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Tech NewsThis Corona Billboard Makes the Moon the World’s Biggest Lime Wedge
If you happen to find yourself taking an evening stroll past 15th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan tomorrow night, you’ll have the opportunity to full enjoy this clever Corona billboard. Playing off the fact the drink is usually served with a lime wedged in the bottle’s mouth, from the right angle, and on the … Continued
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io9Is the Earth getting heavier?
Except for the occasional earthquake or volcano eruption, the Earth seems like a fairly stable place. But if you believe that YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG. We are under constant bombardment. From space! And how does all of this cosmic debris affect the earth? In this week’s “Ask a Physicist” we’ll find out. “Visible … Continued
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io9This New Video Map of Space Will Make You Feel Utterly Insignificant
Talk about your 40-foot perspective: An international team of researchers has put together an absolutely brilliant 3D video map of the nearby universe out to a distance of 300 million light-years. The video is a not-so-subtle reminder of how freakishly tiny we are in the larger scheme of things. Top image: A map showing all … Continued
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io9
Can you guess the subject of this photograph?
Here’s a hint: it’s big, gassy, and rhymes with pattern. It’s Saturn! Kind of. Technically, it’s of Saturn’s D-ring, the innermost (and faintest) ring encircling our solar system’s second-largest planet. Via the Cassini mission’s image page: Saturn’s D ring may be faint and difficult to observe, but it rewards our patience. In this image, the … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
The Smallest Galaxy in the Universe Is Adorable
Few scientific terms express a sense of sheer enormity more than the word “galaxy.” Galaxies are massively massive. They’re filled with more stars than any single person could count. They’re billions of times brighter than our own Sun! Galaxies are huge! Except for Segue 2. This dwarf spheroidal galaxy contains only a thousand stars and … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
The Butterfly Nebula Sure Looks Pretty
There’s nothing gentle or delicate about this butterfly. Despite its pleasant appearance, the Butterfly Nebula has a dying star at its center that has a temperature of 250,000 degrees C. The image, captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows the bright cavity of ionized gas that surrounds the central star. Situated … Continued
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io9
This “comet factory” reveals first secrets of planetary formation
Planets have to start out somewhere, and the leading theory is that they begin as dust particles clumping together to form larger and larger building blocks, before finally emerging eons later as full-blown planets. But the exact physics that would allow such clumps to form has long been frustratingly unclear. That’s why new research of … Continued
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io9
Our intergalactic neighbourhood is more prominent than we thought
Good news, everyone! We’re not intergalactic hicks after all! Turns out that our solar system is located in a large spiral branch called the Local Arm, a prominent feature of the Milky Way galaxy. Top image: The left side shows what we used to think the Milky Way looked like, the right side shows the … Continued
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io9
Why does this bizarro asteroid have a million-kilometer-long tail?
Three years ago, something rather cataclysmic happened to this asteroid. Whatever it was — and it was probably a collision with a smaller asteroid — has now resulted in an exceptionally long debris tail that just keeps getting longer. Asteroids aren’t supposed to have tails. That’s comet territory. But this object, called P/2010 A2 (LINEAR), … Continued
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io9Asteroid Miners Will Launch World’s First Crowdfunded Space Telescope
Planetary Resources – the people behind the recently announced asteroid-mining venture – has just announced a brand new project: the world’s first crowdfunded space telescope, to be financed with a just-launched Kickstarter campaign. The company’s primary goal has always been, and remains, asteroid mining; and to that end, it’s developing a class of asteroid-surveying space … Continued
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io9What will happen when our Galaxy collides with Andromeda?
One day, our own galaxy will collide with Andromeda — and when that happens, poor defenseless Earth will be smashed to bits. Right? Wrong. In this week’s “Ask a Physicist,” we’ll find out why. Like most io9 readers, I’ve been thinking a lot about the apocalypse since Annalee’s new book hit the stands. In tribute, … Continued
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io9When Two Galaxies Collide
This new image from Hubble shows what happens when a spiral galaxy (like the Milky Way) collides into a lenticular galaxy (an intermediate between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy). The Hubble website explains more: The image also reveals further evidence of the collision. There is a bright stream of stars coming out from the … Continued
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io9
Astronomers Map the Extreme Weather of a Distant Hot Jupiter
An emerging branch of science known as exometeorology is offering remarkable insights into the conditions found on some of the more extreme planets in the galaxy — including the weird and mind-boggingly massive weather patterns experienced on a hot Jupiter that’s 385 light years from Earth. Hot Jupiters are those exotic class of extrasolar planets … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightWhy We All Love Space Porn
There’s something so beguilingly beautiful about images of space: those awe inspiring images that make us question our place in the universe. In this video, a team of astrophysicists take a look at why we all find them quite so amazing. So, astrophysicist Dr. Emily Rice, Hubble Image Processor Zolt Levay and Astronomer David W. … Continued
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io9
What the heck is this strange red rectangle doing in our galaxy?
It’s not often that a nebula looks quite so much like a cheesy special effect from some forgotten ’70s sci-fi movie, but the Red Rectangle Nebula qualifies. After all, this seems to betray a total misunderstanding of basic science, because aren’t nebulae meant to be, well, round? And is any nebula that blood-red? This nebula’s … Continued
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io9
Feast your eyes on the first global topographical map of Titan
For the first time ever, planetary scientists have created a topographical map of Titan, the largest of Saturn’s many moons, and the second-largest in the entire solar system. The map is a boon to researchers who study Titan, a mysterious moon that is arguably the most Earth-like body in our solar system – and it’s … Continued
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io9
Here’s the supernova Johannes Kepler studied 400 years ago
These are the remnants of the last supernova known to explode in our galaxy whose light has reached Earth. It lit up the night sky in 1604 and attracted the attention of Johannes Kepler himself. But it’s only in the last couple of decades that we’ve developed the technology to understand exactly what kind of … Continued
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io9
Revisiting Kepler’s Most Mind-Blowing Discoveries
NASA’s Kepler space telescope is busted and it may never work normally again. But during its four years of exemplary service, the planet-hunting telescope provided astronomers with an unprecedented glimpse into the Milky Way. Here are the most incredible discoveries made by Kepler. Top image: Ron Miller. As we reported yesterday, controllers on the ground … Continued
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io9
The Kepler space telescope is spinning out of control
After four years of service, NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope has suffered a second serious malfunction — one that threatens to permanently end the mission. Controllers on the ground can no longer control its orientation. It looks bad, but NASA isn’t giving up hope. This story actually began last July when one of Kepler’s four reaction … Continued
