Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
Breach of the Shield: Magnetic links between sun and Earth last hours
Once breaches have formed in Earth's protective magnetic field, they persist for many hours, allowing charged particles from the sun to gush through and create electrical disturbances.
- Astronomy
Spying a planet in star’s dusty veil
Astronomers blocked out the light of a nearby star and found hints of an orbiting planet.
- Astronomy
Alien stars pass close to home
Stars from an alien galaxy are raining down on our own Milky Way and passing just a few hundred light-years from Earth.
- Astronomy
Solar Flip-Flops: Sun storms spawn magnetic reversal
Coronal mass ejections, billion-ton clouds of charged particles blasted from the sun, appear to play a key role in reversing the sun's magnetic poles every 11 years.
- Planetary Science
Martian sand ripples are taller than Earth’s
New data gathered by a Mars-orbiting probe suggest that large ripples found in sandy areas of the Red Planet are more than twice as tall as their terrestrial counterparts.
- Planetary Science
Giant picture of a giant planet
The Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft has taken the sharpest global portrait of Jupiter ever obtained, showing the planet's turbulent atmosphere in true color.
- Planetary Science
Moonopolies
Recently discovered tiny satellites, all orbiting the outer planets in strange paths, may shed new light on a critical last phase in the formation of the planets.
- Astronomy
Sound of the fury
On Oct. 28, the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft recorded the radio wave "sound" of a powerful solar flare as it raced toward Earth.
- Astronomy
Chow Down! Milky Way gobbles its closest known neighbor
A tiny, newly discovered galaxy being shredded by the gravity of the Milky Way is our galaxy's closest known neighbor, residing just 42,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.
- Astronomy
Hot and Heavy Star Birth: Young cosmos delivers massive stars
Aided by a gravitational zoom lens, astronomers have discovered the hottest, brightest, and most crowded star-forming region ever observed.
- Planetary Science
Bone-dry Mars?
The presence of large amounts of olivine, a mineral that undergoes rapid chemical transformation when exposed to liquid water, argues against ancient oceans or lakes on Mars.
- Planetary Science
Martian Invasion
If all goes according to plan, three spacecraft—one in December, two in January—will land on the Red Planet, looking for evidence that liquid water once flowed on its surface.
