Oct 23, 2017 Mars glows in high frequencies. Editor’s Note: Due to Northern California wildfires, the Picture of the Day will be on a temporary leave of absence. In the interim, please enjoy these articles from the archives. NASA launched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN) on…
Oct 20, 2017 Plasma phenomena are similar no matter how big or how small. Editor’s Note: Due to Northern California wildfires, the Picture of the Day will be on a temporary leave of absence. In the interim, please enjoy these articles from the archives. Almost ten years ago, astronomers…
Oct 19, 2017 Black holes are said to collide. NASA launched the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) aboard a Pegasus rocket on June 13, 2012. A new X-ray image highlights a “monster of a galactic mashup”: two colliding galaxies, known as Arp 299, with “supermassive black holes” inside them….
Oct 18. 2017 Electricity plays a role in Solar System dynamics. Editor’s Note: Due to Northern California wildfires, the Picture of the Day will be on a temporary leave of absence. In the interim, please enjoy these articles from the archives. Mimas is a small moon, only 397 kilometers…
Oct 17, 2017 Two types of pulsars. The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus. — Werner Heisenberg: Letter to Niels Bohr, June 20, 1932. Quoted in Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (1992) by…
Oct 16, 2017 Mercury reveals an unusual blend of minerals, along with a thin atmosphere. Editor’s Note: Due to Northern California wildfires, the Picture of the Day will be on a temporary leave of absence. In the interim, please enjoy these articles from the archives. Of all the rocky…
Oct 13, 2017 Many phenomena could be due to something astronomers do not expect. Editor’s Note: Due to Northern California wildfires, the Picture of the Day will be on a temporary leave of absence. In the interim, please enjoy these articles from the archives. Some things are familiar, even though…
Oct 12, 2017 Electric charge flow in space defines many phenomena. Plasma is not a substance, it is a condition. Matter is categorized by four states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma, therefore, those conditions cannot be analyzed in simple terms. Solids exhibit multiple aspects, including dimension, temperature, composition, etc….
Oct 11, 2017 Magnetic reconnection does not drive electromagnetic events. Upper regions of Earth’s atmosphere are influenced by solar emissions, because the ionosphere is connected to the Sun by filaments of electric charge. At 150 kilometers altitude, Earth’s electromagnetic field exhibits the greatest conductivity in what is called the “dynamo…
Oct 10, 2017 What causes energetic emissions from galactic cores? According to a recent press release, there is a so-called, supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the Milky Way that is tearing stars apart and flinging the remains into space at speeds of 10,000 kilometers per second….
