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Sometimes, when it rains or when they feel the urge to migrate, spiders get out their little silk knapsacks, and balloon away. This ballooning behaviour is well understood by spider scientists, but researchers have recently discovered that electric fields can not only trigger the behaviour, but also provide lift – even without the slightest breeze... They travel via the atmospheric potential gradient (APG), an electric circuit between Earth and the ionosphere - the part of Earth's upper atmosphere that's ionised by solar radiation. Thunderstorms act like a giant battery for the APG, charging up and maintaining the electric fields in...

Astronomers have found that the majority of meteorites that regularly fall into Earth's atmosphere today are the result of an asteroid collision that took place 466 million years ago. Using chemical analysis from rock samples around the world, the team discovered that before that colossal collision, Earth experienced impacts from many different types of meteorite, meaning that our planet's history with meteorites is far more complex than we thought. After examining the chemical makeup of these chrome-spinels, the team found that 34 percent of the pre-collision micrometeorites were primitive achondrites, a type of meteorite that only makes up 0.45 percent...

It is orangish in colour and it currents from the southeast to the south and it is bright. It is bright enough to see in the city. As near as I can determibe, it is either Antares or Mars, but don't know for sure. I'm in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. I'm just annoyed at it because I haven't found any confirmation.

... New research shows that Uranus, a chilly, hostile planet with a number of peculiar features, was the victim of a devastating impact during those early years, and it might explain some of the planet’s strange personality. Uranus moves much differently than the other planets in our Solar System, spinning on its side in comparison to the rest of the worlds in our neighborhood. Astronomers have often wondered just how this happened, but simulations performed by scientists at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology might have finally produced the answer. “We ran more than 50 different impact scenarios using a...

The researchers report that they were studying the planet's rings, which are collectively called Eta, and discovered that they had an oddly shaped orbit -- not round or even circular. Instead, they describe it as sort of triangular. More study showed that the odd orbit of the rings was due to gravitational pull from Cressida -- one of the planet's moons. The gravitational impact is exaggerated, they note, due to the moon keeping pace with the orbit of the planet. The particles in the ring, on the other hand, move faster than the moon. This results in the moon tugging...

The collision with Uranus of a massive object twice the size of Earth that caused the planet's unusual spin, from a high-resolution simulation using over ten million particles, coloured by their internal energy. Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University ___________________________________________________________________________ Uranus was hit by a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth that caused the planet to tilt and could explain its freezing temperatures, according to new research. Astronomers at Durham University, UK, led an international team of experts to investigate how Uranus came to be tilted on its side and what consequences a giant impact would have had on the...

A stunning, first-of-its-kind photo shows a huge, newfound alien world taking shape in the disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star. The image is the first confirmed direct observation of such a young exoplanet, discovery team members said. "These disks around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them," discovery leader Miriam Keppler, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, said in a statement. "The problem is that, until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been...

The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. “We are ready and waiting,’’ said Sivan, an aeronautics engineer The mission would solidify India’s place among the fleet of explorers racing to the moon, Mars and beyond...

Just released by NASA: striking close-ups of the mysterious world Ceres, taken by a robotic probe turned paparazzi. “These pictures are new to you and new to us too,” says Marc Rayman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “It’s a wonderful flood of data.” Every 27 hours, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft swoops near the surface of Ceres to grab the close-ups. At its lowest point, the probe is only 22 miles up. In outer space, that’s virtually skimming the ground. The photo shoot started June 9; so far, Dawn has taken “hundreds” of pictures, says Rayman, “exotic alien...

(much larger hi-res picture at link) Globular clusters are gravitationally-bound groupings of stars which orbit galaxies. These objects typically contain hundreds of thousands of stars that are thought to have formed at roughly the same time as their host galaxy. They are denser and more spherical than open star clusters like the famous Pleiades. The large mass in the rich stellar center of the cluster pulls the stars inward to form a ball of stars. The word globulus, from which these clusters take their name, is Latin for small sphere. It is thought that every galaxy has a population...

Complex organic molecules have been discovered for the first time coming from the depths of Saturn's moon Enceladus, a new study reported. Spacecraft scheduled to launch soon could explore what this new discovery says about the chances of life within icy moons like Enceladus, the study's researchers said. The sixth largest of Saturn's moons, Enceladus is only about 314 miles (505 kilometers) in diameter. This makes the moon small enough to fit inside the borders of Arizona. In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected plumes of water vapor and icy particles erupting from Enceladus, revealing the existence of a giant...

There's a growing number of people who seem to think the world is, in fact, flat. But it gets better. They also insist that Australia is actually just one big hoax. According to a viral Facebook rant, the entire country (and presumably the 24 million people that live there) is completely FAKE. The idea resurfaced at a recent gathering of so-called Flat Earthers in Birmingham recently where over 200 people came together to confirm to each other that the Earth is nothing more than a giant pancake. The origin of the "fake Australia" post started on Reddit back in 2017...

Exploding Rocket Launch Here The 10-meter long MOMO rocket is the first rocket designed to be sent into space by a private company, without the assistance of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). A previous attempt to launch MOMO into space 11 months ago failed as well. Interstellar Technologies Inc. failed to launch a rocket in Japan on Friday, as the vehicle exploded a few seconds after liftoff, Japanese NHK news agency reported. There were no injuries from the blast, as the start was remote and the closest spectators were at least 1,5 km away from the launch pad. Interstellar...

Tampa (AFP) - A ball-shaped artificial intelligence robot nicknamed the "flying brain" because it is trained to follow and interact with a German astronaut blasted off Friday toward the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship. A spare hand for the station's robotic arm, an experiment to measure plant stress and a study of a new cancer treatment were also on board as the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 5:42 am (0942 GMT). "We have ignition and liftoff! The Falcon 9 rocket powers the Dragon spacecraft toward the International Space Station," said a NASA...

The space rock is coming for a visit, but it won't get too close for comfort. T he 4 Vesta asteroid is currently making a drive-by visit to Earth. The asteroid, which reportedly measures more than 300 miles in diameter, is now so close to Earth that at night, you can see it with your very own eyes — no telescope required. ... So why isn’t anyone freaking out over this massive rock flying through space so close to Earth? Because even though it’s so close we can see it in the night sky, it’s not actually that close at...

A round, basketball-shaped autonomous assistant that is supposed to help astronauts with their space work. Sounds a lot like HAL-9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," right? CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) won't say, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," but the first-ever flying, autonomous, artificial intelligence-based robot is slated to head to the International Space Station (ISS) later this week. With any luck, CIMON will stay there for the foreseeable future. ..." "What we're trying to do with Watson AI services is imitate a human," Biniok said, adding that CIMON has a digital "mouth" and can express...

`Oumuamua, pronounced oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah – is moving away from the sun faster than expected. The Hubble Space Telescope made the discovery, in cooperation with ground-based telescopes... The measured gain in ‘Oumuamua’s speed is tiny, these astronomers said. Plus, our sun is still trying to drag `Oumuamua back; that is, the sun’s gravity is still slowing down the object, though not as fast as predicted by celestial mechanics. Marco Micheli of the European Space Agency led the team that explored several scenarios to explain ‘Oumuamua’s faster-than-predicted speed. The most likely explanation is that `Oumuamua is venting material from its surface due to...

Aliens may not exist – but that’s good news for our survival In 1950 Enrico Fermi, an Italian-born American Nobel prize-winning physicist, posed a very simple question with profound implications for one of the most important scientific puzzles: whether or not life exists beyond Earth. The story goes that during a lunchtime chat with colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the issue of flying saucers came up. The conversation was lighthearted, and it doesn’t appear that any of the scientists at that particular gathering believed in aliens. But Fermi merely wanted to know: “Where is...

Japan's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft will collect a piece of the asteroid Ryugu and bring it back to Earth. The asteroid Ryugu, recently imaged by the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft that will now prepare to collect a sample. JAXA _____________________________________________________________________________________ Japan’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft has been traveling through space for almost four years, and it has finally reached its destination. The spacecraft has traveled all this way to a small asteroid, named Ryugu, for a singular purpose: to collect a piece of it and bring it back to Earth. Hayabusa-2 is the successor to Japan’s original Hayabusa spacecraft, which visited the asteroid Itokawa in 2005....

Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft is closing in on its asteroid target ahead of a planned rendezvous just a few days from now. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released several new images that Hayabusa2 snapped recently of the asteroid Ryugu, whose shape has now become clear. "From a distance, Ryugu initially appeared round, then gradually turned into a square before becoming a beautiful shape similar to fluorite (known as the 'firefly stone' in Japanese)," Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda wrote today (June 25) in a description of the newest photos, which the probe took Saturday and Sunday (June 23 and...