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<p>New geochemical research indicates that existing theories of the formation of the Earth may be mistaken. The results of experiments to show how zinc (Zn) relates to sulphur (S) under the conditions present at the time of the formation of the Earth more than 4 billion years ago, indicate that there is a substantial quantity of Zn in the Earth’s core, whereas previously there had been thought to be none. This implies that the building blocks of the Earth must be different to what has been supposed. The work is presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Paris.</p>

On September 11, the spacecraft will awaken for its 16 month journey to MU69, an ancient object which is thought to be one of the early building blocks of the Solar System. The space rock had not even been discovered when the craft launched in 2006 and the flyby will be the most distant in the history of space exploration, a billion miles beyond Pluto, and four billion miles from Earth. Recent observations of MU69 from the Hubble Space Telescope show it is probably two ‘binary’ objects or a pair of space rocks ‘stuck-together’ bodies which are each around 12...

For most viewers, the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse will last less than two and half minutes. But for one team of NASA-funded scientists, the eclipse will last over seven minutes. Their secret? Following the shadow of the Moon in two retrofitted WB-57F jet planes. Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and his team will use two of NASA’s WB-57F research jets to chase the darkness across America on Aug. 21. Taking observations from twin telescopes mounted on the noses of the planes, Caspi will ­­­­­capture the clearest images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere —...

Every object in our Solar System that takes the plunge from out beyond Neptune to our inner reaches, where the rocky planets lie, will become a comet. As it nears the Sun, its ices melt, creating the tails we associate with them, and also creating a debris path that can create meteor showers if they cross Earth's orbit. For thousands of years, the most consistent, spectacular meteor shower has been the Perseids, created by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. At its incredibly large size (26 kilometers across) and speed, it contains nearly 30 times the energy of the asteroid strike that wiped out...

The peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower is peaking this weekend! According to NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke, the Perseids are perhaps the most popular meteor shower of the year. Typical rates are about 80 meteors an hour, but in outburst years (such as in 2016) the rate can be between 150-200 meteors an hour. The meteor shower's actual peak is around 1 p.m. EDT Aug. 12, which means that the night before and the night after will both have good rates; Cooke said the show would be slightly better in the predawn hours of Aug. 12, but that there'd...

NASA looks at reviving atomic rocket program David Szondy August 10, 2017 A new engine being developed for NASA will use low-enriched uranium Cermet fuel rods (Credit: NASA) View gallery - 4 images When the first manned mission to Mars sets out, it may be on the tail of an atomic rocket engine. The Space Race vintage technology could have a renaissance at NASA after the space agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama signed a contract with BWXT Nuclear Energy to develop updated Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) concepts and new fuel elements to power them. The Apollo missions to...

I will wager that some politician or media person will claim that the "catastrophic" 8/21 solar eclipse will be caused by global warming.

NASA this week recorded its fourth test on one of the engines that will power the Space Launch System Station rocket into deep space, perhaps even a trip to Mars one day. The engine test was performed Wednesday (Aug. 9) at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, the agency said in a news release. Stennis said engineers conducted a 500-second test of the RS-25 engine controller on one of the test stands at the sprawling facility. The test involved firing the engine in the same manner and for the same amount of time as an SLS rocket launch. The...

Tau Ceti is the center of the nearest solar system that's similar to ours, an assumption made stronger by the discovery of four rocky super-Earths orbiting the star just 12 light years away. Two of the four planets are in the habitable zone around the star where temperatures could be just right for liquid water, and perhaps alien life, to be present. An international team of scientists devised a new, more accurate and sensitive method of detecting planets by looking for "wobbles" in the star's movement caused by the minute gravitational tug of orbiting planets, while also better ruling out...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft may double its pleasure during its next deep-space flyby 16 months from now. On Jan. 1, 2019, New Horizons is scheduled to have a close encounter with a body called 2014 MU69, which lies 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto in the distant, frigid Kuiper Belt. (The probe famously zoomed past Pluto in July 2015, returning the first-ever up-close images of that mysterious world. This second flyby is the key component of New Horizons' extended mission.) Not much is known about 2014 MU69, so the New Horizons team planned out a campaign to watch...

So you went and looked at the full solar eclipse without proper eye protection, and now your vision is blurry, distorted or tinged with red. What can your eye doctor do about it? Short answer: Nothing. So don't. Ophthalmologist Tomas Lopez of Eyecare Associates in Albany and Corvallis met with about two dozen mid-valley eyecare and health care professionals last week to go over information on the Aug. 21 eclipse and possible effects on patients. While a quick glance probably won't hurt you — and while the sun can't be seen at all if you look directly at the...

Bored at work? Find yourself staring into space? NASA may have the job for you. It comes with a six-figure salary and civil service protection — and duties include saving the Earth. It sounds like a job from the movie “Men in Black” about government employees saving the Earth from creepy aliens. Cassie Conley is NASA’s planetary protection officer, and that is — sort of — what she does, but on a smaller scale, and not quite as messy. “The job is defending Earth from aliens, but they’re microbes, not space invaders,” she told CBS News. We asked if bringing...

Last week, a team of astronomers reported the first potential discovery of an exomoon–a satellite orbiting a planet around another star. Part of what is so striking about the report is the scale of this possible planet-moon system. In this case, the “moon” appears to be about the size of Neptune; the planet it orbits is some 10 times the mass of Jupiter, or about 3,000 times the mass of Earth! The system pushes at the limits of how we normally categorize objects in space and invites questions about where we stand in the scale of things. What is the...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - When the total solar eclipse hits in a couple weeks, you'll need to have legit glasses to view it to protect your eyes. But what about our animals' eyes? Dr. Wendy King of Spears Creek Veterinary Clinic says, “The short answer is nothing because animals have an inherent knowledge of not looking at the sun and they just don't look up at the sun and stare. So they don't need special glasses.”

First images from Lockheed's experimental, telescope-shrinking SPIDER David Szondy August 3, 2017 Cross cut view of a SPIDER array (Credit: Lockheed Martin) View gallery - 3 images If asked to think of a telescope, most people will picture a long tube with a lens at either end. But a new experimental optical instrument developed by Lockheed Martin could usher in ultra-thin devices that weigh 90 percent less than typical telescopes while providing equivalent resolution. The first images captured by the Segmented Planar Imaging Detector for Electro-Optical Reconnaissance (SPIDER) have now been revealed. Lockheed Martin today released the first images from...

A nearly Earth-size storm system was spotted near Neptune's equator, surprising scientists because no bright clouds have ever been seen in that location. The storm is about 6,000 miles (9,000 kilometers) in length — about three-quarters Earth's diameter — and is even huge compared to the size of Neptune: it spans nearly 30 degrees in both longitude and latitude. When astronomers studied the storm between June 26 and July 2, it appeared to get brighter. "Seeing a storm this bright at such a low latitude is extremely surprising," Ned Molter, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, said...

Set to be launched in 2018 from Kourou, French Guiana, the JWST will embark on a journey to unravel the universe’s mysteries, "from discovering the first stars and galaxies" to "studying the atmospheres of alien planets around other stars." “This was the first time all the different parts worked together at the same time, and this was the first time it was tested against the actual spacecraft flight hardware,” explained Alan Johns, ground segment and operations manager for the Webb telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA called, and the Webb telescope responded. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently...

Astronomers thought that all Type Ia supernovas shine with the same brightness, making them incredibly useful cosmic yardsticks. But uncertainty over what causes these explosions has led researchers to reconsider their assumptions. The Type Ia supernova 1994D glows in the lower left of this Hubble Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4526. (photo at link) Of all the mysteries in astrophysics, supernova explosions may seem to be the best-understood, at least to a lay person. A star runs out of fuel and goes boom. But most of what we know is based on guesswork. My recent article on...

This coming October, an asteroid will fly by Earth. Known as 2012 TC4, this small rock is believed to measure between 10 and 30 meters (30 and 100 feet) in size. As with most asteroids, this one is expected to sail safely past Earth without incident. This will take place on October 12th, when the asteroid will pass us at a closest estimated distance of 6,800 kilometers (4,200 miles) from Earth’s surface. That’s certainly good news. But beyond the fact that it does not pose a threat to Earth, NASA is also planning on using the occasion to test their...

For the first 300,000 years after the Big Bang the rapidly expanding universe was dark and filled with neutral hydrogen gas doing nothing much. But over the next half billion years the first stars and galaxies arrive through a process known as re-ionization – turning the lights on in the universe. Using an amazing Dark Energy Camera which is part of the -meter Blanco Telescope, at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), in northern Chile, scientists have captured a picture of 23 of these young galaxies – the very dawn of visual time. Arizona State University astronomers Sangeeta Malhotra and James...