In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner ...
Nov 03, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched -- NASA's New Horizons -- is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in ...
Sep 05, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The solar system does not end abruptly past the planets. Beyond the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet (it orbits the sun at a distance of 30 AU, where one AU is the average distance of ...
May 07, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in visible light in the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of icy debris that is encircling the outer rim of the solar system ...
Dec 16, 2009
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in ...
Nov 10, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- New evidence supports the theory that comets delivered a significant portion of Earth's oceans, which scientists believe formed about 8 million years after the planet itself.
Oct 05, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought ...
Feb 02, 2010
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(Phys.org)—Every six seconds, for millions of years, comets have been colliding with one another near a star in the constellation Cetus called 49 CETI, which is visible to the naked eye.
Nov 08, 2012
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(Phys.org) —With data collected from the mighty W. M. Keck Observatory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) astronomer Mike Brown—known as the Pluto killer for discovering a Kuiper-belt object ...
Mar 05, 2013
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Until now, astronomers have used telescopes to find Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), moon-sized bodies, and obtain their spectra to determine what types of ices are on their surface. They have ...
Jun 16, 2010
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New research indicates that there may be many more dwarf planets similar to Pluto in our solar system than previously thought. Studying these distant objects can help astrobiologists understand the basic properties ...
Apr 26, 2010
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(Phys.org)—Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a large asteroid belt around the star Vega, the second brightest star in northern night skies. The scientists used data from NASA's Spitzer Space ...
Jan 08, 2013
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New research by a University of Victoria PhD student is challenging popular theory about how part of our solar system formed. At today's meeting of the prestigious Division of Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, ...
Oct 06, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The bizarre, hourglass-shaped Kuiper belt object 2001QG298 spins round like a propeller as it orbits the Sun, according to an astronomer from Queens University Belfast. The discovery that ...
Oct 03, 2011
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(Phys.org) -- Data from NASA's Cassini mission reveal Saturn's moon Phoebe has more planet-like qualities than previously thought.
Apr 27, 2012
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