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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Laser-powered device tested on Earth could help detect microbial fossils on Mars

    February 26, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    mars
    Credit: CC0 Public Domain

    The first life on Earth formed four billion years ago, as microbes living in pools and seas: what if the same thing happened on Mars? If it did, how would we prove it? Scientists hoping to identify fossil evidence of ancient Martian microbial life have now found a way to test their hypothesis, proving they can detect the fossils of microbes in gypsum samples that are a close analogy to sulfate rocks on Mars.

    “Our findings provide a methodological framework for detecting biosignatures in Martian sulfate minerals, potentially guiding future Mars exploration missions,” said Youcef Sellam, Ph.D. student at the Physics Institute, University of Bern, and first author of the article in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

    “Our laser ablation ionization ma...

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    Moon or Mars? NASA’s future at a crossroads under Trump

    February 24, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A file photo taken 27 August 2003 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows Mars snapped within minutes of the planet's closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years
    A file photo taken 27 August 2003 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows Mars snapped within minutes of the planet’s closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years.

    Is NASA still Moonbound, or will the next giant leap mean skipping straight to Mars?

    Speculation is mounting that the Trump administration may scale back or cancel NASA’s Artemis missions following the departure of a key official and Boeing’s plans to lay off hundreds of employees working on its lunar rocket.

    Late Wednesday, NASA abruptly announced the retirement of longtime associate administrator Jim Free, effective Saturday.

    No reason was given for Free’s departure after his 30-year rise to NASA’s top civil-service position...

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    Did astronomers just witness the formation of a ‘strange star?’

    February 22, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Did astronomers just witness the formation of a
    Chandra observations of RX J1856.5-3754 suggest that the matter in this collapsed star is even denser than nuclear matter, the most dense matter found on Earth. X-ray and optical data indicate that RX J1856 has a diameter of only 7 miles. This size is too small to reconcile with the standard models of neutron stars. One exciting possibility is that the high density inside the star has caused the neutrons to dissolve into a soup of up, down, and strange quarks to form a strange quark star, which would have a smaller radius. Observations of 3C58, the remnant of a supernova noted on Earth in AD 1181, reveal that the pulsar in the core has a temperature much lower than expected. This suggests that an exotic, denser state of matter might exist inside this collapsed star...
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    Einstein Probe catches X-ray odd couple

    February 20, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky.

    The odd celestial couple consists of a big, hot star, more than 10 times larger than our Sun, and a small compact white dwarf, with a mass similar to our star. Only a handful of these systems have been found so far. And this the first time scientists could track the X-ray light coming from such a curious pair from its initial sudden flare-up to its fading away.

    On 27 May 2024, the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on Einstein Probe spotted X-rays coming from within our neighbour galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC...

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