Last month, NASA funded a team of scientists to investigate the possibility of sending a mission to Venus, and now the agency has revealed more about the potential benefits and practicalities of such a mission. Despite being our planetary neighbor, we know relatively little about Venus. We do know that it is superheated to incredibly high temperatures due to greenhouse gases, but that it could once have been a temperate planet like Earth. That was millions of years ago though, and now it is a hellish planet covered in volcanoes, giant mountains, and clouds of sulfur. Even though Mercury is closer to the sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system due to the gases which bring the temperature up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius). “Venus is like the control case for Earth,” Sue Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab explained in a statement. “We believe they started out with the same composition, the same water and carbon dioxide. And … [Read more...] about NASA wants to send an armada of hot air balloons to study Venus
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Searching for habitable planets in the Goldilocks Zone of K stars
Not too hot, not too cold — this one’s just right. To identify potentially habitable worlds, astronomers search in the “Goldilocks Zone” around stars to find planets where liquid water can exist on the surface. Now a new study has identified types of star called K stars which make especially promising targets to host habitable planets. K stars are less bright than our Sun, but brighter than the dimmest stars — called M stars or red dwarfs. This means K stars shine for a much greater length of time than our Sun, lasting between 17 billion and 70 billion years as compared to our Sun’s 10 billion years. The K stars are also more stable, experiencing less extreme activity when they are young than M stars which go through dramatic phases of stellar flares, and give off so much energy that they could boil oceans on nearby planets. All together, these factors mean that K stars have long periods when they are stable, giving plenty of time for potential life … [Read more...] about Searching for habitable planets in the Goldilocks Zone of K stars
Is the truth out there? New paper proposes solution to the Fermi paradox
Where are all the aliens? The famous Fermi paradox asks why, given how vast the universe is, no other civilizations have arisen elsewhere and contacted us here on Earth. Some thinkers have argued the issue is the vast distances between stars, which means it would take an exceedingly long time for any intelligent life to travel from one habitable planet to another. This was the approach taken by Carl Sagan. Others say that it is the nature of an advanced civilization to eventually destroy itself through war or over-consumption, so all the aliens died off before they had the chance to invent and use interstellar travel. Still others argue that aliens might have taken one look at Earth and decided they’d be better off not contacting us, which is depressing but understandable. And of course there’s the possibility that no one has contacted us because there is no one else out there. Now a new paper takes on Sagan’s argument about distance by showing it wouldn’t … [Read more...] about Is the truth out there? New paper proposes solution to the Fermi paradox
Siri helped save a teenager after his vehicle crashes into icy river
Apple’s digital assistant Siri proved to be instrumental in the rescue of a teenager who crashed his vehicle into an icy river. Gael Salcedo, an 18-year-old college student, was driving to the North Iowa Area Community College when his Jeep hit a patch of ice. Salcedo lost control of the vehicle, which slid off the road and crashed into the Winnebago River. “I turned to the right and from there, everything just went blurry. I didn’t know where I was going and then I just didn’t know what to do. I was just thinking in my head ‘I think I’m going to die,'” Salcedo told KIMT, an affiliate of CNN. Upon realizing that he was in the river, Salcedo rolled down the windows as he grew worried that his Jeep might sink. With the ice and water of the Winnebago River below freezing temperatures, things looked grim for the teenager. Fortunately, Salcedo had the idea of turning to modern technology to get out of his predicament. He did not know where his … [Read more...] about Siri helped save a teenager after his vehicle crashes into icy river
Juno spots a new cyclone joining the six storms on the south pole of Jupiter
The atmosphere of Jupiter is tempestuous and full of dramatic storms and cloud formations, and last year NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew close enough to the planet to observe bizarre geometric storms at its poles. Now, NASA researchers have observed a new cyclone on Jupiter’s southern pole, with six windstorms swirling in a hexagonal pattern around a massive central storm. “Data from Juno’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper [JIRAM] instrument indicates we went from a pentagon of cyclones surrounding one at the center to a hexagonal arrangement,” Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, said in a statement. “This new addition is smaller in stature than its six more established cyclonic brothers: It’s about the size of Texas. Maybe JIRAM data from future flybys will show the cyclone growing to the same size as its neighbors.” It was only possible to collect this data because of a risky maneuver … [Read more...] about Juno spots a new cyclone joining the six storms on the south pole of Jupiter
