Category Astronomy/Space

The Red Planet has a purple side

Mars is known for its reddish colour palette, a result of ancient iron oxides. But these striking pinks and purples are much different from the rest of the red planet. This orbital image shows Thyles Rupes, its cliff face, and a nearby glacier, where the atypical colours come from a mix of dust and frost. The image is from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on the ESA's Mars Express orbiter. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence
Mars is known for its reddish colour palette, a result of ancient iron oxides. But these striking pinks and purples are much different from the rest of the red planet. This orbital image shows Thyles Rupes, its cliff face, and a nearby glacier, where the atypical colours come from a mix of dust and frost. The image is from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence

Oxidized iron dominates the Martian color palette. The dusty reds, ochers, browns and tans give the planet its nickname: the Red Planet. But new images of Mars’ south polar region show something different...

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Scientists teleport quantum states across 100 parallel optical channels

Scientists teleport quantum states across 100 parallel optical channels
Hundred-channel reconfigurable quantum teleportation of a “Q” image. Credit: Jietai Jing et al., East China Normal University.

Quantum communication networks consist of several connected nodes that exchange information encoded in quantum states. These networks could potentially enable more secure communications between quantum devices in different locations.

One proposed approach for enabling quantum communication is known as quantum teleportation. This is a technique for transferring a quantum state carrying information between two systems by leveraging quantum entanglement, a phenomenon that links two or more quantum systems so that their properties remain correlated even when they are separated.

Researchers at East China Normal University recently demonstrated the teleportatio...

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Venus ate its moon: How Earth’s ‘twin’ could have swallowed a rocky satellite

Illustration of corona erupting in the southern hemisphere of Venus
Illustration depicts active volcanism in Venus’ southern hemisphere.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/Peter Rubin)

Scientists have long speculated why Venus, with a size, mass and structure similar to Earth’s, doesn’t have a moon. New UC Riverside research shows that our hungry twin likely swallowed it.

In the past, scientists theorized that Venus possibly had a moon that was hit by something massive, obliterating it. Other theories centered on the idea that Venus never underwent a collision that formed a moon in the first place.

The new research, published in The Astrophysical Journal, shows that neither theory fits.

“My study shows Venus didn’t require a catastrophe to arrive at what we can see today,” said UCR astrophysicist and lead author Stephen Kane...

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A glimpse of the solar system’s origins: Striking details on the molecules inside a meteorite

Meteorite molecules with their corresponding chemical diagrams
Brookhaven Lab scientist Percy Zahl of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, a DOE Office of Science user facility, used high-resolution noncontact atomic force microscopy to image the structures of individual molecules from one of the meteorites. This provided a more detailed look at these extraterrestrial organic compounds. For more information about Brookhaven’s role in this research, contact Peter Genzer (genzer@bnl.gov, 631-344-3174).

Researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory have teamed up to get a fresh look at the complex makeup of meteorites and glimpse into our solar system’s past.

Powerful spectrometry found only at the MagLab identified the vast array of organic compounds inside two meteorites, and Brookhaven scien...

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