanged the possibility for life on Mars.  At first, the acid measured by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers made the environment look inhospitable.  “Now, we also appreciate the high salinity of the water when it left behind the minerals Opportunity found,” said Mark Knoll on a JPL press release.  “This tightens […]
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Solar System

Titan Is Old-Age Problem, Despite News Media Coverage
February 15, 2008
A paper in Geophysical Research Letters1 about Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, reads like a good-news, bad-news joke.  The good news is that Titan appears to have more hydrocarbons than Earth.  The bad news is that it is not enough to save the assumption that Titan is 4.5 billion years old.     Several science news […]
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