Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Alaska’s rivers are turning bright orange and as acidic as vinegar as toxic metal escapes from melting permafrost

NeRD

Dozens of Alaskan rivers have turned bright orange in recent years because melting permafrost has released high levels of toxic metals into the waterways, a worrying new study reveals. The colorful contamination, which can be seen from space, is a potential ecological nightmare — and is likely to get even worse in the coming years, researchers say. In the new study, which was published May 20 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers identified at least 75 orange rivers and streams in a Texas-size area of Alaska’s Brooks mountain…

Read More

Hubble Telescope shares stunning galactic view despite recent hardware malfunction (photo)

NeRD

The aging but tenacious Hubble Space Telescope has beamed back yet another stunning photo of a distant galaxy.  Hubble‘s latest view captures the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3059, which lies about 57 million light-years from Earth. The photo, released on June 7, was taken in May using the space telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument as part of a broader galactic study, according to a statement from NASA.  The space telescope uses various filters for its observations, each of which allows specific wavelengths of light to pass through to the…

Read More

Ed Stone, who led NASA’s iconic Voyager project for 50 years, dies at 88

NeRD

Humanity has lost an interstellar pioneer. Ed Stone, who served as the project scientist for NASA’s groundbreaking Voyager mission from 1972 to 2022, died on Sunday (June 9) at the age of 88. “Ed Stone was a trailblazer who dared mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a cherished mentor to me personally,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in NASA’s obituary for Stone, which the agency posted on Tuesday (June 11).  “Ed…

Read More

DARPA unveils 6 new designs for uncrewed vertical-takeoff military aircraft, eyes 2026 test flights

NeRD

The U.S. military could soon have new uncrewed aircraft that carry weapons and take off and land vertically. The vehicles could undergo test flights as early as 2026.  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced it is moving into a new testing phase for proposed experimental aircraft in which designs will be assessed for risk and analyzed for efficiency.  The Advanced Aircraft Infrastructure-less Launch And Recovery (ANCILLARY) program will field designs for new, uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) carrying weapons. Specifically, the project aims to deliver X-planes capable of…

Read More

Get a sneak peek at new ‘Alien: Rogue Incursion’ survival horror game (trailer)

NeRD

The “Alien” content just keeps on coming. In the aftermath of the 45th anniversary of the iconic film “Alien,” which just passed on May 25, the “Alien” universe is primed to erupt with an invasion of transmedia content over the next year. director Fede Álvarez’s “Alien: Romulus” is set to strike in August, for example, and we’ll also get more ongoing Marvel comics and a freshly-hatched “Alien: Rogue Incursion” virtual reality video game, which is coming in December for PS VR2, Meta Quest 3 and PCVR for Steam. Developer and…

Read More

Watch SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy booster splash down in this epic video

NeRD

Watching Starship come back to Earth last week was perhaps even more exciting than seeing it rise off the pad. SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the fourth time ever on June 6, sending the giant vehicle into space from its Starbase site in South Texas.  The flight plan called for both of Starship’s stages — the Super Heavy first-stage booster and the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper stage, called Starship, or just Ship — to steer themselves back to Earth for ocean splashdowns. Super Heavy was supposed to come down in…

Read More

‘We thought it was impossible:’ Water frost on Mars discovered near Red Planet’s equator

NeRD

Water frost has been spotted at the equator of Mars for the first time. In this region of the Red Planet, equivalent to its tropics, it was previously believed that it would be impossible for frost to exist.  The discovery could be crucial to modeling where water exists on Mars and how it is exchanged between the Red Planet’s atmosphere and its surface. This could be vital for future crewed exploration of Mars.  The water frost was seen by two European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, first by the ExoMars Trace…

Read More

Youthful galaxy in the early universe was a heavy metal rebel

NeRD

The most distant carbon ever seen has been discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in a galaxy that we see as it existed just 350 million years after the Big Bang. The detection is notable because not only is it the oldest carbon known, it is the first time that an element heavier than hydrogen or helium — what astronomers call “metals” — has been confirmed in the very early universe. “Earlier research suggested that carbon started to form in large quantities relatively late — about one billion…

Read More

The Milky Way’s last major act of galactic cannibalism was surprisingly recent

NeRD

New findings from the Gaia space telescope indicate the Milky Way may have cannibalized a small galaxy not too long ago, cosmically speaking. In fact, the last major collision between our galaxy and another seems to have occurred billions of years later than previously suspected. The Milky Way has been long understood to have grown via a series of violent collisions, which see smaller galaxies ripped apart by the immense gravitational influence of our solar system’s spiral home. These collisions distribute stars from the devoured galaxy across the halo that…

Read More

Sandworms rise from the sands of Arrakis in exclusive sneak peek at ‘Dune: The Graphic Novel, Book 3’

NeRD

The wonderfully rich world of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” has enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the past few years. There’s Denis Villeneuve’s big-screen saga, “Dune: Part One” and “Dune: Part Two,” for starters and Boom! Studios’ “Dune” comic book titles adapted from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s “Dune” prequel and sequel novels. There’s even an upcoming “Dune: Awakening” open world survival video game. Adding to the resurgence are the gorgeous hardback “Dune: The Graphic Novel” releases from Abrams ComicArts, accented with the fine work of artists Raúl Allén and…

Read More