http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org provides the latest news from JPL/NASA Johnny Cash may have preferred this galaxy's burning ring of fire to the one he sang about falling into in his popular song. The "starburst ring" seen at center in red and yellow hues is not the product of love, as in the song, but is instead a frenetic region of star formation. http://phys.org/news288096834.html Space & Earth Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:01 EST news288096834 (Phys.org) —The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days. http://phys.org/news287343191.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 May 2013 18:33:27 EST news287343191 (Phys.org) —Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets—planets that orbit stars beyond our sun—and more than 2,700 other candidates. What are these exotic planets made of? Unfortunately, you cannot stack them in a jar like marbles and take a closer look. Instead, researchers are coming up with advanced techniques for probing the planets' makeup. http://phys.org/news287333579.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 May 2013 15:53:11 EST news287333579 (Phys.org) —Our galaxy is teeming with a wild variety of planets. In addition to our solar system's eight near-and-dear planets, there are more than 800 so-called exoplanets known to circle stars beyond our sun. One of the first "species" of exoplanets to be discovered is the hot Jupiters, also known as roasters. These are gas giants like Jupiters, but they orbit closely to their stars, blistering under the heat. http://phys.org/news287077834.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 May 2013 16:50:58 EST news287077834 (Phys.org) —A gauge on the Voyager home page, http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov, tracks levels of two of the three key signs scientists believe will appear when the spacecraft leave our solar neighborhood and enter interstellar space. http://phys.org/news286098155.html Space & Earth Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:30:01 EST news286098155 (Phys.org) —The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa exposes material churned up from inside the moon and also material resulting from matter and energy coming from above. If you want to learn about the deep saltwater ocean beneath this unusual world's icy shell—as many people do who are interested in possible extraterrestrial life—you might target your investigation of the surface somewhere that has more of the up-from-below stuff and less of the down-from-above stuff. http://phys.org/news285233779.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:00:05 EST news285233779 (Phys.org) —Hardware from a spacecraft that the Soviet Union landed on Mars in 1971 might appear in images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. http://phys.org/news284913783.html Space & Earth Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:43:09 EST news284913783 (Phys.org) —Mars has lost much of its original atmosphere, but what's left remains quite active, recent findings from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity indicate. Rover team members reported diverse findings today at the European Geosciences Union 2013 General Assembly, in Vienna. http://phys.org/news284640850.html Space & Earth Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:54:21 EST news284640850 (Phys.org) —A new paper led by a NASA researcher shows that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The authors argue that if the peroxide on the surface of Europa mixes into the ocean below, it could be an important energy supply for simple forms of life, if life were to exist there. The paper was published online recently in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. http://phys.org/news284364861.html Space & Earth Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:14:28 EST news284364861 (Phys.org) —NASA's Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon—a result of Einstein's theory of general relativity—in binary, or double, star systems. http://phys.org/news284310856.html Space & Earth Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:15:56 EST news284310856 (Phys.org) —A versatile NASA airborne imaging radar system is showcasing its broad scientific prowess for studying our home planet during a month-long expedition over the Americas. http://phys.org/news284278445.html Space & Earth Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:14:12 EST news284278445 (Phys.org) —A laboratory experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., simulating the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan suggests complex organic chemistry that could eventually lead to the building blocks of life extends lower in the atmosphere than previously thought. The results now point out another region on the moon that could brew up prebiotic materials. The paper was published in Nature Communications this week. http://phys.org/news284228265.html Space & Earth Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:18:33 EST news284228265 NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has resumed science investigations after recovery from a computer glitch that prompted the engineers to switch the rover to a redundant main computer on Feb. 28. http://phys.org/news283513408.html Space & Earth Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:43:34 EST news283513408 Like archeologists carefully digging for fossils, scientists with the Planck mission are sifting through cosmic clutter to find the most ancient light in the universe. http://phys.org/news283165977.html Space & Earth Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:50:01 EST news283165977 (Phys.org) —A sequence of radar images of asteroid 2013 ET was obtained on March 10, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., when the asteroid was about 693,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 2.9 lunar distances. http://phys.org/news282906980.html Space & Earth Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:17:02 EST news282906980