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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Planetary Science
Award named for late Science News writer
Jonathan Eberhart's name lives on in a new planetary-sciences award.
By Janet Raloff - Space
Ice confirmed on an asteroid
Reporting from the American Astronomical Society meeting in Puerto Rico, planetary scientists confirm, for the first time, the presence of frozen water on an asteroid.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Jupiter’s second greatest hit
Features of a bruise in the Jovian atmosphere suggest an asteroid may be what pummeled the planet this summer.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Largest known planetary ring discovered
Researchers have found a dusty band that circles Saturn and has a radius of more than 12 million kilometers.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Water on the moon: How much?
Ron Cowen reports from the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Inspecting an asteroid that hit Earth
Researchers have analyzed fragments from 2008 TC3, the first asteroid ever tracked during its descent.
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Measuring citations: Calculations can vary widely
Depending on how citation tallies will be used, it may pay to cherry pick the appropriate counting house.
By Janet Raloff - Space
Universe has more entropy than thought
New calculations suggest that the cosmos is more disorderly than thought and is a bit closer to heat death.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
MESSENGER captures new images of Mercury during a third passage
MESSENGER flew past Mercury for a third time on September 29. The spacecraft's mission will continue, with MESSENGER due to settle into a yearlong orbit around Mercury in March 2011.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Windows on the Universe
Astronomy’s multiwavelength revolution paints a more complete picture of the cosmos
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
A damp moon: Water found inside and out
The moon isn’t bone-dry: Its surface and interior contain an abundance of water, new studies reveal.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Entanglement in the macroworld
A team finds “spooky action at a distance” in superconductors big enough to be seen with the naked eye.