The Stone Hunters

ver since  studies started suggesting  that chemical reactions between water and rock on Saturn’s moon Enceladus could provide enough energy in the water to feed microbial life, scientists have been searching for proof that the right sort of reactions really do occur. And during its last dive through the icy plumes that Enceladus erupts into space in October 2015, the Cassini spacecraft has finally managed to find it – in the form of molecular hydrogen. The finding,  published in Science , means the moon can now be considered highly likely to be suitable to host microbial life. In fact, the results should undermine the last strong objection from those who argue it could not. Enceladus is a small (502km in diameter) moon with an icy surface, a rocky interior and an ocean of liquid water sandwiched between the two. Cassini  discovered back in 2005  that Enceladus is venting water into space, in the form of plumes of ice crystals escaping from cracks in th...

What If Meteorite Hit Earth Nearly With Speed Of Light.

The Campo del Cielo meteorite field where Gancedo was discovered translates to ‘field of heaven’ Credit: Ministerio de Gobierno/Facebook The second-largest meteorite ever found has been exhumed outside the small Argentinian town of Gancedo. The 30-tonne rock, named after the town, was discovered on September 10 and dug up by an excavation team which was shocked by its massive size. “While we hoped for weights above what had been registered, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tonnes,” Astronomy Association of Chaco president Mario Vesconi said. It is believed to have crashed to earth about 4,000 years ago as part of an iron meteorite shower covering hundreds of square kilometres, 1,000km north-west of Buenos Aires at a site now known as Campo del Cielo. The original asteroid is estimated to have weighed about 600 tonnes and entered Earth’s atmosphere at 14,000 kilometres per hour, where it broke up into a shower of smaller meteorites, according to Scientific American. Ma...

"The Rose Of Asia" Elbaite Tourmaline Locality: Paprok, Afghanistan

Chyrsanthemum Rock Specimen Locality: Changsha, Hunan in China Photo Copyright © cobalt123/flickr

Controlled burning of surface oil slicks during the Deepwater Horizon event. Credit: David Valentine Due to the environmental disaster’s unprecedented scope, assessing the damage caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been a challenge. One unsolved puzzle is the location of 2 million barrels of submerged oil thought to be trapped in the deep ocean. UC Santa Barbara’s David Valentine and colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) and UC Irvine have been able to describe the path the oil followed to create a footprint on the deep ocean floor. The findings appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For this study, the scientists used data from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The United States government estimates the Macondo well’s total discharge — from the spill in April 2010 until the well was capped that July — to be ...

A fountain of lava erupts from Hawaii’s Kilauea Iki crater on Dec. 5, 1959. Two rock samples from this eruption contain geochemical anomalies that could date back 4.5 billion years, shortly after the Earth first formed. Credit: USGS/J.P. Eaton Earth’s mantle is made of solid rock that nonetheless circulates slowly over millions of years. Some geologists assume that this slow circulation would have wiped away any geochemical traces of Earth’s early history long ago. But a new study led by University of Maryland geologists has found new evidence that could date back more than 4.5 billion years. The authors of the research paper, published April 7 in the journal Science, studied volcanic rocks that recently erupted from volcanoes in Hawaii and Samoa. The rocks contain surprising geochemical anomalies — the “fingerprints” of conditions that existed shortly after the planet formed. The researchers are not yet sure how Earth’s mantle preserved these anomalies. But ...

Old Faithful Geyser  Location Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Teton County, Wyoming Webcam Copyright: National Park Service

You Can't Get Entangled Without a Wormhole:-Quantum entanglement is one of the more bizarre theories to come out of the study of quantum mechanics -- so strange, in fact, that Albert Einstein famously referred to it as "spooky action at a distance." Essentially, entanglement involves two particles, each occupying multiple states at once -- a condition referred to as superposition. For example, both particles may simultaneously spin clockwise and counterclockwise. But  neither has a definite state until one is measured, causing the other particle to instantly assume a corresponding state. The resulting correlations between the particles are preserved, even if they reside on opposite ends of the universe. But what enables particles to communicate instantaneously -- and seemingly faster than the speed of light -- over such vast distances? Earlier this year, physicists proposed an answer in the form of "wormholes," or gravitational tunnels. The group showed th...

There are many hills about 1 kilometer high in Juventae Chasma, which is located north of the main Valles Marineris canyon system. The floor of the canyon is covered by a sea of sand, but the hills rise above the sand. A few adventuresome sand dunes have slowly climbed up on the hills, like that near the upper left of the  enhanced-color cutout . The color diversity here is exceptional, due to varying mineral compositions and good exposures. The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 53.6 centimeters (21.1 inches) per pixel (with 2 x 2 binning); objects on the order of 161 centimeters (63.4 inches) across are resolved.] North is up. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science...

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010. Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet’s history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth? While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to de...

Zoolithen Cave in Burggaillenreuth with flowstones, stalactites, and stalagmites. Credit: Jasper Wassenburg, JGU The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is the dominant atmospheric pressure mode over the North Atlantic that plays a significant role in determining the winter climate in Europe. Depending on the prevailing state of the NAO, Europe experiences mild or very cold winters and even strong storms. Geoscientists based at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany are currently reconstructing the fluctuations of the NAO over the last 10,000 years with the aim of being able to predict future developments. For this purpose, they use stalagmites obtained from subterranean caves as natural climate archives and are examining new indicators of climate change to retrieve climate information that is as accurate as possible. Initial results indicate that it is likely that the NAO will respond to the melting of the Arctic ice cap in the future, with consequences for our climate...

This artist’s rendering shows the collision of two planetary bodies. A collision like this is believed to have formed the moon within the first 150 million years after our solar system formed. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Within the first 150 million years after our solar system formed, a giant body roughly the size of Mars struck and merged with Earth, blasting a huge cloud of rock and debris into space. This cloud would eventually coalesce and form the moon. For almost 30 years, planetary scientists have been quite happy with this explanation–with one major exception. Although this scenario makes sense when you look at the size of the moon and the physics of its orbit around Earth, things start to break down a little when you compare their isotopic compositions–the geological equivalent of a DNA “fingerprint.” Specifically, Earth and the moon are too much alike. The expectation has long been that the moon should carry the isotopic “fingerprint” of the foreign body, which ...

Nevadaite (Cu2+,Al,V3+)6[Al8(PO4)8F8](OH)2·22H2O) is a category 1 and 2 rarity–formed from the scarce elements vanadium and copper under very restricted environmental conditions. The crystals are colorful but microscopic, and only known from two localities–Eureka County, Nevada, and a copper mine in Kyrgyzstan. Credit: Robert Downs, University of Arizona. Scientists have inventoried and categorized all of Earth’s rare mineral species described to date, each sampled from five or fewer sites around the globe. Individually, several of the species have a known supply worldwide smaller than a sugar cube. These 2,550 minerals are far more rare than pricey diamonds and gems usually presented as tokens of love. But while their rarity would logically make them the most precious of minerals, many would not work in a Valentine’s Day ring setting. Several are prone to melt, evaporate or dehydrate. And a few, vampire-like, gradually decompose on exposure to sunlight. Their greatest ...

The dark area across the top of the sun in this image is a coronal hole, a region on the sun where the magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, sending coronal material speeding out in what is called a high-speed solar wind stream. The high-speed solar wind originating from this coronal hole, imaged here on Oct. 10, 2015, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, created a geomagnetic storm near Earth that resulted in several nights of auroras. This image was taken in wavelengths of 193 Angstroms, which is invisible to our eyes and is typically colorized in bronze. Image credit: NASA/SDO Last Updated: Oct. 14, 2015 Editor: Ashley Morrow