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io9New research reveals that planets don’t need stars to be habitable
Planets are sometimes ejected from their solar systems as other planets or passing stars whip up extreme gravitational forces. These starless worlds become cosmic wanderers, freezing slowly to death in the vast emptiness of space. But even that doesn’t have to be the end – under the right conditions, these wandering planets could sustain life … Continued
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io9
Incredible photo over Switzerland reveals the Milky Way in all its galactic glory
This amazing image shows just why we call our galaxy the Milky Way, as the dazzling white band of star clusters and nebulae arcs across the night sky in the Swiss Alps. A NASA astronomer explains just how much of our galaxy (and others) we can see in this one photo… What’s visible in the … Continued
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io9
Our galaxy is home to more than 50 billion planets…and 500 million potentially habitable ones
The Kepler telescope discovered more than 1,200 planets in just one tiny corner of the Milky Way. Crunching the numbers, a conservative estimate says there should be at least fifty billion planets in the entire galaxy, and about 500 million of those should be inside the habitable zone. But how many of those planets have … Continued
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io9
The Sun unleashes its biggest solar flare in years
Earlier this week, the Sun emitted its first X-class solar flare in about four years. The most powerful form of solar flare, this particular flare has lit up a massive region on the Sun’s southern hemisphere…and any of our readers in the far northern or southern latitudes will be treated to some particularly amazing auroras … Continued
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io9
Stardust probe sifts through the remains of a collision between comet and machine
In 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact probe shot an 800-pound subsidiary probe into the comet Tempel 1. Now, six years later, the new Stardust probe has returned to the comet to see our handiwork. But this isn’t just about proving humanity can leave its mark anywhere in the cosmos – the artificially created crater kicked up … Continued
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io9
The search is on for a giant tenth planet hidden in the Oort Cloud
We might just be on the verge of discovering a real Planet X, according to astronomers John Matese and Dan Whitmire. Subtle gravitational influences on comets way out in the Oort Cloud suggest there could be a huge gas giant affecting the other objects, and now NASA’s Wise space telescope has given us the data … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
The Mystery of the Giant Planet Hidden In Our Solar System
There’s a giant planet right here, hiding in our Solar System. One that nobody has ever seen, even while it is four times larger than Jupiter and has rings and moons orbiting it. At least, that’s what two astrophysicists say. The name of the planet is Tyche. The scientists are John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
io9
Two gigantic holes rip open the Sun
This image, snapped by the Japanese probe Hinode on February 1, looks way more terrifying than it actually is. Most of the top half of the Sun seems to have fallen into a massive black hole, but it’s not quite that dramatic. It’s actually a coronal hole, a gigantic opening that allows the Sun to … Continued
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io9
The NASA spaceship that could take humanity into deep space…if we had the money for it
This is the concept design for the Nautilus-X, one of NASA’s ideas for crewed deep space explorer. This craft would be launched from the International Space Station (or some other orbital platform) and could take six astronauts on long missions ranging anywhere from one to twenty-four months. This is the work of two engineers, Mark … Continued
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io9
No one can escape friction, not even in a vacuum.
On earth, we’re slowed down by the muck of the everyday world. Matter slows us down, rubbing against us and taking away our speed and power. Gravel, air, even slip-n-slides, exert some friction on us. This frictional force runs counter to our motion, and it can’t be escaped anywhere on earth. Eventually, inevitably, it will … Continued
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io9
Giant ice caverns lead the hunt for exotic particles
This is a gigantic hole that’s been melted into the South Pole. It’s one of the 100 or so such vertical caves that have been punched into the Antarctic surface as part of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is searching for tiny, almost massless particles known as neutrinos. This remarkable image reveals the incredible lengths … Continued
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io9
What happened to all those “Moon trees” whose seeds went into space?
Even if humanity never returns to the Moon, veterans of the lunar missions will still be around for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. That’s because the Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa brought hundreds of seeds with him to the Moon, and many of these were later planted to create the so-called Moon trees. The … Continued
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io9
A ring of blue. A ring of pink. And a ring of black holes.
Four hundred and thirty million light-years from earth a ring of black holes is forming, possibly around some very nervous aliens. In the constellation Cetus lies ARP 147, the remains of a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy that . . . interacted. For ‘interacted’ read, ‘boom.’ They plowed into one another, smushing enough matter … Continued
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io9
Stellar nursery is a giant, gaseous mountain range
This is nebula NGC 2174, located about 6400 light-years away. This amazing photograph makes the nebula look like the peak of a giant dust mountain, with strange pink stars dominating its summit. In fact, the stars are locked in cosmic battle with the gas mountain, and it’s only a matter of time before the stars … Continued
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io9All 1,200 newly discovered exoplanets orbiting in one gigantic solar system
This amazing video brings together all 1,236 exoplanet candidates that the Kepler telescope has spotted, and it imagines how they would look all together in a single solar system. All the planets are to scale and in the correct relative positions to their star. Prepare to be blown away by just how crowded our galaxy … Continued
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Tech NewsThis Galactic Timelapse Just Needs Some Alien Fighters
José Francisco Salgado is an astronomer at the ALMA observatory in the Atacama desert, Chile. He’s also a great photographer who creates these awesome timelapses. It just needs some alien spaceships attacking Earth. Or maybe just some Nazi UFOs. [Thanks Karl!]
By Jesus Diaz -
io9
Neutron star observed creating otherwise impossible form of matter
Neutron stars are the unimaginably dense remnants of collapsed giant stars. They get their name because the conditions inside are so fierce that atoms are smashed apart into a soup of protons, electrons, and, yes, neutrons. And now we have the first direct evidence that neutron stars are forming superfluids of neutrons – a totally … Continued
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io9
The Soviet Union got closer to reaching the Moon than we ever suspected
The United States won the Space Race decisively when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, but nobody ever really knew just how close the Soviet Union got to putting cosmonauts on the lunar surface. Now, forty years later, researcher Charles Vick says the Soviets really could have reached the Moon by … Continued
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io9
A new model of the universe shows the first stars are still alive
Until recently, astronomers believed that the first stars were ultra-giants which blew themselves apart long ago. Now a new model of the universe suggests that some the first stars of the universe may still be burning today. Although space appears to be full of vast stretches of nothing, between thirteen and fourteen billion years ago … Continued
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io9
The tiny island of Sark is a window back to the Middle Ages – and that’s good for science
Sark is a tiny, car-free island in the English Channel that didn’t fully get rid of feudalism until 2008. Its nights are so reliably dark that it’s just been named the world’s first “dark sky island”, making the island one giant observatory for looking up at the night sky without any light pollution to get … Continued