Tag: Solar System

Mars leaks faster when closer to the sun

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Seasonal changes can have a dramatic effect on how quickly Mars loses its water to space, a joint study between the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has shown. Over three billion years ago, Mars was warm and wet, with large bodies of water on its surface and a thicker atmosphere. Today, however, Mars is desolate, cold and dry. So, what happened to all the water? “There’s only two places water can go,” John Clarke of the University of Boston said in a statement.…

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Weird mystery waves that baffle scientists may be ‘everywhere’ inside Earth’s mantle

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Mysterious zones in the deep mantle where earthquake waves slow to a crawl may actually be everywhere, new research finds. Scientists already knew that ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZs), hover near hotspots — regions of the mantle where hot rock moves upward, forming volcanic island chains such as Hawaii. But mysterious earthquake waves suggest that these features might be widespread. ULVZs, which are located in the lower mantle near the core-mantle boundary, can slow seismic waves by up to 50%. That’s remarkable, said Michael Thorne, a geologist and geophysicist at the University of Utah.…

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No, NASA’s DART asteroid impact probably won’t spark meteor showers on Earth — but maybe on Mars

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Debris from the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft with the asteroid Dimorphos could reach Earth and Mars, astronomers have concluded. However, while the debris could result in meteors on Mars, it is rather unlikely we’ll see a meteor shower on Earth. DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, slammed into Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, with the intention of testing whether a kinetic impact could nudge the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid away from Earth one day. The test passed with flying colors: Dimorphos was pushed into a shorter orbit…

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Scientists find surprising clue about Venus’ past in its atmosphere

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Scientists have observed something unexpected in Venus’ atmosphere — an increase in the level of deuterium relative to hydrogen. Okay, sure, that doesn’t sound like the most exciting statement. However, the consequences of this discovery could actually upend our current understanding of the amber world. As it turns out, it would affect our assumption that Venus is a perpetually barren, inhospitable planet. Here’s how. “Venus is often called Earth’s twin due to its similar size,” said Hiroki Karyu, a researcher at Tohoku University and one of the study’s scientists, in…

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NASA’s DART asteroid crash really messed up its space rock target

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Rogue asteroids, to put it simply, pose a threat to Earth. Though there hasn’t been a cataclysmic event in about 65 million years, that’s not to say there haven’t been nail-biting moments during space rock flybys — in 2013, for instance, the Chelyabinsk asteroid slammed into Earth’s atmosphere “blazing like a second sun” and sending shockwaves through the surrounding area. Space agencies around the world understandably want to be prepared. To this end, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft in 2022, its first mission dedicated to demonstrating…

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Dinosaur-killing asteroid was a rare rock from beyond Jupiter, new study reveals

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The space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was a rare strike from an asteroid beyond Jupiter, a new study details. The finding pins down the nature of the fateful space rock and its origin within our solar system, and may benefit technology that forecasts asteroid strikes on our planet. Most scientists agree that the Chicxulub impactor — named after the community in modern-day Mexico near the 90-mile-wide (145 kilometers) crater carved by the rock — came from within our solar system. But its precise origins…

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The sun might’ve just had a record-breaking number of visible sunspots

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On Aug. 8, scientists may have caught hundreds of individual sunspots on images produced by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). To us, sunspots might seem really tiny — but don’t be fooled. They are actually dark areas typically the size of the entire Earth on the sun’s surface. Plus, they exhibit strong magnetic fields that can fire off solar flares, which spew pulses of electromagnetic radiation into space. These are the explosions that lead to coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can create solar storms on Earth. “The process of the…

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Weird, ‘watermelon shape’ asteroids like Dimorphos and Selam may finally have an explanation

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The unusual shapes of the tiny asteroids Dimorphos and Selam have perplexed astronomers for years, but a new study finally explains how they got so strange. It also suggests these bizarrely shaped “moonlets” may be more common than scientists thought. Binary asteroids — pairs of asteroids that are essentially mini versions of the Earth-moon system — are pretty common in our cosmic neighborhood. These include the Didymos-Dimorphos duo that headlined NASA’s 2022 Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. Previous research suggests that such binary asteroids form when a rubble-pile “parent”…

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NASA satellite data adds key pollutant to national environmental justice database

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Scientists harnessed satellite technology to track a key air pollutant previously absent from a national database, NASA announced earlier this week, marking a crucial step forward in monitoring differences in air quality across the U.S. and identifying groups whose health is unfairly affected. Measurements of nitrogen dioxide, which is primarily released into air through the burning of fossil fuels and can lead to respiratory diseases like asthma among other health problems, had been missing from the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, or EJScreen. The database is maintained by the…

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Mars Express orbiter takes a deep dive into ancient Red Planet lake (images)

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 A Mars orbiter has just taken a “deep dive” into an ancient Martian lake, figuratively, at least.  Larger than any lake currently on Earth, the dried-up remnants of this ancient lakebed were just captured in incredible detail by the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2003. “This patch of Mars — shown in a new view from Mars Express’s High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) — is known as Caralis Chaos,” ESA scientists wrote in a statement. “We believe that water, and a…

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