Category Astronomy/Space

This false-color image from a sub-millimeter interferometric telescope shows the circumstellar disk of gas and dust that surrounds star CI Tau. Credit: Stephane Guilloteau/University of Bordeaux

Jupiter-like ‘CI Tau b’ orbits 2 million-year-old star in constellation Taurus. In contradiction to the long-standing idea that larger planets take longer to form, US astronomers today announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a star so young that it still retains a disk of circumstellar gas and dust.

“For decades, conventional wisdom held that large Jupiter-mass planets take a minimum of 10 million years to form,” said Christopher Johns-Krull. “That’s been called into question over the past decade” CI Tau b is at least 8X larger than Jupiter, ~450 light years from Earth...

The mapping of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu is one of the science goals of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and an integral part of spacecraft operations. The spacecraft will spend a year surveying Bennu before collecting a sample that will be returned to Earth for analysis. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

On Sept. 8, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to launch for terra incognita: the unknown surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. Like expeditions of old, OSIRIS-REx’s mission includes mapping the exotic terrain it explores. Bennu is part of the debris left over from the formation of the solar system and is pristine enough to hold clues to that very early history...

(Colour online) Pre- and post-video test scores by age group (Study A). Values shown are means ± standard errors. All pre-test to post-test improvements were statistically significant (paired t-tests, p < .001 for each)

Does “edutainment” such as content-rich music videos have any place in the rapidly changing landscape of science education? A new study indicates that students can indeed learn serious science content from such videos. The study, titled ‘Leveraging the power of music to improve science education’ and published by International Journal of Science Education, examined over 1,000 students in a 3-part experiment, comparing learners’ understanding and engagement in response to 24 musical and non-musical science videos.

The central findings were that
(1) across ages and g...

NASA’s New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto’s moon Charon, showing the crack on the icy moon. It was taken just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images and the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Credit: NASA

New model could explain cracks on Charon. Until now, it was thought the cracks were the result of geodynamical processes, such as plate tectonics, but the models run by Alice Quillen and her collaborators suggest that a close encounter with another body might have been the cause. Astronomers have long known craters on moons were caused by the impact of other bodies, billions of years ago...