Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed


Forgot your password?

Submission + - Astronomers Probe Mysterious Gas in Titan's Atmosphere (


Submission + - Elements Rising Up From Europa's Ocean (

sciencehabit writes: Material dissolved in the ocean of Jupiter's moon, Europa, which lies beneath an icy shell estimated to be about 100 kilometers thick, nevertheless reaches the surface, new research suggests. The new findings are exciting because they suggest that material that accumulates on Europa's surface might be making its way down into the ocean, where sulfur-bearing compounds could serve as nutrients for microbial life if any exists there.



Submission + - Hot Planet Cools Off Its Own Sun (


Submission + - Distant Nebula Stronly Resemblees Manatee (

sciencehabit writes: A nebula 18,000 light-years away bears a startling resemblance to Earth's humble manatee — down to the "scars" on its back. Scientists already knew of the giant cloud, called the W50 nebula, which formed when a star went supernova 20,000 years ago. But a new image of it taken by the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) telescope , has inspired a new name for the object: the Manatee Nebula. The nebula received its moniker after someone at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory noticed its resemblance to a manatee floating on its back, flippers over tummy. Bright arcs formed by powerful jets of charged particles in the massive cloud mirror the curved boat propeller scars the endangered animals often bear. And like its namesake, the Manatee Nebula is a whopper: It's 700 light-years across, one of the biggest supernova remnants ever spotted by VLA.

Submission + - Polaris Not So Close After all (


Submission + - Sorry, Mr. Spock, No Sign of Vulcanoids (

sciencehabit writes: Long before Star Trek's Mr. Spock, many astronomers during the 19th and early 20th centuries thought a planet named Vulcan circled the sun inside the orbit of Mercury and tugged on the latter, accounting for peculiarities in Mercury's motion. Well, Vulcan doesn't exist—Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity explains Mercury's orbit—but asteroids known as vulcanoids could, circling so close to the sun that we can't see them in its glare. If vulcanoids are real, they're only 7% to 21% as far from the sun as Earth is: closer than that and they evaporate in the sun's heat, farther than that and Mercury kicks them away. Now, in the March issue of Icarus, astronomers report results of a search using STEREO, two NASA spacecraft that revolve around the sun near Earth's orbit. The scientists found no new objects, ruling out the existence of any vulcanoids larger than about 6 kilometers, which is less than half the mean diameter of the little martian moon Deimos. But the search would have missed smaller vulcanoids, so an even deeper exploration might be, as Spock would say, the logical thing to do.

Submission + - Mars Rover Finds Watery Wonderland (


Submission + - The Largest Structure in the Universe (

sciencehabit writes: Astronomers have discovered the largest structure yet seen in the universe, a clump of quasars so large that it would take light 4 billion years to traverse its widest dimension. The structure is so large that it challenges Albert Einstein's cosmological principle—the notion that the universe, at large scales, looks the same no matter the direction and locale from which you look. Bringing the comparison to our cosmic neighborhood, the new record-holding group of quasars spans about 1600 times the distance between our Milky Way galaxy and our neighbor Andromeda.

Submission + - Mysterious Planet May Be Cruising for a Bruising (


Submission + - Has the Milky Way Lost Weight? (

sciencehabit writes: New observations suggest that the Milky Way weighs in at a "mere" 500 billion to 1000 billion times the mass of the sun—less than half as much as astronomers had previously estimated. A lower total mass for our home galaxy would have several implications, in particular for the Milky Way's dark matter content and distribution. Current theories predict that galaxies like ours should be surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of smaller satellite galaxies—many more than astronomers have found. The new estimate could potentially help explain the discrepancy, van der Kruit says, because a smaller galaxy can't attract as many followers.

Submission + - Mars Mission Could Turn Astronauts Into Couch Potatoes (


Submission + - Signs of Water in Martian Meteorite (

sciencehabit writes: A meteorite blasted from the surface of Mars contains traces of water, according to a new study. Though the fist-sized rock is relatively dry by earthly standards, it contains between 10 and 30 times the average concentration of water found in other known martian meteorites—and it is the first to closely match certain aspects of the martian crust. The proportions of various oxygen isotopes in the water don't match those found on Earth, a sign that the water likely originated on the Red Planet either as part of the magma fueling the volcano or as ground water that infiltrated or reacted with the molten material after it cooled. The finding bolsters the notion that Mars may have long ago boasted a much warmer and wetter surface than it has today.

Submission + - BREAKING NEWS: Possible Habitable Planet Just 12 Light Years Away (


Submission + - X-rays Reveal New Black Hole in Andromeda (


Slashdot Top Deals
