Category Astronomy/Space

A team from US, France, U.K. is reporting data sent back by Mars rover Curiosity suggests Mars may have once had a continental crust similar to Earth. They describe 20 rocks that had been probed by the rover, and why their findings suggest a different history for the planet than has been thought. Researchers believe they have found evidence that suggests that rather than a lack of magmatic planetary activity, which should have been evident in rock samples showing mostly basalt, rock samples are full of silica and have a rich composition.

The light-colored rock samples are from an area inside the Gale Crater (in the southern hemisphere near Mount Sharp) and have been dated back to approximately 3.6B years ago...

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After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tues, 7,750 miles above the surface – roughly the same distance from NY to Mumbai, India – making it the 1st-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.

“New Horizons is the latest in a long line of scientific accomplishments at NASA, including multiple missions orbiting and exploring the surface of Mars in advance of human visits still to come; the remarkable Kepler mission to identify Earth-like planets around stars other than our own; and the DSCOVR satellite that soon will be beaming back images of the whole Earth in near real-time from a vantage point a million miles away...

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A new NASA study of ocean temperature measurements shows in recent years extra heat from greenhouse gases has been trapped in the waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans. Researchers say this shifting pattern of ocean heat accounts for the slowdown in the global surface temperature trend observed during the past decade. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), CA, found a specific layer of the Indian and Pacific oceans between 300 and 1,000 ft below the surface has been accumulating more heat than previously recognized. They also found warm water movt has affected surface temps.

“Greenhouse gases continued to trap extra heat (in the 20th century), but for about 10 years starting in the early 2000s, global average surface temperature stopped climbing, and even cooled a bit,” said Willis...

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Fast-moving magnetic waves emanating from a distant supermassive black hole undulate like a whip whose handle is being shaken by a giant hand, according to a new study using National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array. Scientists used this instrument to explore the galaxy/black hole system known as BL Lacertae (BL Lac) in high resolution.
The findings help researchers understand how black holes produce jets.

“The waves are excited by a shaking motion of the jet at its base,” said David Meier. It’s the 1st time Alfven waves have been identified in a black hole system. They are generated when magnetic field lines, such as those from the sun or a disk around a black hole, interact with ions, and become twisted or coiled into a helical shape...

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