Oct 9, 2017 Martian meteorites are most likely a few thousand years old, at most. The Martian lithosphere is composed of iron and silicon, although they are primarily bound with oxygen. Silicon dioxide and iron oxides are the main constituents of Martian regolith. The atmospheric density on Mars is…
Oct 6, 2017 The search for water on Mars continues. According to a recent press release, Mars may not possess the large quantities of water-ice that previous observations suggested. Data provided by the Mars Express orbiter points to, “ice-free, porous, windblown sand” and not subsurface ice. Thomas R. Watters,…
Oct 4, 2017 Reflective mineral deposits on Ceres. NASA launched the Dawn spacecraft on September 27, 2007. After its observations of the asteroid, Vesta ended on September 5, 2012 Dawn headed toward Ceres. Dawn encountered the largest known asteroid in the Solar System on March 6, 2015. The mission officially ended…
Oct 3, 2017 Is it erosion that carved these shapes? Some scientists think that the Egyptians copied their pyramids from natural formations. The Black Desert, among other locations, provides evidence for that contention. In the image at the top of the page is a large pyramid-shaped monolith in Wadi…
Oct 2, 2017 Black holes are said to “warp space”. Consensus theories state that inside of a black hole matter occupies no volume, yet retains its gravitational forces. Those forces are so great that no light can escape, so they are called “black” holes, because they are undetectable with optical…
Sep 29, 2017 A captured moon? Neptune’s moons do not fit into an orderly arrangement. Nereid’s orbit takes it so far out at perihelion that it almost escapes Neptune’s gravity. Most of Neptune’s moons are not visible from Earth and there is little known about them. About half are so…
Sep 28, 2017 Is this Bolivian crater an impact site? It is the contention of Electric Universe proponents that many (if not all) large “impact” craters on Earth are actually the result of interplanetary electric discharges. Previous Picture of the Day articles describe some of those formations: Manicouagan, Popigai,…
Sep 27, 2017 The Universe is not only in motion. Galactic evolution occurs because large-scale plasma discharges form coherent filaments that exhibit electrodynamic behavior. Since the Universe is an electrical system that is constantly charging and discharging, instead of a gravitational system that is constantly contracting and expanding, gravity is…
Sep 26, 2017 Is it liquid metal that circulates below the surface? On November 23, 2013 the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Swarm mission satellites from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Swarm consists of three identical orbiters, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, placed in two different orbital planes. Alpha…
Sep 25, 2017 Intense electric fields most likely create comets out of asteroids. Just before asteroid 300163 (2006 VW139) came closest to the Sun in September 2016, an image from the Hubble Space Telescope displayed a peculiar detail: it is a pair of objects 60 miles apart that are…
