Tag: Solar System

Why we can’t just name a quasi-moon ‘Moony McMoonface’

NeRD

During the summer of 2022, just after the James Webb Space Telescope started sending us a steady stream of deep-space postcards, astronomer Stephen Finkelstein and his team found a mysterious red splotch in one of those data deliveries. They’d spotted one of the earliest galaxies humans have ever laid eyes on — a realm that represented a distant pocket of the universe our species once couldn’t dream of seeing. And, importantly, they found it on Finkelstein’s daughter’s birthday, a serendipity that blessed this blob with a name: Maisie’s Galaxy. But…

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China reveals secrets of 1st sample taken from the far side of the moon — and it contains a volcanic surprise

NeRD

The first analysis of lava samples from the moon’s far side reveals that volcanoes were erupting there 2.8 billion years ago. The moon is tidally locked with Earth, meaning the same side always faces our planet. The far side is less explored than the near side. Only two landers, both from China, have made it to the moon’s far side. In a study published Nov. 15 in the journal Science, researchers analyzed rock samples returned to Earth by the Chang’e 6 lander. The 2024 mission brought back a little over…

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Declassified spy satellite images reveal 1,400-year-old battle site in Iraq that set off the Muslim conquest

NeRD

Declassified spy images of Iraq have helped archaeologists find a historic Islamic battlefield. Upon analyzing the images, which were taken in 1973 by a U.S. satellite system named KH-9 (Hexagon), the team found remnants of a 1,400-year-old settlement. This helped them match the site to the lost location of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, the researchers reported in a study published Nov. 12 in the journal Antiquity. The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah took place in A.D. 636 or 637 between the Arab Muslim army and the Sasanian Empire, which ruled the area…

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This spot will be key to the inevitable collapse of a key Atlantic current

NeRD

Scientists have pinpointed the ocean engine with the biggest role in driving key Atlantic currents that regulate Earth’s climate, new research suggests. The Irminger Sea off southeastern Greenland is where warm waters that transport heat northwards from the Southern Hemisphere sink and then return south along the bottom of the ocean. As such, this region plays a critical role in powering the ocean conveyor belt known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). “The key finding of this study is that the Irminger Basin (eastern Greenland) plays a crucial role…

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Mars may have made its 2 moons by ripping an asteroid apart

NeRD

Computer simulations suggest that Mars’ puzzling moons, Phobos and Deimos, may have been formed from debris created when a large asteroid wandered dangerously close to the Red Planet. This new model proposes that Phobos and Deimos resulted from the wreckage of a larger asteroid that wandered too close to Mars and crossed its Roche limit — the distance at which gravitational tidal forces emanating from the planet became too great and tore the asteroid apart.  “It’s exciting to explore a new option for the making of Phobos and Deimos —…

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NASA satellites reveal Earth’s continents are getting drier

NeRD

The amount of freshwater found on our planet has dropped significantly in the last decade, NASA satellites have found. An international team of scientists reviewed observations taken by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites operated by NASA, the German Aerospace Center and the German Research Center for Geosciences. The data collected by GRACE revealed that beginning in May 2014, there was a plunge in Earth’s freshwater supply, and the planet has still not recovered. The researchers suggest that this evidence could also mean Earth is undergoing a drier…

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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is solving long-standing mysteries about the sun. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

NeRD

On Nov. 6, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe passed within 234 miles (376 kilometers) of Venus’ surface. The purpose of this close flyby was to accomplish a gravity-assist maneuver, in which the probe would steal some of Venus‘ momentum to change the spacecraft’s orbit and bring itself even closer to the sun. The Parker Solar Probe had already made several close passes of the sun, but the recent flyby was its closest, coming within about 3.8 million miles (6 million km) of the solar surface. That’s less than nine times the…

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Venus’ ‘missing’ giant impact craters may be hiding in plain sight

NeRD

Impact features on Venus may have been staring us in the face all along That’s the message from a team of planetary scientists, who have explained Venus‘ apparent dearth of large craters by discovering that impacts could have produced the mysterious “tesserae” formations on the Venusian surface. Tesserae are large — sometimes continent-size — expanses of terrain that have been deformed and covered with wrinkle ridges, which make the landforms look like sheets of corrugated iron. They are formed by lava welling up to the surface, where it cools and…

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Sun erupts with powerful X2.3 solar flare, triggers radio blackouts (video)

NeRD

The sun erupted with an X2.3-class solar flare this morning, triggering radio blackouts  The X-class solar flare was released from a sunspot region AR 3883 at 8:40 a.m. ET (1340 UTC) on Wednesday morning (Nov. 6). Sunspots are darker, cooler locations on the sun that measure the size of planets and denote where the sun’s strong magnetic field roils up to its surface. It was the sunspot region’s strongest flare yet. According to Spaceweather.com, the wait is on for scientists to receive data from the coronagraph on the joint NASA/European Space…

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Small moon of Uranus may have once had a subsurface liquid water ocean

NeRD

Over the last few decades, planetary scientists have been steadily adding to the list of moons in our solar system that may harbor interior oceans either currently or at some point in their past. For the most part, these moons (such as Europa or Enceladus) have been gravitationally bound to the gas giants Jupiter or Saturn.  Recently, though, planetary scientists have been turning their attention further afield, towards the ice giant Uranus, the coldest planet in the solar system. And now, new research based on images taken by the Voyager…

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