Category Astronomy/Space

Strong whistler mode waves observed in the vicinity of Jupiter’s moons. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05431-x

Chorus waves are electromagnetic waves. Converted to sound they sound like singing and chirping birds at dawn. They can cause polar lights above the Earth as well as damage to satellites. Now, a team of researchers has found that such waves are intensified million-fold around Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. This study provides important observational constraints for theoretical studies.

These are the new results from a systematic study on Jupiter’s wave environment taken from the Galileo Probe spacecraft...

NWA 11119 is an unusual light-green fusion crust, silica mineral-rich achondrite meteorite.
Credit: UNM Institute of Meteoritics

Scientists believe the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity possibly triggered by cataclysmic explosion from a nearby massive star or supernova. As this cloud collapsed, it formed a spinning disk with the sun in the center. Since then scientists have been able to establish the formation of the solar system piece by piece. Now, new research has enabled scientists from The University of New Mexico, Arizona State University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center to add another piece to that puzzle with the discovery of the oldest-ever dated igneous meteorite.

The research titled, Silica-rich volcanism in the...

A sequence was compiled from a series of images taken on July 25 by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The angular extent of the widest field of view is six degrees. Visible in the images are the comet C/2018 N1, asteroids, variable stars, asteroids and reflected light from Mars. TESS is expected to find thousands of planets around other nearby stars. Download animated GIF: 
Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Before NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) started science operations on July 25, 2018, the planet hunter sent back a stunning sequence of serendipitous images showing the motion of a comet...

Illustration of the early solar disk, with an inset image of a blue hibonite crystal, one of the first minerals to form in the Solar System. Credit: © Field Museum, University of Chicago, NASA, ESA, and E. Feild (STScl).

By examining tiny blue crystals trapped inside meteorites, scientists were able to figure out what the sun was like before the Earth formed – and apparently, it had a pretty rowdy start. When scientists analyzed the chemical make-up of these crystals, they found atoms that would only be there if the early sun was spitting out lots of high-energy particles – the solar version of going through the ‘terrible twos.’

Our Sun’s beginnings are a mystery. It burst into being 4.6 billion years ago, about 50 million years before the Earth formed...