Tech World: Astronomy

NASA wants you to design the UI of its upcoming smartwatch app for ISS astronauts

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If you're an app designer and you want to have your work featured by NASA, this may be your lucky day, but only if you're good enough. Earlier today, NASA launched a contest for a smartwatch app UI design. The prize money stands at $1500, which is definitely not to be overlooked, but the perks of designing an app for NASA probably will probably outweigh the cash in the eyes of many app designers.<br />
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Designers will have to create the foundation for what will ultimately become the standard UI for smartwatch applications that will be used by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Given the broad utility of the app, designers will have to draw up separate interfaces for multiple sections, such as "Crew Timeline", "Cautions and Warnings", a timer "for procedures until next activity", as well a section for checking the link with Earth. Make sure to head over to the source link below if you're serious about entering the contest and finding out more about the requirements.<br />
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We repeated the word "designers" a few times throughout the post, and that's because NASA isn't looking for app developers. Instead, the contest is for a UI design that's to be submitted as a JPEG or a PNG, and not for the full-blown apps themselves, which will probably be coded away by NASA software engineers. In the contest rules, the association puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that designers are highly encouraged to come up with new ways of representing data on a smartwatch display.<br />
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The whole point of the app is to help ISS astronauts digest information more quickly through the screen of a Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch, the reference hardware for the app. At the moment, the astronauts use iPads to go over their agendas and procedures, but the space association hopes that the transition to smartwatch apps will help astronauts with getting the information they require while also freeing up both hands.<br />
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<a href="https://www.freelancer.com/contest/NASA-Challenge-Astronaut-Smartwatch-App-Interface-Design-261634.html" target="_blank">NASA</a></div>

NASA wants you to design the UI of its upcoming smartwatch app for ISS astronauts

If you're an app designer and you want to have your work featured by NASA, this may be your lucky day, but only if you're good e...

NASA Contest Offers $25,000 for Earthquake Detection Ideas

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NASA needs your help to bolster current earthquake detection technologies, and they’re offering $25,000 to the team that develops the best way to detect an oncoming quake.</div>
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The space agency calls its challenge the "Quest for Quakes," and seeks to inspire new software codes and algorithms to identify electromagnetic pulses (EMP) that scientists theorize precede an earthquake.</div>
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Scientists have debated the connection between electromagnetic pulses and earthquakes for years, some believing distinct ultra-low frequency EMPs that emanate from the ground near earthquake epicenters for weeks prior to moderate and large quakes can be measured and used to warn people before an earthquake happens. [Video: Earthquake Warnings from Space?]</div>
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According to one theory, fracturing in the Earth's crust creates a pulse of electrical charge that travels through the earth and shows up as a small change in the magnetic field. The difficulty, however, is separating quake-specific EMPs from natural and man-made electromagnetic noise like lightning, trains, traffic, and solar storms.</div>
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“Developing a reliable approach that can separate potential earthquake-induced electromagnetic pulses from the myriad of natural and anthropogenic sources has been a significant challenge," Craig Dobson, program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "We look forward to seeing the innovative ideas from this competition and learning more about this controversial phenomenon."</div>
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NASA hopes Quest for Quakes participants can discover a way to distinguish EMPs that indicate earthquake from other, non-quake electromagnetic pulses. They’ve given contestants electromagnetic signal data collected over three-month periods from multiple sensors near past earthquakes. Data with no earthquakes has also been included to act as a control.</div>
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Data for the competition comes from the more than 65 terabytes of data collected from 125 sensors in California and 40 international sensors monitored by the QuakeFinder group, a humanitarian research and development project by Stellar Solutions, Inc., Palo Alto, California.</div>
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Quest for Quakes participants started submitting projects on Monday, July 27 and can continue entering the contest until it ends on Monday, Aug. 10 at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT)</div>
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<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-contest-offers-25-000-earthquake-detection-ideas-144959061.html" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-contest-offers-25-000-earthquake-detection-ideas-144959061.html" target="_blank">Source</a></div>

NASA Contest Offers $25,000 for Earthquake Detection Ideas

NASA needs your help to bolster current earthquake detection technologies, and they’re offering $25,000 to the team that develops th...

Breathtaking photo shows moon crossing Earth's face

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The Deep Space Climate Observatory, a collaboration of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Air Force, snapped an image of the Earth and the moon from a distance of a million miles.<br />
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<span style="color: #666666;">This image shows the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft and the Earth — 1 million miles away.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;">NASA/NOAA</span><br />
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The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) studies the solar wind and snaps vivid shots of Earth's surface from its position about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from the planet. Recently, the moon entered DSCOVR's field of view, and the spacecraft caught the amazing lunar transit on time-lapse video.<br />
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"It's surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon," Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. "Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface."<br />
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The moon is tidally locked to Earth, so it always keeps the same face pointing at the planet. Because DSCOVR observes from a spot between the moon and the sun, the spacecraft's images show the moon's unfamiliar far side.<br />
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The far side — sometimes called the "dark side," which is misleading because it receives just as much sunlight as the near side — is impossible to see from Earth. The Soviet Union's Luna 3 spacecraft exposed its contours for the first time in 1959.<br />
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The moon's far side is very different from its well-known front face. Instead of the "Man in the Moon," whose dark patches formed when craters created by cosmic collisions filled with lava, the far side is all mountains and craters without the dark, flat plains.<br />
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These differences probably exist because the far side's crust is about twice as thick as that on the near side, researchers say. (Heat radiating from the still-scorching Earth shortly after the moon's formation apparently kept the lunar near side molten much longer than the far side; elements therefore condensed out of the moon's wispy atmosphere more readily on the cooler far side.)<br />
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NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) snapped the photos that make up the new time-lapse video over a 5-hour span on July 16. Each image combines three single-color snapshots. That origin can be spotted in the photos, which show a faint green outline on the right side of the moon's disk due to the system's movement during the photographing process, NASA officials said.<br />
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Starting next month, NASA will post daily color images of Earth from EPIC depicting different views of Earth's rotation. The DSCOVR mission itself is a collaboration among NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force, and its primary goal is to monitor the solar wind.<br />
<a href="http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0806/Breathtaking-photo-shows-moon-crossing-Earth-s-face" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0806/Breathtaking-photo-shows-moon-crossing-Earth-s-face" target="_blank">Read More...</a><br />
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Breathtaking photo shows moon crossing Earth's face

The Deep Space Climate Observatory, a collaboration of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Air Force, sna...

NASA drones to seek mining spots on the moon

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The moon has been a lonely place, the last expedition there was in 1972, but interest is renewed again as both NASA and China are planning manned expeditions in the near future. Particularly of interest when it comes to our only natural satellite, is whether it contains any resources, and if so, how to reach them? To answer the question, NASA’s Swamp Works developed new drones to survey the moon for any deposits of raw materials, like iron or gold. These new devices have been built to explore the moon’s numerous craters, particularly any extinct volcanoes or lava tubes deeper below the crust – a growing interest to astronomers.</div>
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“We’re an innovations lab, so in everything we do, we try to come up with new solutions,” said Rob Mueller, a senior technologist from Swamp Works who was responsible for the design of the drones – hoping to find resources such as gold, silver, iron and copper on the moon as well as asteroids.</div>
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The drones were built to dive and fly in the gullies inaccessible by land rovers and are known as Extreme Access Flyers. In addition to raw materials, they’re also seeking out such resources as ice or water, which could provide sustenance to any colonies there in the near future. Because they are flying in uncharted areas, they are canvassing their way as they go along, and the length of their flight is considerably limited, compared to time spent flying over the Earth.</div>
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Using laser guidance functionalities, in addition to autonomous flight and even 3-D printing for creating a prototype, they have been built to resemble quadcopters. The drones may be equally useful on Earth, however, in activities like surveying volcanoes and other disaster areas, particularly areas affected with radiation.</div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/2015/08/05/nasa-drones-to-seek-mining-spots-on-the-moon" target="_blank">Source</a></span></div>
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NASA drones to seek mining spots on the moon

The moon has been a lonely place, the last expedition there was in 1972, but interest is renewed again as both NASA and China are pl...

Our Planet May Be Sprouting Super-Dense “Hairs” of Dark Matter

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Calculations made by a JPL-California research scientist suggest that thin strands of dark matter filaments are spreading out from large planetary bodies like Earth and Jupiter. If true, it’s a possible sign that we may be able to finally detect these hypothetical forms of matter.<br />
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“As the evidence of dark matter’s existence has become overwhelming, understanding its nature and interactions through the observation of both direct...and indirect...dark matter detection has become an increasingly vigorous field of inquiry,” writes Gary Prézeau in his new study, which can be found at the arXiv pre-print server.<br />
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Indeed, detecting dark matter has proven to be much easier said than done. This elusive form of matter, though it may account for nearly 85% of all the stuff in the Universe, has never been detected directly. It doesn’t emit or absorb light, or any other electromagnetic radiation. It’s hypothesized that dark matter only interacts with our visible universe through gravity. Thus, it’s predicted to manifest as halos, discs, and streams.<br />
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To learn more about dark matter—particularly as it applies to its presence around compact bodies like planets—Prézeau performed a series of simulations. New Scientist explains:<br />
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[Prézeau] wondered what would happen if a stream of dark matter pierced a planet like Earth. He calculated that the planet’s gravity would bend the particles’ trajectories and focus them to a point. This “lensing” effect would concentrate dark matter along an axis passing through Earth’s core, reaching densities about a billion times more than average at the focal point.</blockquote>
Which is awesome news if he’s right; given that the “root” of the dark matter hair—its singular focal point—is predicted to extend about a million kilometers above Earth (which is beyond the Moon), we could set up a space-based detector in the vicinity to search for it. What’s more, because there are millions of streams flowing through our solar system, we could also perform searches around larger bodies such as Jupiter and Saturn.<br />
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“The discovery of a hair would...be a huge boon for both planetary science and cosmology,” writes Prézeau in his study. He offers three specific benefits:<br />
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A hair would provide a uniquely powerful laboratory to study dark matter interactions.</blockquote>
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Hairs are unique windows into the fine structure of the local dark matter streams.</blockquote>
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A hair discovered near Earth (or Jupiter) would find counterparts in all solar system bodies providing a powerful universal tool to probe the interior of almost any planet or moon.</blockquote>
Prézeau says that locating these hairs “is likely to be challenging,” but may be facilitated by the fact that the extreme densities of these hairs are distinguishable from their velocity.<br />
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Read the entire study at the preprint arXiv: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.07009" target="_blank">“Dense Dark Matter Hairs Spreading Out from Earth, Jupiter and Other Compact Bodies”.</a><br />
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Our Planet May Be Sprouting Super-Dense “Hairs” of Dark Matter

Calculations made by a JPL-California research scientist suggest that thin strands of dark matter filaments are spreading out from larg...

Mysterious Moon may have Secret Ocean -- and Life

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<cite class="el-editorial-source" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: CNN, 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700;">(CNN)</cite>NASA wants to go to Europa. No, it's not in Europe. And for soccer fans, it has nothing to do with the Europa League.</div>
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Europa is one of Jupiter's larger moons. It's about the size of Earth's moon, and it's thought to be one of the best places to look for life in our solar system -- besides Earth, of course.</div>
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<img alt="An artist's concept of a plume of water jetting above the icy surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons." class="media__image media__image--responsive" data-demand-load="loaded" data-eq-pts="mini: 0,  xsmall: 221,  small: 308,  medium: 461,  large:  781" data-eq-state="xsmall" data-src-full16x9="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-full-169.jpg" data-src-large="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-super-169.jpg" data-src-medium="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-exlarge-169.jpg" data-src-mini="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-small-169.jpg" data-src-mini1x1="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-small-11.jpg" data-src-small="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-large-169.jpg" data-src-xsmall="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-medium-plus-169.jpg" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619073819-europa-water-vapor-medium-plus-169.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; width: 300px;" /><div class="img__preloader" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
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An artist's concept of a plume of water jetting above the icy surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.</div>
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Interest in the icy world heated up in 2012 when the Hubble Space Telescope observed water vapor above the south polar region of Europa. NASA says those observations gave scientists strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface.</div>
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Long before Hubble made those findings, a NASA spacecraft named Galileo traveled to Jupiter in 1995 and found evidence that Europa has a salty ocean beneath its frozen crust. NASA says that ocean may have more than twice as much water as Earth.</div>
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"Europa has tantalized us with its enigmatic icy surface and evidence of a vast ocean, following the amazing data from 11 flybys of the Galileo spacecraft over a decade ago and recent Hubble observations suggesting plumes of water shooting out from the moon," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement in May.</div>
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"We're excited about the potential of this new mission and these instruments to unravel the mysteries of Europa in our quest to find evidence of life beyond Earth."</div>
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<img alt="An artist's concept of what a NASA spacecraft would look like approaching Europa." class="media__image media__image--responsive" data-demand-load="loaded" data-eq-pts="mini: 0,  xsmall: 221,  small: 308,  medium: 461,  large:  781" data-eq-state="xsmall" data-src-full16x9="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-full-169.jpg" data-src-large="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-super-169.jpg" data-src-medium="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-exlarge-169.jpg" data-src-mini="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-small-169.jpg" data-src-mini1x1="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-small-11.jpg" data-src-small="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-large-169.jpg" data-src-xsmall="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-medium-plus-169.jpg" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619070751-nasa-europa-mission-medium-plus-169.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; width: 300px;" /><div class="img__preloader" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
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An artist's concept of what a NASA spacecraft would look like approaching Europa.</div>
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NASA hopes the new probe will help determine if Europa really does have the ingredients for life, according to Barry Goldstein, manager of the Europa Project atNASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.</div>
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The mission took a big step forward Wednesday when NASA announced it had been moved to what's called the "formulation phase," Goldstein told CNN in an email.</div>
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"In this phase we mature the mission design and requirements to assure we are asking the correct science questions, and designing the correct mission to answer those questions," he said.</div>
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The space agency has included $30 million in its 2016 budget to plan the mission. Goldstein said there's still work to do before NASA officially clears mission managers to build the hardware and software for the mission.</div>
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If the mission does get final approval, the spacecraft would be launched in the 2020s. It would take several years to get to Jupiter, and when it arrived it would "orbit the giant planet about every two weeks, providing many opportunities for close flybys of Europa," according to a NASA statement.</div>
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NASA says the mission plan includes 45 flybys at altitudes ranging from 16 miles to 1,700 miles (25 kilometers to 2,700 kilometers). With each pass, the spacecraft would collect information about Europa's surface and use instruments to look deep inside the small world.</div>
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Nine science instruments have been selected so far, including cameras, ice penetrating radar and a magnetometer.</div>
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A bit more about Europa and Jupiter</h3>
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Europa is one of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system -- so big that 1,000 Earths would fit inside. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei is given credit for discovering Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto in 1610, and so the four are known as Galilean satellites or moons. German astronomer Simon Marius claimed to see the moons at about the same time, but Galileo published his findings first. Jupiter also has dozens of other smaller moons.</div>
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Jupiter is about 390 million miles (629 million kilometers) from Earth when the two planets are at their closest.</div>
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Despite the distance, you can see Jupiter with the naked eye on a clear night. In fact, Jupiter and the much brighter Venus are putting on quite a show in the evening sky this month. If you go out after sunset and look west, you can see the two planets fairly close together. They look like two bright lights. In late June and early July, the two planets will be at their closest until August 2016.</div>
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If you have binoculars or a telescope, you can see Jupiter's largest moons, including Europa. They will look like tiny lights near Jupiter.</div>
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Jupiter's other visitors</h3>
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<img alt="This image of Jupiter is a composite of four images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in December 2000. " class="media__image media__image--responsive" data-demand-load="loaded" data-eq-pts="mini: 0,  xsmall: 221,  small: 308,  medium: 461,  large:  781" data-eq-state="xsmall" data-src-full16x9="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-full-169.jpg" data-src-large="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-super-169.jpg" data-src-medium="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-exlarge-169.jpg" data-src-mini="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-small-169.jpg" data-src-mini1x1="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-small-11.jpg" data-src-small="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-large-169.jpg" data-src-xsmall="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-medium-plus-169.jpg" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150619091225-jupiter-and-europa-medium-plus-169.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; width: 300px;" /><div class="img__preloader" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
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This image of Jupiter is a composite of four images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in December 2000.</div>
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While the new probe will focus on Europa, Jupiter has had a steady stream of visitors from Earth over the past few decades:</div>
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• December 1973: NASA's Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter.</div>
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• December 1974: Pioneer 11</div>
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• March 1979: Voyager 1</div>
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• July 1979: Voyager 2</div>
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• December 1989: Galileo (dropped a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere).</div>
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• February 1992: Ulysses</div>
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• December 2000: Cassini-Huygens</div>
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• February 2007: New Horizons</div>
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Even if it gets approved quickly, the Europa spacecraft won't be the next visitor to the Jupiter system. NASA's Juno spacecraft is due to arrive at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.</div>
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Source:<a href="http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/techandscience/android-51-released-for-moto-x-first-generation/ar-AAbS5Gp?srcref=rss" target="_blank"> CNN</a></div>
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Mysterious Moon may have Secret Ocean -- and Life

(CNN) NASA wants to go to Europa. No, it's not in Europe. And for soccer fans, it has nothing to do with the Europa League. Europa...

Mercury's 4 Billion-Year Magnetic Past Revealed Just Before Suicide Of NASA's MESSENGER Spacecraft

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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6XXo9KL7P44v1Q9lGF-PYK3PTb8_BwHrpbZWbR7emPhuKIaot8L84fjBpFuxOa74xa7JQftizPm1KbLBLeXCdTW9rrlMbhqzRSRPVckURWWE_4uGdJUrtFQ3KURjSBvHbRAuKZXPr7i3c/s1600/the-white-lines-show-schematic-magnetic-field-lines-above-the-surface-of-mercury-from-magnetized-crustal-rocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6XXo9KL7P44v1Q9lGF-PYK3PTb8_BwHrpbZWbR7emPhuKIaot8L84fjBpFuxOa74xa7JQftizPm1KbLBLeXCdTW9rrlMbhqzRSRPVckURWWE_4uGdJUrtFQ3KURjSBvHbRAuKZXPr7i3c/s400/the-white-lines-show-schematic-magnetic-field-lines-above-the-surface-of-mercury-from-magnetized-crustal-rocks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">The white lines show schematic magnetic field lines above the surface of Mercury from magnetized crustal rocks and the blue wiggly lines represent small variations in the magnetic field.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">Mercury's magnetic field that is created through a dynamo process in the core may have existed in the planet's early days.</span><br />
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New findings suggest Mercury's amazing magnetic field may have been even stronger than it is today as far back as 4 billion years ago, Johns Hopkins University reported. The findings were made using NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft that crashed into Mercury last week after running out of fuel. Despite its dramatic death, the spacecraft revealed evidence of magnetization of ancient crustal rocks on our solar system's closest planet to the Sun.<br />
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"From MESSENGER and Mariner 10 observations we already knew that Mercury has had a global magnetic field today and 40 years ago," said Catherine Johnson, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and lead author of "Low-altitude Magnetic Field Measurements by MESSENGER Reveal Mercury's Ancient Crustal Field," published today in the journal Science. Johnson is also a professor of Geophysics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.<br />
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MESSENGER's Magnetometer instrument allowed it to first start measuring magnetic field strength and direction when orbiting Mercury at a distance of about 60 miles from the surface. The change in magnetic signal strength from about 50 to 10 miles suggested the presence of magnetized crustal rocks.<br />
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Mercury is believed to be the only planet in our solar system that has a global magnetic field caused by a dynamo in a fluid metallic outer core.<br />
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"Magnetized rocks record the history of the magnetic field of a planet, a key ingredient in understanding its evolution. We already know that around 3.7 to 3.9 billions years ago Mercury was volcanically and tectonically active. We now know that it also had a magnetic field at around that time," Johnson said. "If we didn't have the recent very low-altitude observations, we would never have been able to discover these signals. Mercury has just been waiting to tell us its story"  </blockquote>
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Source - <a href="http://www.hngn.com/articles/90868/20150508/mercurys-4-billion-year-magnetic-past-revealed-before-suicide-nasas.htm" target="_blank">Hngn</a> </div>

Mercury's 4 Billion-Year Magnetic Past Revealed Just Before Suicide Of NASA's MESSENGER Spacecraft

The white lines show schematic magnetic field lines above the surface of Mercury from magnetized crustal rocks and the blue wiggly lines ...

Water Oceans Likely To Be Ubiquitous, Say Astronomers

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Water oceans on other earthlike planets are likely to be ubiquitous, says an international team of U.K. and German astronomers. New ground-based observations of the atmosphere of a cooling stellar white dwarf point — the burnt-out remains of a star once like ours — indicate that at least one of this dying solar system’s asteroids was rich in water ice. As such, the team notes that it would have been capable of seeding an earthlike planet with as much as a third of its oceans’ water.<br />
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The team’s observations — made with the 4.2-meter William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands — lend credence to the idea that asteroids in particular must be have delivered water to a plethora of terrestrial mass planets at habitable distances from their stars.<br />
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A new paper in the journal Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society notes the detection of large quantities of hydrogen and oxygen (along with magnesium, silicon and iron) in the atmosphere of the cooling white dwarf SDSS J1242+5226, located some 530 light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. The team details evidence that an asteroid measuring some 900 km in diameter (or about the size of our own solar system’s dwarf planet Ceres) made its way into the white dwarf’s upper atmosphere.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZu0C2hxc9oIGCKySX4sgtfBRlp8FJr-L7su1ctCjQxXWfokVOZ6N2JWYYVQSlbP_Z_ESdKgF3MoLV5I4R8-TtadhK9VZYBXCCL1N5nBlp3emoXPG9h98XKNc1nCEw0nRo-5Q1nvipVQrj/s1600/wateryasteroidscience-1940x1378.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZu0C2hxc9oIGCKySX4sgtfBRlp8FJr-L7su1ctCjQxXWfokVOZ6N2JWYYVQSlbP_Z_ESdKgF3MoLV5I4R8-TtadhK9VZYBXCCL1N5nBlp3emoXPG9h98XKNc1nCEw0nRo-5Q1nvipVQrj/s400/wateryasteroidscience-1940x1378.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Artist’s impression of a rocky and water-rich asteroid being torn apart by the strong gravity of the white dwarf star. Similar objects in the solar system likely delivered the bulk of water on Earth and represent the building blocks of the terrestrial planets. Credit: Mark A. Garlick (<a href="http://space-art.co.uk/" target="_blank">www.space-art.co.uk</a>) / University of Warwick</span></i><br />
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“We [also] looked at a larger set of white dwarfs and found strong evidence that over their long lifetimes many of them [were] hit by water-rich asteroids or comets,” Boris Gaensicke, the paper’s second author and an astronomer at the University of Warwick in the U.K., told Forbes. “So, there seems to be no shortage of water carriers that could deliver oceans to other earthlike planets.”<br />
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Even so, for years now astrobiologists have debated how oceans actually garnered such vast volumes of water. Did a sizeable swath of our oceans’ water actually originate from planetary impactors, such as asteroids and comets?<br />
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Although most researchers opt for the latter scenario, astrobiologists are still not certain as to which planetary bodies — asteroids of comets — played the larger role in delivering Earth’s own water. And to be fair, while such observations are interesting, Cornell University astronomer Jonathan Lunine cautions not to draw overreaching conclusions.<br />
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Lunine told Forbes that there is still strong evidence that main belt asteroids likely delivered much of Earth’s water, but he doesn’t discount the fact that early in the solar system’s history Jupiter may have migrated temporarily inward and pushed a plethora of water rich comets into an Earth-crossing path.<br />
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In the paper, the authors note that “these hydrogen- and oxygen-enriched stars are the metaphorical ‘tip of an iceberg’ of water-accreting white dwarfs.” But not all researchers are so sanguine.<br />
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“I don’t think these white dwarf [observations] resolve the issue for our solar system,” said Lunine. “Every system is different, and what might pertain in terms of water delivery in one system isn’t going to necessarily pertain to another.”<br />
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However, the University of Warwick-led team also contends that detailed chemical abundance analysis of more stars should give astronomers a better idea of just how frequent these water rich-asteroids actually are in other planetary systems.<br />
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Even so, NASA cometary scientist Michael Mumma told Forbes that the authors’ assertion that water makes up a lion’s share of the mass on asteroids and natural planetary satellites is a bit too sweeping.<br />
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“It is certainly true for the icy satellites in [our] outer solar system, but the reality and possible significance of icy asteroids is still dicey,” said Mumma, an astrobiologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.<br />
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As for water from comets and asteroids?<br />
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Gaensicke notes that although comets used to be considered as prime sources of water of Earth’s early oceans, he says Rosetta mission analysis indicates that Comet 67-P has a relative dearth of water ice.<br />
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But Mumma thinks more data is needed before we’ll know for sure.<br />
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“Theorists often pounce on a datum and interpret it to hell and gone,” said Mumma.  “But chemical compositions of cometary ices show great diversity and we still don’t know [enough] to answer the big question:  What fraction of Earth’s water was [actually] delivered by comets?”<br />
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Source - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2015/05/07/water-oceans-likely-to-be-ubiquitous-say-astronomers/" target="_blank">Forbes</a></div>

Water Oceans Likely To Be Ubiquitous, Say Astronomers

Water oceans on other earthlike planets are likely to be ubiquitous, says an international team of U.K. and German astronomers. New ground-...

Astronomers Find Galaxy 13.1 Billion Light-years Away

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Astronomers have spotted a baby blue galaxy that is farther away in distance and time than any other galaxy ever seen. It is among the universe’s first generation of galaxies, from approximately 13.1 billion years ago.</div>
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Yale and University of Santa Cruz scientists used three telescopes to spot and then calculate the age of the blurry infant galaxy. By measuring how the light has shifted, they determined the galaxy, named EGS-zs8-1, is from about 670 million years after the Big Bang.</div>
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Since the astronomers look further away from Earth, they are essentially looking back further in time, this both the most distant galaxy and the furthest back in time. It is 13.1 billion light-years away, in the constellation Bootes. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.</div>
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This beats the old record by about 30 million years, which isn't much, but was difficult to achieve, said astronomer Garth Illingworth of the University of California Santa Cruz, who co-authored the paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters announcing the discovery.</div>
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The photo they took was from a crucial time in the early universe, after what was called the Dark Ages, when galaxies and stars were just starting to form and the universe was only one five hundredth the mass it is now, Illingworth said.</div>
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This galaxy – larger than most of the others from that time, which is why astronomers using the most powerful telescopes can see it now – was probably only about 100 million years also, but was quite busy, Illingworth said.</div>
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"We're looking here at an infant that's growing at a great rate," he said. The galaxy was giving birth to stars at 80 times the rate our Milky Way does now. "These objects would like nothing like our sun. It would look much, much bluer."</div>
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Yale astronomer Pascal Oesch was looking through Hubble Space Telescope images in 2013 when he saw a bright object. He then used the Spitzer space telescope to see it again. The hardest work was confirming the age and distance using the ground-based Keck Observatory in Hawaii to separate light waves.</div>
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Astronomers Find Galaxy 13.1 Billion Light-years Away

Astronomers have spotted a baby blue galaxy that is farther away in distance and time than any other galaxy ever seen. It is among t...

New Technology Could Revolutionize Space Travel

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At NASA’s Eagleworks Labs, located at the Johnson Space Center, scientists are working on a new space travel technology that could, if successful, dramatically reduce the time necessary for space voyages.<br />
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Titled electromagnetic propulsion or EM drive, the new technology centers on creating the propulsion necessary to move a spacecraft without using any propellant.<br />
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Instead of using fuel, the EM drive bounces electromagnetic microwaves inside a closed chamber to generate electrical energy and convert it into thrust.<br />
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No emissions are produced during the process.<br />
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Many scientists are skeptical about EM drive technology, which they consider “fringe” because it violates the law of conservation of momentum, a key component of Newtonian physics.<br />
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According to Newton’s laws, moving one object forward requires another object to move backward. In traditional spaceflight, propellant pushes vehicles forward and is then emitted behind them.<br />
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Because space is an airless vacuum, skeptics  argue that nothing can move in it without use of a propellant.<br />
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But Eagleworks researchers, led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White, say they have successfully tested the EM drive and measured the level of thrust it generated.<br />
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That measurement might be inaccurate due to interference by air around the EM drive, skeptics claim.<br />
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In response, White and his team members tested the drive in a vacuum, and it still worked.<br />
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Using EM drive, a spacecraft could travel to the Moon in four hours and to Mars in 70 days.<br />
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If the drive were put onto the International Space Station (ISS), reboots from other vehicles, now done to reverse orbital decay, would no longer be necessary.<br />
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More importantly, EM drive could reduce travel time to other star systems from thousands of years to about one century.<br />
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Faster space travel would not be the only benefit of the new technology. Propellant is not only  expensive and heavy; it also takes up a lot of room on a spacecraft.<br />
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Once its propellant supply runs out, a spacecraft drifts in space forever, something that would not happen to a vehicle that uses electricity for propulsion.<br />
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EM drive is also being tested in the United Kingdom and China.<br />
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Source - <a href="http://thespacereporter.com/2015/05/new-technology-could-revolutionize-space-travel/" target="_blank">Thespacereporter<br />
</a></div>

New Technology Could Revolutionize Space Travel

At NASA’s Eagleworks Labs, located at the Johnson Space Center, scientists are working on a new space travel technology that could, if ...

Mystery of Titan's Dunes: Violent Methane Storms Might Explain Dune Direction on Saturn's Moon, New Study Says

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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Here's the problem: Climate simulations indicate that Titan's near-surface winds - like Earth's trade winds - blow toward the west, according to a press release. So why do the surface dunes, reaching a hundred yards high and many miles long, point to the east?</span></i><br />
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The direction of the dunes has at times been attributed to the effects of Saturn's gravitational tides or various land features or wind dynamics, but nothing quite explained their eastward slant.<br />
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Violent methane storms high in Titan's dense atmosphere, where winds do blow toward the east, might be the answer, according to new research by University of Washington astronomer Benjamin Charnay and co-authors in a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.<br />
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Using computer models, the authors hypothesized that the tilt of Titan's sand dunes results from rare methane storms that produce eastward gusts much stronger than the usual westward surface winds.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Photo : NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This NASA image of sand dunes near the equator on Titan’s surface was shot by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft and "denoised" by Antoine Lucas. UW astronomer Benjamin Charnay and co-authors, including Lucas, may have solved the mystery of Titan’s sand dunes and surface winds aiming in opposite directions, according to the press release.</span></i><br />
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"These fast eastward gusts dominate the sand transport, and thus dunes propagate eastward," Charnay said, according to the press release. It probably helps that, according to Cassini's observations, Titan's atmosphere is in "super-rotation" above about 5 miles, meaning that it rotates a lot faster than the surface itself. Their model, Charnay said, suggests that these methane storms "produce strong downdrafts, flowing eastward when they reach the surface," thus rearranging the dunes.<br />
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"It was a kind of detective game, as often is the case in planetary sciences, where we have many mysteries and a few clues to solve them," Charnay said, according to the press release. The dunes in question, which are linear and run parallel to Titan's equator, are probably not composed of silicates like Earth sand, Charnay said, but of hydrocarbon polymers -- a kind of soot resulting from the decomposition of methane in the atmosphere.<br />
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Charnay said direct observation by Cassini would be the way to confirm his hypothesis, according to the press release. Unfortunately, the Cassini mission will end in 2017 and Titan's next equinox is not until 2023.<br />
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<i>"But there will be other missions," he said. "There are still a lot of mysteries about Titan. We still don't know how a thick nitrogen atmosphere formed, where the methane comes from nor how Titan's sand forms. And it is not completely excluded that life can be there, perhaps in its methane seas or lakes. So Titan really is a fascinating and evolving world, which has to be understood as a whole."</i><br />
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<i><a href="http://www.hngn.com/articles/84455/20150414/mystery-titans-dunes-violent-methane-storms-explain-dune-direction-saturns.htm">Source</a></i></div>

Mystery of Titan's Dunes: Violent Methane Storms Might Explain Dune Direction on Saturn's Moon, New Study Says

Here's the problem: Climate simulations indicate that Titan's near-surface winds - like Earth's trade winds - blow toward th...

Pictures of Inside Planet Mars

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What inside Planet Mars looks like<br />
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<span style="color: #666666;">Pictured by NASA's Mobile Robot</span><br />
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