All Stories by Ron Cowen
- Astronomy
Are solar eruptions triggered a loopy way?
Astronomers have identified a new solar mechanism that may explain some coronal mass ejections.
- Tech
Ribbon to the Stars
Advances in one of the tiniest of technologies—carbon nanotubes—is bringing the concept of a space elevator closer to reality.
- Astronomy
Black holes and their galaxies: A closer link
Supermassive black holes and the galaxies they inhabit appear to grow up together.
- Planetary Science
Rocks on the ice
Pristine fragments of a meteorite that fell January 18 in the frozen Yukon and that remained frozen until they were delivered to a NASA laboratory may reveal much about the earliest days of the solar system.
- Planetary Science
A Comet’s Long Tail Tickles Ulysses
Stretching more than half a billion kilometers, the ion tail that Comet Hyakutake flaunted when it passed near the sun in 1996 is the longest ever recorded and suggests that otherwise invisible comets could be detected by searching for their tails.
- Planetary Science
Reviewers see red over recent Mars programs
NASA's two most recent missions to Mars failed because they were underfunded, managed by inexperienced people, and insufficiently tested, according to a report released March 28.
- Astronomy
Big Bang Confirmed: Seeing twists and turns of primordial light
The latest observations of the cosmic microwave background reveal that photons from adjacent patches of the sky have slightly different polarizations.
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- Astronomy
Found: Gamma-ray background information
Resolving a 30-year-old mystery, astronomers say they have identified the source of the faint, high-energy glow of radiation known as the gamma-ray background.
- Astronomy
X-ray telescope vanishes
Astro-E, a Japanese X-ray observatory, fell back to Earth and burned up just after launch on Feb. 9.
- Planetary Science
Unveiling Mars’ watery secret
A new gravity map of Mars has revealed a network of buried channels that billions of years ago may have been on the surface and helped carry water to fill an ancient ocean.
- Astronomy
Craft spies new class of gamma-ray sources
Roughly half the 120 unidentified sources of high-energy gamma-ray emissions in the Milky Way—those at midgalactic latitudes—may comprise a new class of objects and originate from a belt of massive stars that lies only a few hundred light-years from the solar system.
