Category Astronomy/Space

Mars bears the scars of five giant impacts, including the ancient giant Borealis basin (top of globe), Hellas (bottom right), and Argyre (bottom left). An SwRI-led team discovered that Mars experienced a 400-million-year lull in impacts between the formation of Borealis and the younger basins. Credit: University of Arizona/LPL/Southwest Research Institute

Studying the early bombardment history of Mars, scientists have discovered a 400-million-year lull in large impacts early in Martian history. “The new results reveal that Mars’ impact history closely parallels the bombardment histories we’ve inferred for the Moon, the asteroid belt, and the planet Mercury,” Bottke said. “We refer to the period for the later impacts as the ‘Late Heavy Bombardment...

Subjecting artificial amino acids to extreme conditions, researchers hunt for clues on what it takes to survive on other planets. Credit: Claire Mammoser, Valparaiso University

Subjecting artificial amino acids to extreme conditions, researchers hunt for clues on what it takes to survive on other planets. Scientists are attempting to identify the amino acids -building blocks that make proteins and support all life on Earth – that might feasibly form the basis of extraterrestrial life. The researchers have analyzed how an assortment of 15 amino acids, some found here on Earth in living organisms and some not found in living organisms on Earth, hold up in the face of extreme conditions found on other planets and moons.

Claire Mammoser, an undergraduate research assistant at Valparaiso Univer...

The image on the left shows a compact model of the heliosphere, supported by this latest data, while the image on the right shows an alternate model with an extended tail. The main difference is the new model’s lack of a trailing, comet-like tail on one side of the heliosphere. This tail is shown in the old model in light blue. Credits: Dialynas, et al. (left); NASA (right)

New Cassini mission data, combined with measurements from the 2 Voyager spacecraft and NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, IBEX, suggests our sun and planets are surrounded by a giant, rounded system of magnetic field from the sun—calling into question the alternate view of the solar magnetic fields trailing behind the sun in the shape of a long comet tail.

The sun releases a constant outflow of magnetic solar ma...

This entrancing image shows a few of the tenuous threads that comprise Sh2-308, a faint and wispy shell of gas located 5,200 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

This entrancing image shows a few of the tenuous threads that comprise Sh2-308, a faint and wispy shell of gas located 5,200 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Sh2-308 is a large bubble-like structure wrapped around an extremely large, bright type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet Star – this particular star is called EZ Canis Majoris. These type of stars are among the brightest and most massive stars in the Universe, tens of times more massive than our own sun, and they represent the extremes of stellar evolution.

Thick winds continually pou...