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Social Sciences Nov 17, 2014

Best of Last Week – Philae lands on a comet, new way to generate electricity and long term impact of marijuana use

(Phys.org)—It was a big week for space science, topping the news of course was a European spacecraft landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The spectacular achievement by the washing-machine sized Philae probe was ...

Astronomy Jul 26, 2006

Pre-life molecules present in comets

Evidence of atomic nitrogen in interstellar gas clouds suggests that pre-life molecules may be present in comets, a discovery that gives a clue about the early conditions that gave rise to life, according to researchers from ...

Sep 7, 2005

Spitzer and Deep Impact Build Recipe for Comet Soup

When Deep Impact smashed into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, it released the ingredients of our solar system's primordial "soup." Now, astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Deep Impact have analyzed ...

Astronomy Feb 26, 2024

Metal scar found on cannibal star

When a star like our sun reaches the end of its life, it can ingest the surrounding planets and asteroids that were born with it. Now, using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) in Chile, researchers ...

Space Exploration Jun 30, 2023

Complex organosulfur molecules on comet 67P: Evidence from Rosetta orbiter and the lab

The Rosetta orbiter spectrometer for ion and neutral analysis (ROSINA) instrument orbited comet 67P to revolutionize our understanding of cometary material composition. A key finding of the satellite was to explore the composition ...

Astronomy Mar 22, 2023

A surprisingly simple explanation for 'Oumuamua's weird orbit

In 2017, a mysterious comet dubbed 'Oumuamua fired the imaginations of scientists and the public alike. It was the first known visitor from outside our solar system, it had no bright coma or dust tail, like most comets, and ...

Planetary Sciences Mar 8, 2023

Tracing the history of water in planet formation back to the interstellar medium

Scientists studying a nearby protostar have detected the presence of water in its circumstellar disk. The new observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) mark the first detection of water ...

Planetary Sciences Dec 19, 2022

Isotopic signatures in Ryugu suggest it formed close to comets along with some unique minerals

An international team of researchers studying material from the asteroid Ryugu returned to Earth by the Hayabusa-2 Japanese space probe has found evidence that the asteroid formed in an outer part of the solar system, near ...

Astronomy Apr 12, 2022

4 billion-year-old relic from early solar system heading our way

An enormous comet—approximately 80 miles across, more than twice the width of Rhode Island—is heading our way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. Fortunately, it will never get closer than 1 billion ...

Astronomy Mar 30, 2022

Scientists discover distant long-period comets quickly fade away

As comets approach the Sun, they release gas and dust known to astronomers as cometary activity. For comets passing near or inside Earth's orbit, this activity slows over successive orbits. University of Oklahoma astronomer ...

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