Category Astronomy/Space

Although Tethys and Janus both Orbit Saturn and both made of similar materials, they are very Different Worlds

Tethus, Janus and Saturn's rings

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 1 degree above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2015. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 28,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 54 degrees. Image scale is 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science

Their contrasts are related, in large part, to their sizes. Tethys (660 miles across) is large enough to be spherical and to have varied geology, like chasms and smooth plains, along with some puzzling arc-shaped features (see PIA19637 http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19637) ...

Read More

Star Trek’s Vision becomes Reality: “Beam me up, Scotty”

Juniorprof. Dr Alexander Szameit (r.) and Dr Marco Ornigotti with models of the USS Enterprise. The physicists have now for the first demonstrated in an experiment that the concept of teleportation does not only persist in the world of quantum particles, but also in our classical world.

Juniorprof. Dr Alexander Szameit (r.) and Dr Marco Ornigotti from University of Jena (Germany)with models of the USS Enterprise. The physicists have now for the first demonstrated in an experiment that the concept of teleportation does not only persist in the world of quantum particles, but also in our classical world. Credit: Jan-Peter Kasper/FSU

The team of scientists lead by sci-fi fan Prof. Szameit has now for the first demonstrated in an experiment that the concept of teleportation does not only persist in the world of quantum particles, but also in our classical world. “Elementary particles such as electrons and light particles exist per se in a spatially delocalized state,” says Szameit...

Read More

Hubble Breaks Cosmic Distance Record: Sees Universe soon after Big Bang

This image shows the position of the most distant galaxy discovered so far within a deep sky Hubble Space Telescope survey called GOODS North (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North). The survey field contains tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back into time. The remote galaxy GN-z11, shown in the inset, existed only 400 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only 3 percent of its current age. It belongs to the first generation of galaxies in the Universe and its discovery provides new insights into the very early Universe. This is the first time that the distance of an object so far away has been measured from its spectrum, which makes the measurement extremely reliable. GN-z11 is actually ablaze with bright, young, blue stars but these look red in this image because its light was stretched to longer, redder, wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Oesch (Yale University)

This image shows the position of the most distant galaxy discovered so far within a deep sky Hubble Space Telescope survey called GOODS North (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North). The survey field contains tens of thousands of galaxies stretching far back into time. The remote galaxy GN-z11, shown in the inset, existed only 400 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only 3 percent of its current age. It belongs to the first generation of galaxies in the Universe and its discovery provides new insights into the very early Universe. This is the first time that the distance of an object so far away has been measured from its spectrum, which makes the measurement extremely reliable...

Read More

Great Tilt gave Mars a new Face

Scenario for a TPW driven by a late growth of Tharsis contemporaneous with valley network incision.

Scenario for a TPW driven by a late growth of Tharsis contemporaneous with valley network incision.

The surface of the planet Mars tilted by 20 – 25 degrees 3 to 3.5 billion years ago. This was caused by a massive volcanic structure, the Tharsis volcanic dome, which is the largest in the Solar System. Because of its extraordinary mass, it caused the outer layers of Mars (its crust and mantle) to rotate around its core. The discovery of this huge shift changes our vision of Mars during the first billion years of its history, at a time when life may have emerged...

Read More