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A scientific paper led by two researchers at Harvard University made a splash this week by claiming that a cigar-shaped rock zooming through our solar system may have been sent by aliens. The researchers noted in a pre-print of the article that it was an “exotic scenario,” but that “Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.” Oumuamua, the first interstellar object known to enter our solar system, accelerated faster away from the Sun than expected, hence the notion that some kind of artificial sail that runs on sunlight — known as...

Observations of the oblong interstellar traveler Oumuamua have revealed an unidentified organic coating on it, igniting scientific and public curiosity alike. After “Oumuamua” was initially spotted by a telescope in Hawaii by the Pan-STARRS project on October 19, experts raced to gather all possible information on it before it passed beyond humanity’s collective reach. But, while they expected to find a comet-like chunk of ice passing by our sun, the object mysteriously failed to leave behind a vapor trail as it grazed our home star. Instead, the still-unidentified chunk of ancient space debris hurtling at 60,000 MPH through our solar...

A leading astronomer studying the origins of the space object known as Oumuamua has come out declaring it’s an alien probe with broken engines. Dr. Jason Wright claims that Oumuamua’s movement is that of a craft that has lost power to its engines. Right now, leading scientists are studying the odd “cigar-shaped” object which originated outside of our solar system. Teams lead by renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, are attempting to discover whether or not Oumuamua is alien or natural. If a radio signal is detected later today, scientists will “proceed with caution.” Professor Avi Loeb, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard...

Oumuamua appeared to have been dropped in on our solar system from some great interstellar height, picking up even more speed on a slingshot-like loop around the sun before soaring away for parts unknown. It is now already halfway to Jupiter, too far for a rendezvous mission and rapidly fading from the view of Earth’s most powerful telescopes. Astronomers scrambling to glimpse the fading object have revealed additional oddities. ‘Oumuamua was never seen to sprout a comet-like tail after getting close to the sun, hinting it is not a relatively fresh bit of icy flotsam from the outskirts of a...

The IAU also approved an official scientific designation for 'Oumuamua: 1I/2017 U1. This is a first-of-its-kind moniker; the "I" stands for "interstellar." Previously, small objects like 'Oumuamua have received standard comet or asteroid designations, which sport a "C" or "A," respectively, in place of the "I." 'Oumuamua was first spotted on Oct. 19, by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii. The smallish object was first classified as a comet but then regarded as an asteroid, after further observations revealed no evidence of a coma (the fuzzy cloud of gas and dust that surrounds a comet's core). Analysis of 'Oumuamua's trajectory soon...

Nancy Grace Roman, known as the "mother" of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first woman to hold an executive position at NASA, died on Christmas Day. She was 93. As the first chief of astronomy in the office of space science at NASA headquarters, Roman had oversight of the planning and development of programs such as the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Hubble Space Telescope, according to NASA. “During the 1960s and early 1970s there was no one at NASA who was more important in getting the first designs and concepts for Hubble funded and completed,” space historian Robert Zimmerman wrote in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An orbiting spacecraft has found evidence of what look like seven caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano, the space agency NASA said on Friday. The Mars Odyssey spacecraft has sent back images of very dark, nearly circular features that appear to be openings to underground spaces. "They are cooler than the surrounding surface in the day and warmer at night," said Glen Cushing of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Team and Northern Arizona University. "Their thermal behavior is not as steady as large caves on Earth that often maintain a fairly constant temperature, but it...

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano. The find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caverns elsewhere on the Red Planet. Very dark, nearly circular features ranging in diameter from about 100 to 250 meters (328 to 820 feet) puzzled researchers who found them in images taken by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. Using Mars Odyssey's infrared camera to check the daytime and nighttime temperatures of the circles, scientists concluded that they could be windows into underground spaces....

Nasa release on the topography of the south polar region of Mars Scientists studying pictures from Nasa's Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars.The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. Details were presented here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Temperature data from Mars Odyssey's Themis instrument support the idea. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant. The caves...

Late in 2018, the gravitational wave observatory, LIGO, announced that they had detected the most distant and massive source of ripples of spacetime ever monitored: waves triggered by pairs of black holes colliding in deep space. Only since 2015 have we been able to observe these invisible astronomical bodies, which can be detected only by their gravitational attraction. The history of our hunt for these enigmatic objects traces back to the 18th century, but the crucial phase took place in a suitably dark period of human history – World War II. The concept of a body that would trap light,...

1. We have absolutely no idea where it came from 2. We don't really know what it looks like ...tumbling through space and appears to be, more or less, cigar-shaped.... about 10 times longer than its width. ..object's brightness (or amount of reflected sunlight) varied by a factor of 10 every eight hours or so. This strongly implies that 'Oumuamua has an extremely elongated shape. 3. 'Oumuamua got a little speed boost as it approached us Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories noticed that its acceleration increased which slightly changed its course from what was initially predicted....

The processes that led to glaciation at the cratered poles of Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, have been modeled by a University of Maine-led research team. James Fastook, a UMaine professor of computer science and Climate Change Institute researcher, and James Head and Ariel Deutsch of Brown University, studied the accumulation and flow of ice on Mercury, and how the glacial deposits on the smallest planet in our solar system compare to those on Earth and Mars.Their findings, published in the journal Icarus, add to our understanding of how Mercury's ice accumulations—estimated to be less than 50 million...

Before the dust even settled after the Great Pluto War at the International Astronomical Union (IAU)'s General Assembly in Prague, one thing became clear: There will never be an accepted scientific definition for the term "planet." Rather than crafting an acceptable definition, the IAU alienated members, put the group's authority in jeopardy and fueled schisms among astronomers on theoretical grounds and even nationality. And the whole affair was scientifically pointless, many astronomers say..."It is a little-known fact that nearly 25 percent of the known extrasolar planets are in binary- or multiple-star systems," said Stephen Kortenkamp , a research associate at...

While most people wouldn’t suspect it, the closest planet to our Sun is actually a potential candidate for settlement... Mercury’s very low axial tilt (0.034°) means that its polar regions are permanently shaded and cold enough to contain water ice. In the northern region, a number of craters were observed by NASA’s MESSENGER probe in 2012 which confirmed the existence of water ice and organic molecules. Scientists believe that Mercury’s southern pole may also have ice, and claim that an estimated 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of water ice could exist at both poles, which could be up to...

MOSCOW: Several objects resembling living beings were detected on photographs taken by a Russian landing probe in 1982 during a Venus mission, says an article published in the Solar System Research magazine. Leonid Ksanfomaliti of the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences published a research that analysed the photographs from the Venus mission made by a Soviet landing probe, Venus-13, in 1982. The photographs feature several objects, which Ksanfomaliti said, resembled a "disk", a "black flap" and a "scorpion".

Black holes are among the most mysterious places in the universe; locations where the very fabric of space and time are warped so badly that not even light can escape from them. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, at their center lies a singularity, a place where the mass of many stars is crushed into a volume with exactly zero size. However, two recent physics papers, published on Dec.10 in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D, respectively, may make scientists reconsider what we think we know about black holes. Black holes might not last forever, and...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Uranus is a lopsided oddity, the only planet to spin on its side. Scientists now think they know how it got that way: It was pushed over by a rock at least twice as big as Earth.</p>

<p>Uranus is a lopsided oddity, the only planet to spin on its side. Scientists now think they know how it got that way: It was pushed over by a rock at least twice as big as Earth.</p> <p>Detailed computer simulations show that an enormous rock crashed into the seventh planet from the sun, said Durham University astronomy researcher Jacob Kegerreis, who presented his analysis at a large earth and space science conference this month.</p>

The nonprofit SpaceIL and the government-owned corporation Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which manufactured the spacecraft, announced in a statement Monday (Dec. 17) that the lunar spacecraft, dubbed Beresheet will carry a digital time capsule with Israeli national memorabilia. SpaceIL’s mission to the moon began as part of the Google Lunar X Prize competition. SpaceIL was the only Israeli team that participated in the competition, which originally offered a first prize of $30 million to the privately-funded team that could put a robotic spacecraft on the moon, move the craft 1,640 feet (500 meters) and have it beam high-definition photos and...

( Video at Link) A newly discovered object is the most-distant body ever observed in the solar system — and the first object ever found orbiting at more than 100 times the distance from Earth to the sun. The discovery team nicknamed the object "Farout," and its provisional designation from the International Astronomical Union is 2018 VG18. Preliminary research suggests it's a round, pinkish dwarf planet. The same team spotted a faraway dwarf planet nicknamed "The Goblin" in October. A newly discovered object is the most-distant body ever observed in the solar system — and the first object ever found...