Category Astronomy/Space

Artistic simulation of a planetary system composed by three rocky planets with the same size of the Earth. Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC)

Today marks the discovery of two new planetary systems, one of them hosting three planets with the same size of the Earth. The information about these new exoplanets has been obtained from the data collected by the K2 mission of NASA’s Kepler satellite, which started in November 2013. The work, which will be published in the Monthly Notices of the magazine Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), reveals the existence of two new planetary systems detected from the eclipses they produce in the stellar light of their respective stars...

A panorama of Gale crater on Mars taken from Vera Rubin ridge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Mineralogist’s big data approach improves resolution of a Curiosity instrument by an order of magnitude. A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Shaunna Morrison and including Bob Hazen have revealed the mineralogy of Mars at an unprecedented scale, which will help them understand the planet’s geologic history and habitability. Their findings are published in two American Mineralogist papers.

Minerals form from novel combinations of elements. These combinations can be facilitated by geological activity, including volcanoes and water-rock interactions...

Microgravity-induced ocular changes are related to body weight

New research suggests that changes in the eye that occur during spaceflight may be related to how much an astronaut weighs. The study is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

Reduced gravity levels (microgravity) in space can lead to spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS) in some astronauts. SANS refers to structural changes in the eye that may impair vision, including swelling of the optic nerve (optic disc edema) and colored indentations (choroidal folds) in the blood vessel network at the back of the eye. Researchers now think that how much a person weighs may play a role in these ocular changes.

On Earth, the weight of the body’s tis...

This is a binary star evolution within a globular cluster. Credit: Mark A. Garlick/University of Warwick

Comprised of hundreds of thousands of stars densely packed into a tight ball, globular clusters had been thought to be almost as old as the Universe itself – but thanks to newly developed research models it has been shown that they could be as young as 9 billion years old rather than 13 billion.

The discovery brings into question current theories on how galaxies, including the Milky Way, were formed – with between 150-180 clusters thought to exist in the Milky Way alone – as globular clusters had previously been thought to be almost as old as the Universe itself.

Designed to reconsider the evolution of stars, the new Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) models take the detai...