Category Astronomy/Space

The solar system’s largest moon, Ganymede, is captured here alongside the planet Jupiter in a color picture taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 3, 2000.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

A recently published study led by researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology reveals Ganymede, an icy moon of Jupiter, appears to have undergone complex periods of geologic activity, specifically strike-slip tectonism, as is seen in Earth’s San Andreas fault. This is the first study to exhaustively consider the role of strike-slip tectonism in Ganymede’s geologic history.

Plate tectonics is the process on Earth that has created many familiar large scale features – oceanic and continental crust, mountain ranges, mid-ocean ridges, for example...

Stars at the center of the Milky Way.
Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al.

Astronomers from Lund University in Sweden have now found the explanation to a recent mystery at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy: the high levels of scandium discovered last spring near the galaxy’s giant black hole were in fact an optical illusion.

Last spring, researchers published a study about the apparent presence of astonishing and dramatically high levels of three different elements in red giant stars, located less than three light years away from the big black hole at the centre of our galaxy...

Possible model of exoplanets with a rocky core and gaseous atmosphere (artist’s impression).
Credit: UZH

Researchers have analyzed the composition and structure of faraway exoplanets using statistical tools. Their analysis indicates whether a planet is earth-like, made up of pure rock or a water-world. The larger the planet, the more hydrogen and helium surround it. Is there a second Earth out there in space? Our knowledge of planetary systems far, far away is increasing constantly, as new technologies continue to sharpen our gaze into space. To date, 3,700 planets have already been discovered outside our solar system. The planetary masses and radii of these exoplanets can be used to infer their mean density, but not their exact chemical composition and structure...

The atmospheric haze of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon (pictured here along Saturn’s midsection), is captured in this natural-color image (box at left). A new study, which involved experiments at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, has provided new clues about the chemical steps that may have produced this haze.
Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Space Science Institute, Caltech

A team of scientists homes in on a ‘missing link’ in Titan’s one-of-a-kind chemistry. Experiments have helped scientists to zero in on a low-temperature chemical mechanism that may help to explain the complex molecular compounds that make up the nitrogen-rich haze layer surrounding Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is unique among all moons in our solar system for its dense and nitroge...