A step forward in space exploration for China and humankind and a colossal step backward for the US.
Category: space – Page 643
😯 Earth isn’t the only place with rivers, lakes & seas. Saturn’s moon Titan has them, too — not of water, but liquid methane & ethane! This frigid world even hides a liquid water ocean deep beneath its surface.
Here’s what you need to know about Titan: https://go.nasa.gov/2Jost2M
A powerful telescope in Australia gives a glimpse of three million galaxies in record time.
Astronomers may have witnessed the formation of a kind of rapidly spinning, extremely magnetized stellar corpse for the first time.
This is an “extremely close,” albeit safe, approach, with the object passing at a distance equivalent to around 13 percent of the average distance between our planet and the moon, astronomer Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project told Newsweek.
The object, which is estimated to measure between 15–33 feet across, was discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey based in Maui, Hawaii, on September 17, 2020. This find was confirmed two days later by the Minor Planet Center, which is responsible for the designation of minor bodies in the solar system.
Initial observations suggested that the object was an asteroid. But scientists at CNEOS soon began to suspect that 2020 SO was not a normal asteroid.
Researchers have spotted millions of galaxies in the most detailed radio survey of the southern sky ever conducted. It has smashed previous records for survey speed.
Shockingly, Carroll notes that if our own Earth had formed just one percent farther away from the Sun, it would have suffered a runaway glaciation. By contrast, one percent further in and Earth would have suffered a runaway greenhouse and the fate that befell present-day Venus. “The habitable zone is a planetary tightrope,” writes Carroll.
However, the book does cover the possibility that super-earths and/or gas giant planets that lie in their parent stars’ habitable zones might also harbor planet-sized moons. As the book notes, it’s an idea that Hollywood director James Cameron’s embraced in his ground-breaking movie “Avatar.”
“Envisioning Exoplanets” also offers the reader capsule summaries of the various detection techniques that astronomers have used through the years to remotely explore and characterize these far-flung worlds.
Welcome back to our series on Martian colonization! In Part I, we looked at the challenges and benefits of colonization. In Part II, we looked at what it would take to transport people to and from Mars. In Part III, we looked at how people could live there. Today, we will address the question of how people could establish an industrial base there.
If we intend to “go interplanetary” and establish a colony on Mars, we need to know how to address the long-term needs of the colonists. In addition to shelter, air, water, food security, and radiation shielding, the people will need to create an economy of sorts. The question is, what kind of industry would Mars support?
There’s Gold in Them Thar’ Hills!
One of the main reasons why Mars is considered an attractive location for a colony is the similarities it has to Earth. Like Earth, it’s a terrestrial (aka. rocky) planet that’s composed primarily of metals and silicate minerals, which are differentiated between a metallic core and a silicate mantle and crust.