Category Astronomy/Space

The whole northern region of Saturn is bathed in sunlight in this view from late 2016,. The hexagon-shaped jet-stream is fully illuminated Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Sunlight truly has come to Saturn’s north pole. The whole northern region is bathed in sunlight in this view from late 2016, feeble though the light may be at Saturn’s distant domain in the solar system. The hexagon-shaped jet-stream is fully illuminated here. In this image, the planet appears darker in regions where the cloud deck is lower, such the region interior to the hexagon. Mission experts on Saturn’s atmosphere are taking advantage of the season and Cassini’s favorable viewing geometry to study this and other weather patterns as Saturn’s northern hemisphere approaches Summer solstice.

This view l...

The discrepancy between the cosmological parameters in the modern Universe and the Universe shortly after the Big Bang can be explained by the fact that the proportion of dark matter has decreased. The authors of the study could calculate how much dark matter could have been lost and what the corresponding size of the unstable component would be. Researchers may explore how quickly this unstable part decays and say if dark matter is still disintegrating. CREDIT MIPT Press Office USAGE RESTRICTION

Russian scientists have discovered that the proportion of unstable particles in the composition of dark matter in the days immediately following the Big Bang was no more than 2 – 5%...

Image1: Far side of the Moon, photographed by Apollo 16
Image2: Valles Marineris, Mars. Credit: NASA

China has set out its space plans for the next 5 years, including soft landing a probe on the far side of the moon around 2018 and launching its first Mars probe by 2020. “To explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power is a dream we pursue unremittingly,” read a white paper. It says China aims to use space for peaceful purposes and to guarantee national security, and to carry out cutting edge scientific research.

The white paper released by the information office of China’s Cabinet points to the growing ambitions of China’s already rapidly advancing space program...

ESO/M. Kornmesser METI aims to send messages to the potentially Earth-like exoplanet Proxima b, as imagined by an artist. Here it is orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system.

After decades of fruitless scanning the skies for alien messages, scientists say it’s time to try a basic rule of etiquette: Say “hello” first. A new San Francisco-based organization, METI, or Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, plans to send signals to distant planets, rather than waiting for them to call Earth. By the end of 2018, the project aims to send some conversation-starters via radio or laser signals to a rocky planet circling Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than the sun, and then to more distant destinations, hundreds or thousands of light years away.