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This site has a pretty nice demonstration of the Solar System. You can speed things up or slow them down and even go back in time to see how the planets move throughout the ages. It is slightly inaccurate since it still includes Pluto, but Pluto will always be a planet in my heart. It is also very interesting to see just how long it takes the outer planets to make a revolution around the Sun compared to the inner planets.

Site: Astro Tour

US scientists have found evidence that water was held in the Moon’s interior, challenging some elements of the theory of how Earth’s satellite formed.

The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object.

Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water.

But a new study in Nature magazine shows water was delivered to the lunar surface from the interior in volcanic eruptions three billion years ago.

This suggests that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence.

The discovery came from lunar volcanic glasses, pebble-like beads collected and returned to Earth by the US Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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The team, from Brown University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Case Western Reserve University, used secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) technology to detect extremely minute quantities of water in glasses and minerals.

“We developed a way to detect as little as five parts per million of water,” said Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.

Full Article: BBC News

Pretty interesting news on our newest planetary neighbor. What implications this may hold as to whether or not their may have been life on the moon remains to be unseen. The article even points out that the water may have drifted to the poles and may remain there as ice.

After a 10 month journey to Mars, the Phoenix Landed has successfully touched down. Its mission is to study the history of water and also the habit potential of the soil on Mars. Congrats to the guys at NASA!

Source: NASA Mission Page

Additional mission information: University of Arizona

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe.

The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday.

Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter — the protons and neutrons that make up atoms — but there also is an even larger amount of invisible “dark” matter.

“We think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe,” said Mike Shull of the University of Colorado, who helped lead the study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The matter is spread as superheated oxygen and hydrogen in what looked like vast empty spaces between galaxies.

“It is kind of like a spider web. The gravity of the spider web is what produced what we see,” Shull said in a telephone interview. “It’s very thin. Some of it is very hot gas, almost a million degrees.”

This is where the dark matter comes in. The dark matter is heating up the gas, Shull said.

“Dark matter has gravity. It pulls the gas in,” Shull said. “This causes what I call sonic booms — shock waves. This shock heats it to a million degrees. That makes it even harder to see.”

Shull and colleagues said these webs of hydrogen and oxygen are too hot to be seen in visible light and too cool to be seen in X-rays.

Full Article: Yahoo!

It is quite remarkable how they have discovered this matter that has remained to elude many scientists for a while now. Even though the dark matter hasn’t been found itself, its affects have been found. However, since they have only found a partial amount of it, the search for the rest continues.

Scientists using a combination of radio and X-rays have found the most recent supernova remnant observed in our galaxy, located about 26,000 light-years from here. It’s the youngest, most energetic supernova we know and could shed light on just exactly how the stardust we’re made of — heavier elements and all — gets created. The finding also lends some support to astronomers’ calculations that there should be about three supernovae in our galaxy per century, although they still need to find dozens more similar supernova remnants to confirm their suspicions.

Full Article: Wired

This is a fairly significant discovery by the folks at NASA. It is a bit confusing in the terminology because this supernova exploded 26,140 years ago, but hit Earth 140 years ago, so that explains the discrepancy. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has been finding an incredible amount of data from thousands of years in the past as well as evidence of the Big Bang itself, so it is nice to see it find things within our own galaxy and learn more about it. The press conference is a bit comical but on the nerdy side if you want to take a look at it on the Wired website.

Nuclear physics and Roman archaeology just don’t mix, or so you would think. But researchers at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Padua, Italy, and a team of archaeologists have found a common goal: to raise 1500 ingots of lead from a Roman freighter which sank off the coast of Sardinia more than 2000 years ago.

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The physicists want the ancient lead for a practical reason. Lead is the best material for shielding delicate experiments which detect minute amounts of radiation, for example from the unusual kinds of radioactivity associated with double beta decay, or from the rare interaction of neutrinos – the ghost-like particles that are emitted from the Sun and pass through the Earth unheeded. Another experiment requiring shielding is the detection of particles of so-called dark matter – the material believed to hold the Universe together.

Such experiments are usually carried out deep underground in specially built installations, such as the Gran Sasso Laboratory near Rome. Here, 1400 metres of solid rock protect the detecting apparatus from high-energy cosmic rays raining through the atmosphere. Small amounts of radioactive materials in the rocks themselves, however, can interfere with the experiments, so the detector has to be surrounded by an additional lead shield.

Commercial lead has only tiny amounts of radioactive contaminants such as lead-210, but even this is enough to affect very sensitive experiments. However, the half-life of lead-210 is 22 years, which means that lead excavated a long time ago would have lost most of its radioactive component. In fact, physicists have sometimes relied on lead from old cannonballs for their experiments.

Lead that is 2000 years old would be expected to contain virtually no radioactive isotopes at all. The physicists, when they tested a small portion of a salvaged ingot, found this was the case.

Full Article: NewScientist

This article is rather old, but was just put online by NewScientist. Being able to detect neutrinos is very hard even for sophisticated equipment that we have today. I know of some facilities that use very sensitive equipment at the bottom of large water basins deep beneath the Earth, yey very few neutrinos are even detected. It is kind of neat to see old wreckage being put into use for current scientific research. There wasn’t any follow up article shown, but it would be interesting to find out whether or not this lead helped them in any way. If anyone knows of any further research, I’d love to hear it.

The most recent announcement comes from Sunrgi, which claims its XCPV system will “produce electricity at a wholesale cost of 5-cents per kWh” (via news release). Their system magnifies sunlight 2,000 times at over 3,000 degree Fahrenheit onto a small, top-of-the-line solar panel, which dramatically boosts the amount of energy the panel can produce. Since the system is in a module, it can be as big or small as you want. The modules also track the sun throughout the day to maximize power output, and they’re upgradable. That means if better solar panels hit the market in the future (or if theirs do get fried after all), you can switch them out. Another feature Sunrgi claims is an impressive efficiency rating of 37.5%. For the uninitiated, that might not sound like much, but consider that the world record in February, 2008 was 31.25% using CSP – on an unusually sunny day. But the whole system hinges on its cooling mechanism, described only as nanotech “goop”, to prevent the solar panels from melting. And that technology is still “proprietary”. In other words, they haven’t actually made commercial product yet.

So the exciting thing about Extreme Concentrated Photo Voltaics is the combination of high efficiency with low price. By magnifying the power of the sun, these companies are pushing the envelope at a time when energy prices are high. But these ventures are not without risk. Inadequate cooling of of the solar cells could result in decreased performance or melting. There’s also hurdles facing solar energy; the least of which is investing in manufacturing infrastructure, and transporting product. But the magic number here is 5 cents/ kwh.

Full Article: Cleantechnica

This is definitely good news to see solar power begin to get the recognition it deserves. While solar isn’t the ultimate solution since the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day obviously, combining it with some other source such as wind power or nuclear could help rid fossil fuel burning electricity plants completely.

The ancient catastrophe that gave birth to the Moon may have produced additional satellites that lingered in Earth’s skies for tens of millions of years.

A new model suggests moonlets may have once occupied the two Earth-Moon Lagrangian points, regions in space where the gravitational tug of the Earth and the Moon exactly cancel each other out. Objects trapped in these points are called Trojans and can remain stationary forever if left undisturbed.

Scientists think the Moon was created when Earth was struck by a Mars-sized object some 4.5 billion years ago.

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Once captured, the Trojan satellites likely remained in their orbits for up to 100 million years, Lissauer and co-author John Chambers of the Carnegie Institution of Washington say. Then, gravitational tugs from the planets would have triggered changes in the Earth’s orbit, ultimately causing the moons to become unmoored and drift away or crash into the Moon or Earth.

Full Article: NewScientist

While I have heard the idea of a Mars sized planet crashing into the Earth to create the moon, I have never heard there may have been multiple moons for a period of time. I think it would be fascinating to have multiple moons to be able to visit instead of just one. While they may not have been very large, it would probably have been akin to visiting something like an asteroid.

After reports that budget cuts would force NASA to shut down the Mars rovers that landed in 2004, NASA has confirmed the rovers will continue work as usual. The rovers were initially hoped to last 90 days, but have kept working for over four years now allowing NASA to gather tons of information on the Red planet. I hate to bring politics into this, but perhaps the government should look into cutting defense spending rather than cutting the already small budget given to improving technology. NASA does far more with the money it is given than all the other government agencies that waste money. The amount of money wasted in Iraq could have sent manned missions to the moon and Mars many times over and replaced our archaic Space Shuttle Fleet with a more modern system rather than bringing back the Apollo like series.

Source: CNN Blog