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A superbolide was recorded flying over the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, Brazil on October 1, 2020. Trajectory Preliminary analyses show that the very bright fireball began to shine at about 89.5 km over the rural area to the east of Caxias do Sul and travelled north, at 16.9 km/s (60,900 km/h) at an entrance angle of 44° to the ground The bight meteor disintegrated during 6 seconds, easily overcoming the full moon’s brightness and finally exploded at an altitude of 22 km over the city of Vacaria, also in Rio Grande do Sul state. A...

13,000 years ago, something very bad seems to have occurred, leaving a layer of carbon suggesting dramatic fires. But for much of the last decade, scientists inspecting the remnants of the village have debated what happened, unable to decide whether the carbon formed during an airburst or during more mundane fires among the thatched huts. So Moore decided to reexamine the glass in more detail. His analysis of the glass composition matched a 2012 finding claiming an airburst had destroyed Abu Hureyra, suggesting that the villagers' bucolic lifestyle ended suddenly when one or more fragments from a passing comet exploded...

On Aug. 28, 2012, during the 22nd Martian day, or sol, after landing on Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover drove about 52 feet (16 meters) eastward. The drive imprinted the wheel tracks visible in this image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech After decades of following the water, the reality that “life as we know it” may never have gotten a foothold on Mars’ surface, at least, has arguably taken root within the planetary science community. If life ever was or is lurking on the Red planet, it’s been extremely coy about revealing itself. The recent news that the Mars Curiosity rover has thus far...

Mars Express was able to accomplish what so many other spacecraft have tried and failed by using a SPICAM(2) spectrometer The search for water on Mars has been ongoing for quite some time now, with Mars rovers like NASA's Spirit and Opportunity being two examples of those who have found clues that point to a once-tropical past on the dusty red planet billions of years ago. Now, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has discovered that Mars' atmosphere holds water vapor in a supersaturated state. Mars Express was able to accomplish what so many other spacecraft have tried and...

Mars formed in record time, growing to its present size in a mere three million years, much quicker than scientists previously thought.Its rapid formation could explain why the Red Planet is about one tenth the mass of Earth. The study supports a 20-year-old theory that Mars remained small because it avoided collisions with planetary building material. The new finding is published in the journal Nature. In our early Solar System, well before planets had formed, a frisbee-shaped cloud of gas and dust encircled the Sun. Scientists believe that the planets grew from material pulled together by electrostatic charges - the...

September 24, 2009: Meteorites recently striking Mars have exposed deposits of frozen water not far below the Martian surface. Pictures of the impact sites taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show that frozen water may be available to explorers of the Red Planet at lower latitudes than previously thought. "This ice is a relic of a more humid climate from perhaps just several thousand years ago," says Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Byrne is a member of the team operating the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, which captured the unprecedented images. Byrne...

Sept 21, 2009 — The Martians are singing How dry I am. Scientists have a new explanation for how Mars turned red without water...

"We often tell ourselves that we are very fortunate living on this planet because we have this strong magnetic shield that protects us from all sorts of things that the cosmos throws at us -- cosmic rays, solar flares and the pesky solar wind," said Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It certainly does help in some of those areas but ... in the case of the atmosphere, this may not be true," he said. Russel and others came to this realization while meeting at a comparative planetology conference last...

Liquid droplets seem to form and move on the leg of the Phoenix Mars lander, as seen in images taken on days 8, 31, and 44 (seen above from left to right) of the craft's mission. Scientists think the water could stay liquid even in the frigid Martian arctic because of its high concentration of perchlorates, salts that acts like antifreeze. Images courtesy Image NASA/JPL-Caltech//University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute

A new study suggests that ancient features on the surface of Mars called valley networks were carved by recurrent floods during a long period when the martian climate may have been much like that of some arid or semiarid regions on Earth. An alternative theory that the valleys were carved by catastrophic flooding over a relatively short time is not supported by the new results... Often cited as evidence that Mars once had a warm environment with liquid water on the surface, valley networks are distinctive features of the martian landscape. In the new study, researchers used sophisticated computer models...

A new study of gas in meteorites suggests Mars was bitterly cold for pretty much all of the past 4 billion years, putting the freeze on hopes that the red planet had any extended wet periods during which life could have flourished. Several rocks that were once near the surface of Mars, and have in the past few million years been kicked up by impacts that sent them to Earth, have been freezing cold for most of the past four billion years, the study concludes. While the findings don't rule out the possibility of life on Mars, they indicate that...

A chemical study of Martian meteorites implies that the planet has always been cold and was rarely above freezing.Writing in Science, researchers have been able to determine the maximum temperature the rock experienced. There is no evidence that it was ever warm, they say, as it records near surface conditions for four billion years. The water erosional features seen on Mars must have been made during very brief periods, they conclude. Thermal historyAlthough the current average temperature at the Martian equator is about minus 55 Celsius, many scientists believe that the Red Planet was once warm enough for water...

Mars theory cites episodes of wet asteroids By Paul Recer The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Mars never had oceans as some researchers claim, but instead is a cold, dry planet that was pounded by water-bearing asteroids and showered with scalding rain that carved vast gullies and valleys, a new study claims. The study, reported this week in the journal Science, sheds new light on a continuing debate by Mars researchers about how much water was on Mars, where it went and how it formed the planet's intricate pattern of canyons, riverbeds and deltas. Using Mars photos and computer simulations, researchers...

"The road, trees, houses and even ourselves were bathed in a blinding phosphorescent-like glow which had its center in a bright streak in the sky above us," highway construction superintendent Leroy Milhan of Centerville, Michigan, would recall in a paper published the following year. "It passed over us toward the west. Immediately came a muffled report or jar that shook houses and the very earth like an earthquake." The following day, the Washington Times reported that "telegraph and telephone communications and electric lighting plants in several cities in southern Michigan and northern Indiana are out of commission" as a result...

ESA released stunning images of an ancient river in Nirgal Vallis that once flowed on Mars By studying the surrounding craters, the branching remains are said to be between 3.5 and 4 billion years old Detailed images of Mars reveal an ancient river that once flowed on the red planet. Spanning nearly 435 miles across the surface, the valley stream is named Nirgal Vallis and experts said it was shaped by flowing water and impacts. By exploring the characteristics of the surrounding craters, the European Space Agency has estimated the system’s age to be between 3.5 and 4 billion years...

Along with locations in North and South America, Greenland, Western Europe, and the Middle East, we can now add southern Africa to the list of places where scientists have uncovered evidence of a calamitous event that happened 12,800 years ago. This evidence of a 12,800-year-old platinum spike in Africa is the first to be found on the continent, and it’s yet further evidence in support of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. According to this theory, either a comet or asteroid struck Earth during the Pleistocene, triggering an impact winter that saw temperatures plummet around the globe. The associated loss of...

Billions of years ago, something slammed into the dark side of the moon and carved out a very, very large hole. Stretching 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide and 8 miles (13 km) deep, the South Pole-Aitken basin... For decades, researchers have suspected that the gargantuan basin was created by a head-on collision with a very large, very fast meteor. Such an impact would have ripped the moon's crust apart and scattered chunks of lunar mantle across the crater's surface, providing a rare glimpse at what the moon is really made of. ... Now, however... After analyzing the minerals in six...

Scientists have launched a bid to observe and understand mysterious flashes of light on the surface of the moon. The ‘transient luminous lunar phenomena’ occur several times a week and illuminate parts of the moon’s landscape for a brief period of time before disappearing. Sometimes, a reverse effect which causes the lunar surface to darken has also been observed. Although there are several theories about the lunar mystery lights’ origins, they have not yet been fully explained. Now astronomers from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany have set up a telescope which will use artificial intelligence to automatically detect the...

Science does not know exactly how these phenomena occur on the moon. But it has attempted to explain them: the impact of a meteor, for example, should cause a brief glow. Such flashes could also occur when electrically charged particles of the solar wind react with moon dust. "Seismic activities...would explain the luminous phenomena, some of which last for hours," says Hakan Kayal, Professor of Space Technology...in Bavaria, Germany. Kayal's team built a lunar telescope and put it into operation in April 2019. It is located in a private observatory in Spain, about 100 kilometres north of Seville in a...

There are a number of theories about where the moon came from. Our best guess is that it was formed when the Earth was hit by a large object known as Theia. The impact threw up huge amounts of debris into orbit, which eventually coalesced to form the moon. There’s a problem with this theory. The mathematical models show that most of the material that makes up the moon should come from Theia. But samples from the Apollo missions show that most of the material on the moon came from Earth. A paper out earlier this week in Nature Geoscience...