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A rare class of so-called “active asteroids” that appear to leave behind a tail of dust and debris similar to that of a comet are travelling so fast that they are essentially making themselves blow up, according to research published Friday in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

For many years, people assumed that asteroids were nothing more than lifeless rocks floating throughout space, but in recent years, experts began discovering signs of activity in these objects, according to CNET. In fact, in 2010, a new sub-type of active asteroid with comet-like tails was discovered, and scientists were at a loss as to why the object was ejecting dust.

Hypervelocity collisions versus rotational disruption

Scientists came up with two predominant possible hypotheses to explain these asteroids. One was that the explosion was the result of a hypervelocity collision with another minor object. The other was that it was launching dust and fragments as a consequence of a phenomenon known as “rotational disruption,” in which the asteroid was spinning so quickly that the large centrifugal forces produced exceed its own gravity and cause it to begin breaking apart.

[STORY: Raindrops on sand mimic asteroid collisions with Earth]

In their new paper, a team led by astronomers at the Jagiellonian University in Poland explained that they used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to observe and measure an active asteroid which was believed to be experiencing rotational disruption. They calculated the rotational speed of the object and found that it was spinning so fast that it was essentially self-destructing.

“When we pointed Keck II at P/2012 F5 last August, we hoped to measure how fast it rotated and check whether it had sizable fragments. And the data showed us all that,” lead investigator Michal Drahus of the Jagiellonian University explained last week in a statement.

He and his colleagues discovered at least four individual fragments of the object, which was established to have impulsively ejected dust in mid-2011, and an extremely short rotation period (3.24 hours) that was fast enough to cause the object to impulsively explode. Essentially, it was spinning so fast that it burst, leaving behind a comet-like trail of dust and fragments.

[STORY: ESA soliciting CubeSats for deep-space asteroid mission]

“This is really cool because fast rotation has been suspected of catapulting dust and triggering fragmentation of some active asteroids and comets. But up until now we couldn’t fully test this hypothesis as we didn’t know how fast fragmented objects rotate,” explained Drahus.

Measuring periodic fluctuations in brightness

He and his colleagues calculated the rotation period of the target object, P/2012 F5, through measurements of slight periodic fluctuations in brightness. These oscillations occur naturally as the irregular nucleus rotates about its spin axis, they explained, and reflect different amounts of sunlight during a different points in a rotation cycle.

“This is a well-established technique but its application on faint targets is challenging,” said Waclaw Waniak, a researcher at the Jagiellonian University who processed the Keck Observatory data. “The main difficulty is the brightness must to be probed every few minutes so we don’t have time for long exposures. We needed the huge collecting area of Keck II, which captures a plentiful amount of photons in a very short time.”

[STORY: Largest asteroid crater ever discovered in Australia]

While the data collected by Drahus and his colleagues is consistent with the rotational disruption scenario, he noted that possible alternative explanations for the asteroid’s breakup, such as a high speed collision with a smaller object, cannot be completely eliminated at this time.

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A nearly 250 mile (400 km) wide impact zone recently discovered in Central Australia is being called the largest asteroid-caused crater ever discovered, according to research published earlier this month in the international earth sciences journal Tectonophysics.

The impact craters were discovered hidden deep beneath the Earth’s crust by geophysicists from the Australian National University’s School of Archaeology and Anthropology, and according to Discovery News, they were caused by the most powerful asteroid impact ever discovered.

Lead investigator Dr. Andrew Glikson and his colleagues believe that the craters were created by a massive asteroid that broke into two pieces just prior to making impact, and the force generated by its violent collision likely had a devastating impact on creatures living at the time.

[VIDEO: Rare goblin shark found off Australia]

“The two asteroids must each have been over 10 kilometers across – it would have been curtains for many life species on the planet at the time,” explained Dr. Glikson, who is also affiliated with the ANU Planetary Science Institute. He added that “large impacts like these may have had a far more significant role in the Earth’s evolution than previously thought.”

A bit of a mystery

While the impact crater itself is long gone, buried 19 miles (30 km) beneath the surface in rock that is at least 300 million years old, its imprint on the Earth’s crust remains, the website said. It was found in the Warburton Basin in Central Australia, in a region close to the borders of South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, the researchers noted.

The asteroid believed to have caused the impact would have been far larger than the one that was responsible for the famous Chicxulub crater located beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which is believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago. The Warburton Basin impact zone is twice the size of the Chicxulub one, and was caused by two impactors, each about the same size as the six-mile (10 km) wide asteroid that caused the Mexican crater.

The impacts were discovered accidentally during a geothermal research project. While drilling more than a mile into the Earth’s crust, the team found traces of rocks that had been turned into glass by the extreme temperature and pressure resulting from a major impact event. A magnetic model of the deep crust there found chemical composition corresponding to that typically found in the mantle, including high amounts of iron and magnesium, the study authors said.

[STORY: ‘Horrific’ prehistoric shark makes appearance in Australia]

After the Chicxulub impact, a huge quantity of debris was shot into the atmosphere, covering the globe in a tell-tale layer of sediment. However, no such layer has been found in relation to the Warburton Basin event, Dr. Glikson said, which leads to a bit of a mystery, as he said that there is no evidence of a mass extinction event that matches the timing of the collisions.

For that reason, he believes that the impact might even be even more than 300 million years old. The goal now is to uncover additional evidence for the impact to determine exactly when it happened and what impact it had on the planet.

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The first “wet chemistry” experiment conducted by NASA’s Curiosity rover may have found  evidence of long-chain carboxylic acid, a fatty acid that could be the latest organic molecule to be discovered on Mars, researchers from the US space agency have revealed.

However, NASA scientist Daniel Glavin and his colleagues, who presented their findings at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Houston last week, caution that it is not possible at this time to determine whether or not the compound has a biological origin.

Contamination could also be to blame for the discovery, according to BBC News.

Does it answer the million dollar question?

The results were produced by Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which analyzes organics and gases from both atmospheric and solid samples. SAM was created by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, France’s Laboratoire Inter-Universitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA), Honeybee Robotics and multiple other partner agencies.

[STORY: Is Mars One legit?!]

Glavin explained that the fatty acid was a good fit for one of the data peaks in a mudstone called Cumberland, the British news agency noted. A form of alcohol molecule could be among the compounds analyzed, and while the preliminary finding is exciting because fatty acids play a key role in the cell membranes of most types of living organisms (excluding microbes).

However, while he said that the research was “provocative” and that its link to potential life on Mars was the “million dollar question,” Glavin said that it was every bit as possible that the signal had a non-biological origin at this point. Another scientist commending on the study told the BBC that contamination also could not be rules out as a cause of the findings.

Mass spec-ing the Red Planet

The SAM team, which previously found evidence of chlorobenzene in the same rock, has also been working on a chemical leak in the instrument. That chemical, MTBSTFA, has actually helped their research, they explained, because they have used their understanding of how the organic molecule interacts with other compounds to discover organic substances on Mars.

[STORY: Could the Death Star destroy a planet?]

The SAM instrument suite, which makes up more than half the science payload on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, features the same type of chemical equipment found in many Earth-based scientific laboratories, NASA said. It was created to search for compounds of the element carbon that are associated with life, and to figure out how they are created and destroyed in the Red Planet’s ecosphere.

Included among the instruments in the SAM suite are a mass spectrometer, gas chromatograph, and tunable laser spectrometer, they added. The mass spectrometer separates elements and compounds by mass for identification and measurement, while the gas chromatograph vaporizes soil and rock samples, separates the resulting gases into their components and analyzes them.

The laser spectrometer measures the abundance of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen isotopes in atmospheric gases such as methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. Those measurements are accurate to within 10 parts per thousand, and since those compounds are vital to living things, their abundances are essential when evaluating the potential habitability of Mars.

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On March 15, an amateur astronomer from Australia by the name of John Seach reported the discovery of a quickly brightening nova in the southern constellation Sagittarius.

[STORY: Astronomers discover oldest planetary system ever]

The nova, which has been (affectionately) named PNV J18365700-2855420, had not previously been visible but soared to magnitude 6.3 at the time of its discovery, according to National Geographic. It joins a long and growing list of objects discovered by weekend astronomers.

Which begs the question: how does someone report a newly located star, nova, comet, asteroid, or planet? What information do you need to collect if you think you’ve spotted something no one has ever seen before, and who do you even contact in such a situation?

Step #1: Confirm the discovery is both real and new

The first thing you should do, according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), is verify that what you’re looking at is actually a new object. They advise confirming the observation on multiple nights to ensure that it isn’t an instrumental artifact or “ghost image” caused by nearby bright objects, and obtaining multiple images of the objects to verify that it is real.

Monitor the object of the movement and its brightness. If there is definitely detectable movement the object may be a minor planet or comet, while if there is no movement, it could be a nova or a supernova. If the object has fluctuating brightness, it is neither a nova nor a supernova. It could be a normal variable star, a new variable star or the outburst of an unusual variable star.

[STORY: Lost asteroid rediscovered by amateur astronomer]

You should check the location of the object to see if there is already a verified object in that area. The IAU recommends placing the coordinates into a quality sky atlas, such as WIKISKY or The Digitized Sky Survey, consulting a list of confirmed objects like the CBAT supernova catalogue, the annual Comet Handbook, or the General Catalogue of Variable Stars, and contacting a local observatory for help confirming the discovery before filing an official report.

Step #2: Prepare a report

The exact information required on a report will vary somewhat based on the what type of object is being reported, but in general, every report should include: your name, address, phone number, email address, date and time of the observation, the method used (naked eye, telescope, photographic, etc., including specific details about instrumentation and type of exposures) and observation site (location name, latitude and longitude, elevation, etc.)

The IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, which handles comet discovery reports, asks that astronomers not send in any type of images, because they do not have the staff to look at the amount of photographic evidence they tend to receive. Those who wish to submit CCD images are asked to contact the bureau before doing so, and that they prefer that you first post the pictures to your own website and send to URL to the agency for review upon approval.

[STORY: Amateur astronomer creates map of Jupiter moon’s reflectivity]

On the other hand, the SOHO and Stereo Sungrazer Project does request images of the comets being reported, and note that it should appear in at least four different frames to be considered real. In addition to the photographic evidence, they ask you to send in the date, time, and position of the object for at least one image, as well as which telescope it was observed in and the origin of the coordinate system. A good general rule is to collect as much information as possible.

Step #3: Find the correct agency and file your report

Once you have conducted enough observations and compiled all of your data, it’s time to figure out exactly where you’re supposed to report your new discovery. For comets, supernovae, novae, and outbursts of unusual variable stars, the IAU recommends that you contact the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) which operates out of Harvard University.

For more routine or new variable stars, amateur astronomers can get in touch with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) or the IAU’s Commission on Variable Stars at Konkoly Observatory in Budapest. For objects such as minor planets and asteroids, reports may be filed to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), while the Fireball Data Center of the International Meteor Organization handles fireballs and meteorites.

[STORY: Astronomer discovers hydrogen river flowing in nearby galaxy]

Galaxies or nebulae will only be reclassified if an astronomer’s research is published in a peer-review scientific journal, the IAU added, and even then, the greater astronomy community must approve any updates to those databases. The agency itself does not accept scientific papers and instead recommends sending them to a publisher such as the American Astronomical Society or Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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A mysterious explosion observed by astronomers in the 17th century was not a nova, but a far more rare and violent type of stellar collision, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature and based on observations made with the ESO’s APEX telescope.

Back in the good ol’ days

The event, witnessed by European researchers in 1670, was spectacular enough to be observed with the naked eye during its first outburst, the observatory said in a statement. However, it also left behind faint traces that had to be analyzed with powerful sub-millimeter telescopes over 340 years later in order to discover the true source of these unusual explosions, they added.

[STORY: Astronomers capture first-ever image of nova exploding]

Johannes Hevelius, who discovered seven still-recognized constellations and has been dubbed the father of lunar topography, was among the astronomers that documented the appearance of a new star in the skies in 1670. Originally described as Hevelius as nova sub capite Cygni (a new star below the head of the swan), it is now known as Nova Vulpeculae 1670.

“For many years this object was thought to be a nova, but the more it was studied the less it looked like an ordinary nova – or indeed any other kind of exploding star,” explained lead author Tomasz Kamiński of the ESO and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

At first, Nova Vul 1670 could easily be seen without the need for telescopes, and over a span of two years, it varied greatly in brightness. It actually vanished and returned twice before it finally disappeared for good. While it was well documented for the era, the early astronomers alive at the time lacked the equipment required to solve the riddle of its unusual activity.

[STORY: Rare dwarf galaxies found orbiting the Milky Way]

Astronomers came to realize that most novae could be explained by the explosive behavior of close binary stars during the 1900s, but the model still did not seem to apply to Nova Vul 1670, so it remained a mystery. It wasn’t until the 1980s that astronomers first realized that Nova Vul 1670 did not disappear completely, but that a faint nebula remained around its location.

It wasn’t until Kamiński and his colleagues investigated that area using the APEX telescope, the Submillimeter Array (SMA), and the Effelsberg radio telescope that they found a cool gas that had an unusual chemical composition surrounding the remnant. Thanks to their efforts, they were able to compile a detailed account of the region’s makeup.

What they discovered was that the mass of the cool material was too great to have originated from a nova explosion, and that the isotope ratios surrounding Nova Vul 1670 were different to those expected from a nova.

So if it wasn’t a nova, what was it?

As it turns out, the phenomenon is the result of a collision between two stars that is more brilliant than a nova but not as bright as a supernova. The collision produces what is known as a red transient, in which a star explodes due to a merger with another star and ejects material into space.

[STORY: Astronomers trace origin of gamma rays back to nova explosions]

These events are rare, the researchers explained, and ultimately they leave behind just a faint remnant embedded in a cool environment, rich in molecules and dust. This new class of stellar eruptions precisely fits the profile of Nova Vul 1670, leading to a discovery that co-author and Max Planck Institute researcher Karl Menten called “completely unexpected.”

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As New Horizons spacecraft draws ever closer to Pluto en route to its planned close-encounter this summer, NASA is already hard at work reviewing potential candidates for its next destination, according to recent reports.

[STORY: Using a telescope to dig for ice on Pluto]

Officials at the US space agency used the Hubble Space Telescope to review objects located in the Kuiper belt in search of suitably-positioned objects which could be reached by New Horizons in an extended mission, Irene Klotz of Discovery News explained on Friday.

The New Horizons team spent 45 days last summer scouting potential targets, and out of the five that made original cut, two potential destinations remained after a second round of observations that took place in October, NASA scientists announced earlier this week at the 46th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

Those two objects are 2014 MT69 and 2014 MT70, and they were chosen because both of them are within range of the spacecraft, which has a limited amount of fuel remaining. The agency is expected to announce which target will be selected in August, but a potential mission to either one is dependent upon NASA funding an extended mission for New Horizons.

The 2 candidates

The first of the two candidates, 2014 MT69, is described as a 37 mile (60 kilometer) wide body that orbits the sun at a distance 44.3 times that of Earth. The advantage of it is that it would take less fuel to reach, and New Horizons could arrive there on or around January 1, 2019.

[STORY: New Horizons begins first approach phase around Pluto]

“It’s not a terribly bright target and it’s not very big… and it’s quite possibly smaller, if it’s a binary or if other things are going on,” New Horizons team member Simon Porter, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, told Discovery News on Friday.

The other candidate, 2014 MT70, is brighter and most likely larger than MT60. It has a diameter of approximately 47 miles (76 kilometers), and Porter said that it is more desirable, scientifically speaking. A mission to either one of them would also include distant observations of as many other Kuiper belt objects as possible, he added.

Currently, Porter said that MT69 “is the front-runner” because it requires less of a change in velocity (Delta-v), but noted that its dim nature could require the use of more fuel for course corrections. He added that the position of the sun may has be an obstacle to the encounter.

[STORY: Pluto may be hiding two other planets, scientists say]

First, however, the spacecraft has a date with the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons.

In late January, New Horizons captured new photos of Pluto when it was over 126 million miles (nearly 203 million kilometers) away from the dwarf planet. The images, taken with the craft’s Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), were the first taken during its 2015 approach to the Pluto system, which culminates with a July 14 flyby, according to NASA.

“Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light,” Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said at the time. “LORRI has now resolved Pluto, and the dwarf planet will continue to grow larger and larger in the images as New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward its targets.”

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The International Space Station (ISS) has been in service for nearly 15 years, been visited by hundreds of astronauts, travelled well over 1.5 billion miles and provided invaluable scientific research. But have you ever stopped to wonder why it looks so… odd?

[STORY: The moon got its shape from tidal forces]

Let’s face it, as wonderful as the ISS is, it doesn’t look near as badass as the orbital outposts that are depicted in science fiction (Star Trek’s Deep Space 9 or the Death Star, for example). So why did NASA and its international colleagues choose to give it such an unusual shape?

As it turns out, they didn’t, according to Robert Frost, an instructor and engineer in the US space agency’s Flight Operations Directorate and the author of a Quora article (reprinted by Gizmodo) that dishes the dirt on why the station lacks the sleek designs of its fictional counterparts.

“Where a fictional spacecraft has the luxury of having its design dictated by style, real spacecraft are constrained by budget, tradeoffs, and practicality,” Frost wrote. “Every feature of the ISS can be explained by those words.”

[STORY: Astronaut builds Lego ISS model in space]

“We don’t yet have the technology to do construction in space, so we have to assemble a large vehicle in space from launch-able components,” he added. “At the time of the ISS assembly, the two mechanisms for getting a large payload to space were the Space Shuttle Orbiter and the Russian Proton rocket. Those two sentences explain a lot of the ISS appearance.”

Frost went on to explain that the ISS had to be assembled from pieces that were small enough to find in the space shuttle’s payload bay, or in the cargo compartment of a Proton rocket. As such, the maximum length and diameter of these components were limited, forcing crews to rely upon pieces that were primarily cylindrical in shape and able to be linked together.

Parts had to fly themselves

The delivery vehicles also mandated certain other characteristics, he added. While the shuttle could transport unpowered cylinders, remove it from the payload bay and attach is using a robot arm, the Proton rocket had to leave its payload in orbit. The components would then have to fly themselves to the ISS, meaning that all of the Russian modules are active spacecraft, complete with fuel tanks, thrusters, navigation equipment, and a communications array.

[STORY: 3D-printed parts from ISS sent back to Earth]

The power required to generate the several laboratories used on the space station also required the use of enormous solar arrays, nearly an entire football field in size, Frost explained. Since the angle to the sun changes while the ISS is in orbit around the Earth, those arrays needed to be able to rotate so that they could always be facing the sun, further complicating the design.

Solar arrays

The energy requirement “dictates that those solar arrays need to have unobstructed paths – unobstructed not just in their rotation, but unobstructed in their line of sight to the sun. So we mount the solar arrays off to the sides and we keep the profile of the rest of the vehicle low,” he said. “Similarly, we need to be able to reject heat to space and thus need to have large radiators. Those radiators need to be able to articulate so that they aren’t in direct sunlight.”

“To hold those solar arrays we need rigid structures that can handle the twisting torques of the solar array rotation and drag,” Frost added. “That’s the big horizontal bar across the vehicle. The trusses are not pressurized modules, but they aren’t wasted space. The trusses are full of equipment like batteries and coolant pumps. The ISS needs to stay powered during night passes, so several very large batteries are needed.”

The NASA engineer added that the station needed to be designed in such a way to give the crew unimpeded access to docking vehicles, the ability to reach berthing ports with its robotic arm and power, data, and consumables connectivity. They also need stable attitude control of the stack, as well as ensuring that the communications and GPS antennae are not blocked by obstructions.

Science fiction is just that – fiction

“When I watch science fiction,” Frost said, “I find myself looking at the smooth, uniform, symmetrical ships and asking myself questions like ‘How do they reject heat? Where are they getting their electrical power? Where are the communications antennae? How does a docking vehicle avoid pluming? … Where the heck did they build that thing? And so on.’”

[STORY: ISS adding more spaceship parking]

“The ISS is all about function over form,” he added. “Every little projection, every little change in color, every change in dimension on the ISS is for a explicit engineering reason.”

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Finding a way to explain exactly what dark matter and dark energy are, while also finding a way to reconcile quantum theory and general relativity, has long been a struggle for physicists, but a new study may have found a way to provide a satisfactory solution to these mysteries.

[STORY: Chandra helps locate one of the most powerful black holes ever]

Writing in the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics, Stuart Marongwe of the McConnell College Physics Department in Botswana has reportedly come up with a self-consistent theory of quantum gravity that explains the dark sector while still being in agreement with existing observations.

Nexus graviton

Marongwe proposes a theory known as Nexus in that it provides a link between quantum theory and general relativity in the form of the Nexus graviton.

This phenomenon is a composite spin 2 particle of space-time which emerges naturally from the unification process, and one unique feature of the Nexus graviton which distinguishes it from the graviton hypothesized in the Standard Model is that it is not a messenger particle. Actually, it causes constant rotational motion on any test particle that is embedded inside of it.

[STORY: Seen ‘Interstellar’? You’ve seen a ‘realistic’ black hole]

Furthermore, the Nexus graviton can also be considered as a globule of vacuum energy that is capable of merging and separating from others in a process not unlike that of cytokineses in cell biology. The Nexus graviton is dark matter and constitutes space-time.

The emission of a graviton of least energy by a higher-energy one results in the expansion of the high-energy graviton as it takes on a lower-energy state, Marongwe explained – a process which takes place throughout space-time and manifests as dark energy, based on the theory.

The Schwarzschild approach

Marongwe refers to this as “the Schwarzschild approach” in his paper, adding that it “is applied to solve the field equations describing a Nexus graviton field. The resulting solutions are free from singularities which have been a problem in general relativity since its inception.”

“Findings from this work also demonstrate that at the Hubble radius, the metric signature of space-time changes are generating short-lived but intense bursts of energy during the transition process,” he added. “The solutions in this paper also provide an explanation to the enigma of late time cosmic acceleration, the galaxy rotation curve problem and the coincidence problem.”

[STORY: Distant black hole duo locked in a circling dance]

His study helps provide new insight into some of the more puzzling issues in physics, including providing a quantum description of black holes without singularities inherent in the classical theory of general relativity. Marongwe believes that the methods used in his research and the solutions it provides will lead to new developments in the field of physics.

In January, scientists at the University of Southampton proposed a new fundamental particle that could help detect dark matter, which is believed to make up 85 percent of the universe’s mass. In contrast to the standard view that that dark matter has a very large mass, similar to those of heavy atoms, the researchers proposed the existence of low-mass dark matter particles.

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A spacesuit is an astronaut’s best friend, keeping the person wearing it from succumbing to the harsh conditions that exist beyond the Earth’s orbit, and to ensure that they work properly. Each one of these protective suits undergoes a series of rigorous tests at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Earlier this week, a team of engineers and technicians began one such trial, taking part in what is known as a Vacuum Pressure Integrated Suit Test to make sure that recent alternations to the suit can meet test and design standards for use on future Orion spacecraft launches.

[STORY: Iron Man-like suits are now being tested]

As the US space agency explained, the spacesuits are connected to life support systems during the test. The air is then removed from the 11-foot thermal vacuum chamber at the Johnson Space Center to gauge how well they would perform in real-life conditions similar to this.

Known as the Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit, it is described as a closed-loop version of the launch and entry suits that were used by space shuttle astronauts. The suits will contain all of the functions required to support life, and are being designed to enable spacewalks. In addition, they are being designed to help keep astronauts alive should their spacecraft lose pressure.

Lying down on the job

Images of the test show the NASA engineers lying down, but as Gizmodo points out, the photos are misleading, as “the experience isn’t as relaxing as it looks.” The research that they are participating in is essential to the future of the American space program, and it is just one of the four tests the suits will undergo before they get the thumbs-up for use in deep space missions.

[STORY: Spacesuits of the future could act like shrink-wrap]

The 11 Foot Chamber is, as its name would suggest, is an 11 foot (3.4 meter) diameter and 19 foot (5.8 meter) long test site that is outfitted with dual airlock compartments used for testing in a vacuum environment and for spacesuit development. A third, smaller compartment located in the chamber is used for reduced pressure and manned/unmanned testing.

The Johnson Space Center is also home to the 20 Foot Chamber, a vacuum chamber with two airlocks, a rapid decompression chamber, and removable bulkhead on the outerlock compartment. The center also hosts Chamber B, a test facility used for human testing in a vacuum environment that contains a traversing monorail that provides weight relief to one suited crewmember at a time.

Other test areas at the Houston-based facility include the Dual Glove Box Thermal Vacuum Chamber, which is located inside the 11-Foot Chamber’s outer airlock and allows the use of EMU arms and gloves for test operations, and the Space Station (ISS) Airlock, a human-rated, high fidelity spacewalk hardware testing, certification, and flight crew training facility.

[STORY: Spacesuit prototype chosen by public]

These testing areas are crucial to making sure that an astronaut’s gear can survive space travel – especially the spacesuits that these men and women count on to keep them safe once they enter the vacuum of outer space. After all, as NASA explains, they keep astronauts from getting too hot or too cold, provides air, and protects them from space dust, and shields their eyes from bright sunlight with a special gold-lined visor.

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The comet currently being observed by the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft may actually be made entirely of pebbles, scientists involved with the mission explained earlier this week at the 46th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

[STORY: NASA: Comets are like fried ice cream]

According to NewScientist, François Poulet of the CIVA camera team presented an in-depth analysis of the first images of Rosetta’s Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P). (What a mouthful.) He reported that the pictures indicate that parts of the surface around that location appear to be made out of aggregated pebbles, while others tended to be smoother.

The CIVA instrument is a suite of six micro-cameras used to capture panoramic pictures of the surface, as well as a spectrometer studies the composition, texture and the albedo (or reflectivity) of samples collected from the comet’s surface. Poulet said that the discovery of the pebbles was a good sign because they match-up with one existing model of how comets form.

That model proposes that miniature particles in the early universe clumped together to form pebbles approximately one-centimeter in size, but that those pebbles did not necessarily grow to be increasingly larger objects. Rather, they come together but retain their original shape, which is what Poulet’s team discovered, indicating that Comet 67P “could be totally made of pebbles.”

Pebble accretion

The comet originated from the Kuiper belt, a region located beyond the dwarf planet Pluto that is filled with icy objects left over from the formation of our solar system over 4.5 billion years ago. If the data collected by Philae during the short period it was operational after it touched down on comet is true, it will force experts to re-examine how pebbles as large as those observed on 67P were able to form so far away from the sun, Discovery News explained on Thursday.

[STORY: Rosetta: A timeline of deep space comet encounters]

“The pebble accretion is kind of a new idea,” Donald Brownlee, an astronomer at the University of Washington, told the website. He explained that the theory suggests that the motion of gas can trap and transport medium-sized pebbles, which in turn attract more gas “like a magnet.”

Rosetta’s comet could be the first entity to provide actual evidence of this hypothesis, he noted. However, he and his colleagues previously found hints that comets might be large collections of pebbles in 2004, when NASA’s Stardust spacecraft flew past a comet called Wild-2 and brought back samples back to Earth.

Brownlee told Discovery News that his team found “some blocks that were clearly stronger than their surrounding material, but… we thought the surrounding material was just ablating away and leaving their original blocks. Rosetta is seeing huge numbers of these things, so my guess is those are original accreted materials… debris that was out there in the Kuiper belt.”

[STORY: Is Rosetta’s comet falling apart?]

That material may have been collected to form the comet, and the fact that they were able to survive intact indicates that they could not have been travelling at high speeds, he added. The Rosetta and Philae mission scientists have reportedly mapped hundreds of these objects.

“We can’t tell yet if these are really all throughout the interior of the comet,” Holger Sierks, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, told Discovery News. However, he noted that the pebbles found thus far are too large to be in line with existing models of how objects in the outer solar system form.

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The smallest planet in the solar system is getting smaller, with the most recent estimates indicating that Mercury’s diameter has shrunk by an estimated 8.5 miles (14 kilometers) during its 4.5 billion years of existence, according to a recent Nature Geosciences study. Is there a giant shrink ray in space? Maybe.

It is just one of the quirks of an unusual planet which, according to National Geographic, could potentially harbor organic materials in the permanently shadowed craters at the its north pole and contains host a significant amount of water ice despite its proximity to the sun.

[STORY: Bumblebees shrinking thanks to pesticides]

Mercury’s shrinkage has long been a fascinating phenomenon. In March 2014, data obtained from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft revealed that the planet had contracted into itself and lost more than four miles (7 kilometers) of elevation in some parts, resolving a paradox between thermal history models and previous estimates of Mercury’s contractions.

Why is Mercury shrinking? The answer lies in the rigid, outermost shell of the planet known as the lithosphere. On Earth, the lithosphere is divided into a series of tectonic plates that can slip underneath one another to accommodate this contraction. On Mercury, however, it is one large entity, so when its surface crinkles, it forms long, steep cliffs with curved edges.

Raisin skin surface

These features are known as lobate scarps, and while some of them are small, others can grow to be up to 600 miles long and two miles high, Paul Byrne, author of the study and a planetary geologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, told Nat Geo. These surface wrinkles are said to be similar to those appearing on a raisin skin as it begins to dry out and shrivel up.

[STORY: Fatty acids provide hope for shrinking brains]

Water loss isn’t to blame for Mercury shrinking, however. The planet is growing smaller because of cooling and contracting taking place within its iron-rich metallic core, the website noted. As a general rule, Byrne said, more contraction produces scarps that are taller, longer and steeper, and by measuring their length and height, experts can calculate how much shrinking is taking place.

Scarps and ridges

In their new study, Byrne and his colleagues identified and measured nearly 6,000 scarps and ridges on the planet’s surface, then calculated that Mercury’s diameter might have shrunk by as little as 5.7 miles (9.2 kilometers) or as much as 8.8 miles (14.2 kilometers).

These figures are closer to predictions than previous observations, and “are helping resolve a discrepancy between theory and observation that has existed since Mariner 10 first swooped in and took some photos of the little planet in the mid-1970s,” National Geographic reported.

One unexpected discovery, though, is that Mercury is not contracting uniformly. Rather, the wrinkles and scarps are distributed unevenly throughout its surface, and some regions (including the Northern volcanic plains) are showing more evidence of shrinkage than others.

[STORY: Mercury has unusual tectonic landforms]

“I think it’s probably the result of variations in the strength of rocks across and within the planet,” Byrne told the website. “Some parts of the planet’s lithosphere are likely stronger than others, and so the outcome of their response to stresses due to global contraction will probably look different – either in terms of shapes of structure, distribution of structures, or both.”

Scarps continue to form, and as Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum told Nat Geo this week, those features “really are exciting because they’re showing us that new faults are forming on Mercury as a result of the most recent phase of interior cooling and global contraction. These faults are so young that they’re probably forming today.”

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Most stars in the Milky Way have between one and three planets in the habitable zone, the region where worlds can support liquid surface water, scientists from the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen report in a new study.

[STORY: Planet-hunting Kepler turns six]

By analyzing the thousands of exoplanets discovered in our galaxy thus far, the researchers have calculated the probability for the number of stars in the Milky Way that might have planets in the habitable zone. As they reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the calculations show that billions of those stars could have planets in the habitable zone.

Kepler is on point

Based on information collected by NASA’s Kepler satellite, astronomers have found about 1,000 planets around stars in the Milky Way, as well as approximately 3,000 other potential worlds, the study authors explained. Many of those stars have planetary systems of two to six planets found to date, but they might also have more planets that cannot be detected using Kepler.

Kepler is best suited for finding large planets that orbit relatively close to their stars, and since those that orbit at that distance would be too hot to support life, the researchers used a modified version of the Titius-Bode law: a 250-year-old method technique that uses numbers to show the relationships between planetary orbital periods and their distance from the Sun.

[STORY: Did Mars ever have a habitable environment?]

The law, which correctly calculated the position of Uranus before it was discovered, states that there is a certain ratio between the orbital periods of planets in a solar system. The ratio between the orbital period of the first and second is the same that the ratio between the second and third and so on.

Knowing how long it takes for some planets to orbit around a star can allow scientists to figure out how long it takes for other planets to orbit, and can be used to calculate the position of those worlds in the planetary system It can also be used to detect “missing” planets in the sequence.

“We decided to use this method to calculate the potential planetary positions in 151 planetary systems, where the Kepler satellite had found between 3 and 6 planets,” Steffen Kjær Jacobsen, a PhD student in the research group Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, explained in a statement.

[STORY: Gas planets could transform into habitable worlds]

“In 124 of the planetary systems, the Titius-Bode law fit with the position of the planets,” added Jacobsen. “Using T-B’s law we tried to predict where there could be more planets further out in the planetary systems. But we only made calculations for planets where there is a good chance that you can see them with the Kepler satellite.”

In 27 of the 151 planetary systems, observed planets did not initially fit the T-B law, prompting the researchers to place planets into the pattern for where missing worlds would be located. They added those planets between already identified ones, and added one additional planet beyond the outermost known one in each system to predict a total of 228 total planets in the 151 systems.

“We then made a priority list with 77 planets in 40 planetary systems to focus on because they have a high probability of making a transit, so you can see them with Kepler,” Jacobsen said. “We have encouraged other researchers to look for these. If they are found, it is an indication that the theory stands up.”

[STORY: ‘Habitable’ planet GJ 581d might exist; astronomers at odds]

He and his colleagues evaluated the number of planets in the habitable zone based on the extra planets added to each of the 151 systems, and came up with between one and three planets in the habitable zone for each planetary system. They followed that up by taking an additional look at 31 planetary systems where planets had already been found in the habitable zone, or where just one additional planet was needed to meet the requirements.

“In these 31 planetary systems that were close to the habitable zone, our calculations showed that there was an average of two planets in the habitable zone,” Jacobsen said. “According to the statistics and the indications we have, a good share of the planets in the habitable zone will be solid planets where there might be liquid water and where life could exist.”

If the findings are then applied further outward into space, it would mean that there would be billions of stars with planets in the habitable zone in the Milky Way alone, he added. The study authors now hope that other scientists will review the Kepler data for the 40 planetary systems they predict should be well placed for observations conducted using the satellite.

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The mysterious ‘Y’ shape that has been seen covering the planet Venus for over five decades is the result of a never-before-seen type of wave being distorted by the planet’s winds, according to new research published in a recent edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

Astronomers have long found Venus to be a mysterious world because its surface is hidden by the planet’s thick clouds, but attempts to examine it in ultraviolet wavelengths of light revealed yet another mystery – a dark, Y-shaped anomaly resting along the equator, said Space.com.

[STORY: Mysterious surface of Venus mapped with Earth-based radar]

That structure covers nearly all of Venus. It has arms that are over 10,500 miles (17,000 km) long and a stem that is 11,900 miles (19,200 km) long. When it was first discovered more than 50 years ago, scientists believed that it was nothing more than clouds blowing in the wind, but data from the 1973 Mariner 10 mission proved otherwise.

Observations from Mariner 10 revealed that the structure not only moved as though it was one single entity, but it traveled at a different speed than its surrounding environment, Space.com said. It is made of a yet-unknown compound that can absorb UV radiation, and by tracking how it moved, experts discovered that the planet’s atmosphere rotates faster than Venus itself.

Y is it there?

While researchers previously believed that the Y feature was caused by waves in the atmosphere, no model of the planet was able to reproduce how it originated and evolved, the website noted. Now, however, scientists at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain have discovered a new type of wave system that could be responsible for creating the unique and iconic structure.

[STORY: Venus may have had seas of carbon dioxide]

“So far, no model has simultaneously reproduced its shape, temporal evolution, related wind field, nor the relation between its dynamics and the unknown UV-absorbing aerosol that produces its dark morphology,” the authors wrote. “In this paper we present an analytical model for a Kelvin-like wave that offers an explanation of these peculiarities.”

“Under Venus cyclostrophic conditions, this wave is equatorially and vertically trapped where zonal winds peak and extends 7 km in altitude, and its vertical wind perturbations are shown to produce upwelling of the UV absorber. The Y-feature morphology and its 30-day evolution are reproduced as distortions of the wave structure by the Venus winds,” they added.

When a planet spins, Space.com explained, a phenomenon known as the Coriolis effect causes air masses on its surface to apparently deviate on curved paths. Previous studies suggested that atmospheric waves based on this effect may have played a role in creating the Y feature, but lead author Javier Peralta told the website that “the Coriolis effect is negligible on Venus.”

[STORY: Can vision be improved by controlling brain waves?]

Peralta and his colleagues discovered that centrifugal forces, which cause items on a spinning object to move away from the center of rotation, could be responsible for creating the Y feature. These forces could cause denser substances to move outward, and the study authors believe that this new wave can cause the currently unidentified UV light-absorbing material on the planet to well upwards, which could explain the dark color of the Y feature.

Shaping up

As for its unusual shape, the Peralta’s team explained that the part of Venus between its equator and its middle latitudes is home to a strong westward-blowing wind that travels at fairly constant speeds. At higher latitudes near the poles, however, they swirl far more quickly, which causes the wave to become distorted and caused the Y-shape appearance of the phenomenon.

The wave exists around the cloud tops of Venus, where the atmospheric winds are at their most intense, not just the planet’s equator. The researchers believe that this could help explain why the Y feature is only seen at altitudes of no more than five miles, and could also shed new light on the behavior of other planets that rotate slowly.

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NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has for the first time captured a detailed time-lapse image of a “mini supernova” that they believe could reveal new information about the dynamics of far larger stellar explosions, the US space agency announced earlier this week. Here’s a video to get you in the explosion mood.

Dai Takei of the RIKEN SPring-8 Center in Japan and his colleagues used Chandra to observe GK Persei, an object discovered in 1901 that appeared as one of the brightest stars in the sky for only a few days before it started gradually becoming increasingly dimmer. Today, experts know that GK Persei is an example of what is known as a “classical nova.”

[VIDEO: Bright explosion on the Moon]

A classical nova, NASA explained, is an outburst created by a thermonuclear explosion that occurs on the surface of a white dwarf star, the dense remnant of a Sun-like star. They take place when a white dwarf’s powerful gravity pulls in enough hydrogen gas and other materials from an orbiting companion star to cause nuclear fusion reactions to occur and intensify.

If enough material accumulates, it can result in a “cosmic-sized hydrogen bomb blast,” blowing away the other layers of the white dwarf and producing a nova outburst that can be observed for a period of at least several months. These classical novas are essentially small-scale versions of supernova explosions, which are far brighter and result in the destruction of an entire star.

[STORY: Supernova may become visible from Earth in 50 years]

There is a tremendous amount of interest in supernovas, which inject tremendous amounts of energy into interstellar gas. They are responsible for disperses iron, calcium, oxygen, and other elements into space, where they may one day become part of the next generation of planets and stars. However, because these phenomena only last long, they have been difficult to study.

UNTIL NOW…

Because of the enormous amount of time during which that stellar explosions take place, experts have traditionally turned to both computer simulations and different supernovas believed to be in different stages of evolution. Now, however, Takei and his fellow investigators hope to use their observations of GK Persei to learn more about the expansion of gases in the universe.

“I wanted to understand how these explosions unfold, but there were many obstacles,” Takei said in a statement. “We thus took on the challenge of… studying the expansion of a classical nova explosion, since this process is expected to develop within approximately a human lifetime. The GK Persei nova… provided the perfect model for our study.”

[STORY: Autopsy of supernova’s aftermath yields surprising results]

Since the classical nova’s development is fairly rapid in comparison to supernovas, his team used X-ray snapshots collected by Chandra in 2000 and 2013 and compared the emissions created due to the expanding gases heat the interstellar medium into plasma during that time frame.

They discovered that, while the nova remnant expanded by approximately 90 billion kilometers during that 14-year span, the temperature of the plasma remained at a nearly constant one million degrees Celsius. The light was fading but the energy of the dominant photons had not changed, suggesting that the nova remnant was expanding into a region of lower density.

[STORY: Do fart-filtering underpants actually work?]

“For the first time, we have a detailed image of how the nova propagates through space,” Takei said. “Through this kind of study, we hope to be able to understand exactly how these powerful explosions expand into interstellar space, and it may ultimately give us new insights into the history of the cosmos.”

Their findings appear in the April 2015 edition of The Astrophysical Journal.

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In you live in the northern US and were up late last night, you were probably treated to one heck of a light show! After a long night of St. Patty’s partying, you might have thought that you just imagined the green streaks in the sky, but you didn’t! The lights were courtesy of a rare atmospheric event that helped make the aurora borealis visible as far south as Michigan, as well as in some parts of Europe and Asia.

Also known as the Northern Lights, the aurora is typically visible only in the Arctic, but the combination of a severe geomagnetic storm and clear skies in many parts of the world (including the upper Midwest, Ohio Valley, and parts of the Mid-Atlantic in the US and the northern part of the UK) brought the phenomenon to a far larger audience, according to Mashable.

Even the sun celebrates St. Patty’s Day

Geomagnetic storms are disturbances of Earth’s magnetosphere that take place when there is a highly efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding the planet. These space weather events result from solar wind variations that produce significant changes in the currents, plasmas, and fields in Earth’s magnetosphere.

[STORY: The world’s best places to see auroras]

The solar wind conditions required to produce geomagnetic storms are sustained (lasting for at least several hours) period of high-speed solar wind, and more importantly, a southward-aimed solar wind magnetic field (opposite that of Earth’s) at the magnetosphere’s dayside. The enables the most effective energy-transfer from the solar wind into Earth’s magnetosphere.

Tuesday’s geomagnetic storm was likely caused by the combination of a pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from an active sunspot region the Washington Post said. Models originally predicted just a “glancing blow” from the CMEs, but the disruptions wound up being far more intense than expected, they added.

Bob Rutledge, lead forecaster at the Space Weather Prediction Center, told reporters that the storm had reached its peak intensity as of early Tuesday afternoon, but that conditions could last for another 12 hours, after which time it would begin to decay. While the Center had received no reports of interference with satellite electronics and high-latitude flights, Rutledge said that there was a chance that some GPS and sat nav systems could be disrupted.

[STORY: NASA-funded sounding rocket to fly into heart of aurora]

Previous geomagnetic storms of this caliber (G4 intensity on a five-point scale) had resulted in reports of aurora sightings “as far south as Tennessee, New Mexico, and Oklahoma,” said Brent Gordon, the center’s branch chief. He added that “a lot of factors go into whether you can see the aurora, cloud cover most importantly, and proximity to city lights. We are favorable in terms of the moon being crescent, which will give us pretty dark skies.”

Mashable noted that there is “no precise way” to predict whether or not the Northern Lights will be visible in the south, but the center does provide a series of tracking aids on its website, such as the Planetary K-Index, which measures the magnitude of geomagnetic storms. Real-time maps of aurora likelihood and short-term forecast models are also available online.

[STORY: Christmas lights from space]

How do you know if the lights you saw in the sky actually was the aurora? In an article for Slate.com, meteorologist Eric Holthaus said that if it the Northern Lights aren’t all that active, they will appear as “a faint green glow just above the horizon” that can easily be confused with “light light pollution from a nearby city.”

“The key difference is the aurora will be gradually morphing over time. If you set up a long-duration exposure on your camera (at least 30 seconds), you may notice faint pillars of green emanating upwards from the horizon. That’s the aurora,” he explained.

Those who are more fortunate or live further north may see the aurora as “vertically oriented greenish-gray streaks in the sky,” Holthaus added. “If you’re really lucky, it’ll be obvious (and breathtaking) that what you’re seeing is the northern lights – the continuously changing pillars of greens (oxygen) and reds (neon) and purples (argon) are caused by high-energy particles from the sun tunneling into the Earth’s upper atmosphere.”

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A pair of mysterious bright spots detected on Ceres during the Dawn spacecraft’s approach to the dwarf planet appear to be made of ice, mission scientists reported Tuesday during the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

[STORY: Uh, what are those bright spots on Ceres?]

The spots, which were originally detected by the NASA probe in February, were located in the same basin on the dwarf planet’s surface and reflected about 40 percent of the light that was hitting them. At first, it appeared that there was only one bright spot, but as Dawn drew closer to Ceres en route to its March 6 rendezvous with the dwarf planet, a second became visible, leaving us all baffled. What were these bright spots?

Experts were puzzled as to the potential origin of the bright spots. The presence of the second one hinted that they may have had a “volcano-like origin,” Dawn principal investigator Chris Russell has said previously. Ice was another possible explanation, as scientists had previously detected water vapor coming from the dwarf planet’s surface.

Ice, ice baby

While ice would probably reflect more than 40 percent of the light that hit it, the resolution limits of Dawn’s imaging equipment at its current distance may make it appear otherwise, the researchers explained. A third possibility was that the areas were patches of salt, but scientists could not say for sure until Dawn reached Ceres and collected more data.

Now, as Eric Hand of Science reported on Tuesday, it appears that those who chose ice in their “what caused those bright spots to form on Ceres” office bet are a little richer this morning. Not only that, but the ice may even be emitting water vapor into space on a daily basis, he noted.

[STORY: Bright clumps in Saturn ring now mysteriously scarce]

Officially known as “feature #5,” the bright spots were originally detected by the Hubble Space Telescope as resting within a nearly 50 mile (80 km) wide crater. Dawn has allowed scientists to get a better look at the feature, however, and is close to resolving the 2.5-mile (4 km) spots.

During the conference, Andreas Nathues, principal investigator for Dawn’s framing camera, explained that the spectral characteristics of the feature are consistent with ice, and that the fact that the brightness is visible even when the spacecraft is looking on edge at the crater rim seems to indicate that it is outgassing water vapor above the rim and into space.

“Ceres seems to be indeed active,” Nathues told Hand. The feature becomes brighter during the course of a day, and then appears to switch off at night – behavior that the Dawn scientist points out is similar to that of a comet.

[STORY: Confederate submarine mystery may finally be solved]

Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, was the second location visited by Dawn. In 2011 and 2012, the spacecraft visited the giant asteroid Vesta, and while it was there, it collected over 30,000 images and several measurements of the object. As a result, scientists learned far more about its composition and geology.

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