NASA's Cassini spacecraft still has a few months to go before it completes its mission in September, but the veteran Saturn explorer reaches a new milestone today. Saturn's solstice—that is, the longest day of summer in ...
Space Exploration
May 25, 2017
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Saturn's hexagonal polar jet stream is the shining feature of almost every view of the north polar region of Saturn. The region, in shadow for the first part of the Cassini mission, now enjoys full sunlight, which enables ...
Space Exploration
May 9, 2017
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A new movie sequence of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the view as the spacecraft swooped over Saturn during the first of its Grand Finale dives between the planet and its rings on April 26.
Space Exploration
May 4, 2017
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After training a network of telescopes stretching from Hawaii to Antarctica to Spain at the heart of our galaxy for five nights running, astronomers said Wednesday they may have snapped the first-ever picture of a black hole.
Astronomy
Apr 12, 2017
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Ever since first mentioned by Jon Michell in a letter to the Royal Society in 1783, black holes have captured the imagination of scientists, writers, filmmakers and other artists. Perhaps part of the allure is that these ...
Astronomy
Mar 20, 2017
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Over the past decade, the international Cassini mission has revealed intense activity at the southern pole of Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, with warm fractures venting water-rich jets that hint at an underground sea. A new ...
Space Exploration
Mar 14, 2017
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In 1911, physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes aimed to lower mercury's temperature to as close to absolute zero as possible. He hoped to win a disagreement with Lord Kelvin, who thought metals would stop conducting electricity ...
Superconductivity
Mar 2, 2017
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Nearly 10 years after a "doomsday" seed vault opened on an Arctic island, some 50,000 new samples from seed collections around the world have been deposited in the world's largest repository built to safeguard against wars ...
Ecology
Feb 23, 2017
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For 12 days in January 2016, a football-field-sized balloon with a telescope hanging beneath it floated 24 miles above the Antarctic continent, riding the spiraling polar vortex. On Jan. 31, 2016, scientists sent the pre-planned ...
Space Exploration
Feb 23, 2017
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On Feb. 17, 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft was making the first-ever close pass over Saturn's moon Enceladus as it worked through its detailed survey of the planet's icy satellites. Exciting, to be sure, just for the thrill ...
Space Exploration
Feb 17, 2017
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