Jupiter’s moon Io is in stark contrast to the other three Galilean moons. While Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa all appear to have subsurface oceans, Io is a volcanic world, covered with more than 400 active volcanoes. In fact, Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. Io’s largest volcano is named Loki,…
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A bright object will be visible in the Western Pennsylvania sky tonight. Wednesday evening’s clear skies will provide an opportunity to see the International Space Station as it flies over Western Pennsylvania. It will look like a bright, moving star or a plane without blinking lights. The Pittsburgh area will see the…
A 10-million-year-old fossilized ape has given scientists new insights into human evolution.The ape skeleton, known as Rudapithecus, was initially discovered in Hungary; its preserved pelvis was studied by an international team of researchers, who found that human bipedalism — locomotion on two legs — might have deeper ancestral origins than previously thought.”Rudapithecus was pretty apelike and probably moved among…
The Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander and rover before they went to the moon. ISRO The world was rooting for India’s Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander when it aimed for a successful touchdown on the moon on Sept. 6. It didn’t quite work out as planned. The lander lost communication with mission control just above the lunar surface, and we’re…
Image: Twentieth Century FoxIn the lead-up to Ad Astra’s release, many have called it this year’s Interstellar. The two films boast some similarities—a title referencing stars, the prominence of a space-faring father’s relationship with his grown child, threats to the Earth’s environment—but the two projects are quite distinct from one another. Ultimately, the pervasive comparisons…
A stylized version of a racetrack nanosandblasted on lithium niobate, where photons are coaxed to interact with each other under low energy conditions. The new system could be optimized to work at the level of individual photons – the holy grail for room-temperature quantum computing and secure quantum communication. Credit: Stevens Institute of Technology To…
Dust from a giant asteroid collision in outer space caused Earth to freeze over, which triggered a bloom in biodiversity 466 million years ago, scientist say. A 93-mile wide asteroid broke apart between Mars and Jupiter, which flung huge amounts of dust towards Earth, blocking light from the sun and causing dramatic global cooling. The dust floated down to…
NASA’s Juno orbiter has captured stunning images of the swirling, hypnotic beauty of Jupiter in the three years it has been observing our solar system’s largest planet.On Sept. 12, Juno sent back a scene from a close orbit of 8,000 kilometers. Data processed into a color image shows Jupiter’s moon Io casting a shadow over…
It’s not quite a “Stairway to Heaven,” but scientists have come up with what appears to be a perfectly feasible plan to build an elevator to the Moon. Or, more accurately, a Spaceline from the Moon to the Earth. In a paper published in late August, astrophysicists Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandson of the University…
When the remnants of Europe’s second summertime heat wave migrated over Greenland in late July, more than half of the ice sheet’s surface started melting for the first time since 2012. A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that mega-melts like that one, which are being amplified by climate change, aren’t just causing Greenland to…
