Archive for Space Travel

Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image Of Martian Dust Particle

August 16, 2008 at 11:43 am · Filed under Space Travel ·Tagged , ,

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Neuchatel/Imperial College London)

This color image is a three dimensional view of a digital elevation map of a sample collected by NASA

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars’ ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.

The particle — shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world — is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars’ distinctive red soil.

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Martian Life Or Not? NASA’s Phoenix Team Analyzes Results

August 7, 2008 at 9:39 am · Filed under Space Travel, World News ·Tagged , , ,

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University)

This image was acquired by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on Sol 43, the 43rd Martian day after landing (July 8, 2008). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University)

Describing the latest findings from the Red Planet as “neither good nor bad for life,” Phoenix Mars mission scientists spoke Aug. 5 on research in progress concerning an ongoing investigation of perchlorate salts detected in soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory aboard NASA’s Phoenix Lander.

“Finding perchlorates is neither good nor bad for life, but it does make us reassess how we think about life on Mars,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA), the instrument that includes the wet chemistry laboratory.

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Young Galaxies Have Surprisingly Strong Magnetic Fields: Contradicts Popular Theories

August 3, 2008 at 9:46 am · Filed under Space Travel ·Tagged , ,

The origin of magnetic fields in galaxies is still a mystery to astronomers. Popular theories suggest continual strengthening over billions of years. The latest results from Simon Lilly’s group, however, contradict this assumption and reveal that young galaxies also have strong magnetic fields.

“There is an astronomer joke that goes ‘to understand the universe, we examine galaxies for radiation, gases, temperatures, chemical constitution and much more. Anything we can’t explain after that we attribute to the magnetic fields’”, explains Simon Lilly, Professor at the Institute of Astronomy at ETH Zurich. The creations of the magnetic fields in galaxies remain a badly researched mystery. Until now, it was deduced that galaxies which formed after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago had very weak magnetic fields that then proceeded to grow exponentially in strength over several billions of years. At least that is what the dynamo theory (see box), which is often used to explain the development of magnetic fields, conveys.

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How The First Stars In The Universe Came Into Existence

August 3, 2008 at 9:31 am · Filed under Space Travel ·Tagged ,

Researchers believe that our universe began with the Big Bang about 13 billion years ago, and that soon after that event, matter began to form as small dust grains and gases.

How the first stars formed from this dust and gas has been a burning question for years, but a state-of-the-art computer simulation now offers the most detailed picture yet of how these first stars in the universe came into existence, researchers say.

The composition of the early universe was quite different from that of today, and the physics that governed the early universe were also somewhat simpler. Dr. Naoki Yoshida and colleagues in Japan and the U.S. incorporated these conditions of the early universe, sometimes referred to as the “cosmic dark ages,” to simulate the formation of an astronomical object that would eventually shine its light into this darkness.

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New Way To Weigh Giant Black Holes

August 3, 2008 at 9:25 am · Filed under Space Travel ·Tagged , ,

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique.

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