04 January 2019
Merger with the LMC spells doom for our Solar System
... unhindered for many billions of years to come. However, recent dark matter measurements of the LMC have revealed a bit of a problem. This once dwarf spiral galaxy is actually teeming with the unseen dark stuff – up to twice as much...
01 March 2019
New evidence of a planet-wide groundwater system on Mars
... 4000 metres – below martian ‘sea level’ in the northern hemisphere of Mars. The sea-level designation is a bit of a misnomer, as obviously Mars has no visible seas, so it is a somewhat arbitrarily defined level based on elevation and atmospheric...
06 March 2019
Growing food from thin air to feed astronauts
... that does just that - it literally produces proteins out of thin air. Created in a mini-reactor that looks a bit like a high-tech hurricane lantern, the protein, which is called Solein, is made from just carbon dioxide...
22 March 2019
Citizen science project turns research into a quest
... time by turning the research into a quest. “A few of us on the team are avid gamers, so it’s no surprise we’d try to inject a bit of gaming flair into the project!” writes AstroQuest’s Christian Polson-Brown in an article on the AstroQuest website.
27 March 2019
Storm-plagued exoplanet revealed in detail with GRAVITY
... planetary systems form. HR8799e is also completely inhospitable too; the exoplanet suffers from a powerful greenhouse effect – a bit like Venus – which heats the super giant to a scorching hot temperature of roughly 1000 °C. The exoplanet also...
17 April 2019
Proxima Centauri may host a second exoplanet, but its first might not be there
... Earth-like water-world would then surely rest with Proxima b; a possible twin Earth but just a bit smaller. Perhaps not. When news spread that an exoplanet had been found around our nearest star...
