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+20 +1
Water may have killed Mars’ magnetic field
Mars’ missing magnetic field may have drowned in the planet’s core. An excess of hydrogen, split off from water molecules and stored in the Martian mantle, could have shut down convection, switching the magnetic field off forever, planetary scientist Joseph O’Rourke proposed March 21 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
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+25 +1
No, the Rapture Isn't Coming on April 23 Because of Nibiru (Which Doesn't Exist)
Here we go again: Fresh reports claim that the end of the world is nigh. Forgetting that we were all a little burned out by the 2012 end-of-Maya-calendar debacle, outlets such as the Daily Express are claiming that the Rapture — the end-time event when Christians are said to ascend to heaven at the second coming of Christ — is coming April 23 and we should get ready for it. In case you were inclined to jump on the Armageddon bandwagon, know this: The reports are bogus, and the celestial bodies aren't even in the predicted position for this supposed doomsday to occur!
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+7 +1
Study: Diamond from the sky may have come from 'lost planet'
BERLIN (AP) — Fragments of a meteorite that fell to Earth about a decade ago provide compelling evidence of a lost planet that once roamed our solar system.
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+11 +1
Researchers describe one of the darkest planets ever found (Update)
A team of researchers with Keele University in the U.K. has described one of the darkest planets ever observed. In their paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, the team describes the planet and where it appears to stand among other dark planets. The planet in question, WASP-104b, is a hot Jupiter, a gas giant that orbits very close to its star—approximately 4.3 million kilometers away from it (it circles its star every 1.75 days). It is deemed dark because its atmosphere absorbs approximately...
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+18 +1
Mars Quakes Set to Reveal Tantalizing Clues to Planet's Early Years
NASA’s Mars InSight mission will listen for seismic activity to uncover details of Red Planet’s mysterious core
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NASA's InSight Mars Lander Launches to Probe Red Planet's Deep Interior
The agency's InSight Mars lander lifted off today (May 5) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, rising off a pad here at 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT, 4:05 a.m. local California time) and disappearing into the thick predawn fog moments later. "This is a big day. We're going back to Mars," NASA's new administrator Jim Bridenstine, who took charge of the agency last month, said in a congratulatory call to the InSight team after launch. "This is an extraordinary mission with a whole host of firsts." [Launch Photos: See NASA's InSight Soar Toward Mars]
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+15 +1
Astronomers discover exoplanet where rain is definitely not a problem
Out in the cold, dark cosmos, a team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet that is completely cloud-free. The Kepler Space Telescope has contributed a great deal to astronomy, revealing thousands of strange exoplanets against the backdrop of the blackness of space. And, sometimes, it helps astronomers find a particular planet that, to those of us on Earth, sounds truly alien.
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+33 +1
The awesome beauty of Jupiter captured by Juno, in 13 photos
For the past two years, the spacecraft has been taking photos of Jupiter. Here are the best shots. By Brian Resnick.
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+23 +1
Infamous three-body problem has over a thousand new solutions
A long-standing maths puzzle has 1223 new solutions, more than doubling the number of possible paths three objects can take as they orbit one another
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+17 +1
We Finally Know What The Interior Of Jupiter Looks Like
When you spend almost more than $1 billion on a beautiful spacecraft, it can be a very nervous wait to see if everything actually pays off. But if and when it does, the results can be rather glorious. And NASA’s Juno spacecraft has just paid off in a huge way. One of the major goals of the Juno mission, which began in July 2016 when the probe entered orbit around Jupiter, has been to study the interior of this fascinating gas giant. We can see its amazing cloud tops, sure, but we really didn’t know what’s going on inside.
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+8 +1
A miniature chemistry lab is headed to Mars to search for signs of life
The ExoMars Rover, scheduled to land on the red planet in two years, will contain a miniaturized chemistry lab onboard that can be used to search for signs of life. Not much bigger than a shoebox, the sophisticated Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) will contain a mass spectrometer that can detect and analyze organic molecules, such as amino acids, that could be the first evidence that life has existed on another planet.
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+21 +1
Tiny, far-flung worlds could explain outer Solar System’s strange geometry
Gravity of distant Moon-sized objects could do the job attributed to a hypothetical Planet Nine.
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+44 +1
Juno Solves 39-Year Old Mystery of Jupiter Lightning
NASA's Juno spacecraft finds lightning on Jupiter is same as in Earth in some ways, opposite in others.
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+7 +1
Ancient Earth froze over in a geologic instant
Earth’s ice is melting at a rapid clip today. But some scientists think that during several ancient episodes, the planet plunged into a deep freeze known as “Snowball Earth,” when ice sheets grew to cover almost the entire planet. However, the number of these episodes, their extent, and just how fast Earth turned into an ice cube have long been a mystery. Now, analysis of a newly discovered rock sequence in Ethiopia supports a Snowball Earth event some 717 million years ago and suggests it took place in mere thousands of years—the geologic equivalent of a cold snap.
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+16 +1
The most likely cradles for life inside our solar system
Scientists still believe it possible that extraterrestrial life could flourish in our own neighbourhood. This week, Nasa’s veteran Curiosity rover discovered complex organic matter that had been buried and preserved for more than 3bn years in sediments forming a lake bed. This means that if microbial life did land on Mars, it would be nourished.
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+2 +1
Weather got you down? The entire planet of Mars is buried in a dust storm right now.
Mars is having a bit of a dustup. The entire surface is currently smothered in a “planet-encircling” dust storm that began two weeks ago, and swelled into a global event that forced NASA to suspend operations for the Opportunity rover. Mars is no stranger to dust storms, but this one isn’t a run-of-the-mill tempest. It’s far more gargantuan. These global storms occur only once every 5.5 years or so, swallowing up the entire planet in a cloud of red.
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+17 +1
Wind-Powered Mars Landers Could Really Work
Small robotic landers near the Martian poles could conceivably harness wind power, a new study suggests.
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+18 +1
Mars' 2018 dust storm intensifies
The martian dust storm that put the Opportunity rover to sleep in early June has by now intensified into a Planet-Encircling Dust Event, or PEDE, that would cover both North America and Russia completely if it were on Earth. Though its current location is nowhere near Opportunity’s, the Curiosity rover (currently studying Gale Crater) captured the growing impacts of the storm in a selfie snapped June 15.
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+10 +1
A massive object devastated Uranus a long time ago and it never fully recovered
Our Solar System is a pretty calm place these days, all things considered, but that wasn’t always the case.
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+17 +1
Mars is said to have had the right conditions to host life around 3.8 billion years ago.
By analysing rocks from the Gale crater — a 96 mile wide depression that was previously a huge lake — researchers have demonstrated the conditions on Mars over different periods. Their examination, distributed in the Journal Science, uncovers how the atmosphere transformed from a cool one to a warm, mild one in which life may have flourished.
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