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.

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...

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 ...

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