A Super Discovery, 05.11.12

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has made another monumental discovery: a “super-Earth.”

Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth is, for now, called 55 Cancri e, and is situated in the constellation Cancer, about 41 light years away. For the first time, scientists were able to actually measure the light emanating (reflected) from the planet itself, instead of measuring how much light it blocks as it transits in front of its star. Because of the low measure­ments that were taken, scientists guess that the planet is probably very dark most of the time. It appears to be tidally locked, though (one side is stuck facing its star), and that side appears to have temperatures in excess of 3,000 Fahrenheit. Just so we’re clear on how hot that is, most kinds of metal will be liquid at that temperature.

Based on their observations, scientists are saying the planet most likely has a rocky core and is covered with water. Be­cause of the extreme heat on the sunny side, however, the water is probably in a “supercritical” state, where it exists as both liquid and gas. NASA claims the atmosphere is covered with steam. Regardless, the atmosphere appears to be very thin, as it is doing such a poor job of blocking its sun’s heat.

Based on all observations made at this point, the planet cannot support life.

Read more from NASA.

Life on Europa: a soda ocean? 03.02.12

Of all of the other places in our solar system, one of the most promising locations for extraterrestrial life has been Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Completely covered with ice on the surface, researchers believe Europa harbors an ocean of liquid water at least 100 miles deep, which leads down to a rocky interior and a solid core of some type, most likely metal. Surface studies on the moon have yet to be conducted, however, so the re­searchers have no idea how thick the icy crust on the outside of the planet may be.

Credit: NASA.

While the possibility of an ocean of liquid water is more than enough to be excited about, some researchers are beginning to doubt whether or not life as we know it would be able to thrive on the chilling planet. What research has been done on the planet is beginning to lead the scientists to believe that whatever water is there would be highly contaminated by extremely acidic chemicals. There is some speculation that it is possible the acidity could be balanced out by more basal minerals at the ocean floor, but again, it is all speculation.

There are a few places on Earth where some microbes and other life forms thrive in highly acidic environments, but those areas are few and far between. So, the likelihood of life sur­viving on an entire planet like that? Very slim.

Without the bases and minerals at the ocean floor to balance out the pH, though, the researchers say the ocean would have moderately corrosive characteristics, “about the same as your average soft drink,” except it would be more along the lines of hydrogen peroxide than a cola. Swim time, anyone?

Information credit: SPACE.com.

Liquid water on Mars? 08.08.11

New observations by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have produced promising evidence that during certain seasons, Mars may actually have liquid water flowing across its surface.

NASA is all a-twitter due to some new images gathered that show “dark, finger-like features” that “appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring.” That the features recur every cycle-through of the seasons indicate that they are not merely anomalies, but rather something like the swelling of streamlets and rivers here on Earth from thawed snow and ice.

Any liquid water to be found on Mars would most likely be very salty or “briny,” though, according to NASA. Based on what is known at this point of the surface chemistry of Mars, any water to be found on the surface would have a sodium concentration comparable to our own oceans. This lowers the freezing point of the water, making it possible for it to exist in a liquid form in Mars’ sometimes lower surface temperatures.

There are also markings in the soil and rock that are indicative of flowing water.

NASA astronomers are not 100% certain about the find as of this point, however. Spectroscopy scans made by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) do not reveal any liquid water.  According to Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, “the flows are not dark because of being wet…they are dark for some other reason.” The flows he was referring to were the lines in the soil and rock, and the dark lines seen by the Reconnaissance Orbiter. If the ground is completely dry and does not have little streams of brine in it, then it becomes a new mystery that it would lighten just in those areas during the winter.

According to NASA, this is the closest they have ever come to finding liquid water on Mars, and makes it an even more ideal place to visit by astronauts for study.


Credit: NASA.

Pluto's family grows, 07.29.11

The Hubble Telescope has added another great discovery to its repertoire; a fourth moon for Pluto. Temporarily assigned the name P4, it was discovered just this month orbiting around the dwarf planet with Charon, Nix, and Hydra, Pluto’s other moons.

Estimated to only be 8-21 miles wide, the tiny little rock is the smallest one to have been found orbiting Pluto. All the other moons orbiting Pluto are at least twice as large. Charon, the largest, is 648 miles across.

Astronomers anxiously wait for the day when the New Horizons spacecraft reaches the Pluto system in 2015. Launched in 2006, New Horizons is outfitted with a visible and infrared imager/spectrometer, an ultraviolet imaging spectrometer, a radio science experiment to measure atmospheric temperature and composition, a telescopic camera, a solar wind and plasma spectrometer, an energetic particle spectrometer, and a dust counter to measure how much dust New Horizons on its way to Pluto.

Credit: NASA. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter.

A quasar's lesson in death, 03.02.11

There is a supermassive black hole at the center of Markarian 231, about 600 million light years away, near the constellation Ursa Major, which is giving scientists some clues into the life cycles of black holes. Irony objectified, it turns out that their massive appetites actually starve them out in the end.

Image credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA, artwork by Lynette Cook.

Mrk 231 is under observation by the Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawai’I, and the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Mauna Kea, Hawai’i. The observatory has estimated that the total flow of matter from Mrk 231 is about 400 times the mass of the Sun, and that it puts out this much every year. Such an enormous appetite, however, cannot go on forever, scientists say.


Black holes are a normal find in the center of galaxies; we even have one of our own in the center of the Milky Way. Mrk 231has allowed scientists to glean data that demonstrates how black holes can be choked out. They are calling their findings a “negative feedback loop,” in which the black hole sucks in matter and energy around it, compresses it into an unimaginably fine stream (probably because of magnetic fields), and then spews it back out. The problem, they say, is that it is spitting its food out too far and too fast. “This is really a last gasp of this galaxy;” says Sylvain Veilleux of the University of Maryland, “The black hole is belching its next meal into oblivion!”


In the final, violent stages of merging with another galaxy, it spits out the material it needs faster and farther away than it can be retrieved. Soon, it will be stripped down to its energetic central quasar.


Quasar is actually a shortened term for “quasi-stellar radio source.” This is a bit of a misnomer, however, as some quasars emit very little of a radio signal, if any, at all. They also are some of the brightest and presumably oldest objects in the universe, and are still being extensively studied.


Credit: NASA.

Shockwaves and invisible colors: Zeta Ophiuchi, 01.31.11

A huge star, 20 times the mass of our own sun, is hurtling through space. Possibly sent on its course by its former binary star companion’s supernova, the star has been surfing the heavens at roughly 54,000 miles per hour. NASA’s WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope has captured the star as it hurtled through a giant dust cloud, creating a massive shockwave, called “bow shock,” like the wave preceding a ship in the ocean. Zeta Ophiuchi, of the constellation Ophiuchus (of recent zodiac fame/infamy), can be seen here creating the giant, golden arc before its path.

Image credit: SPACE.com.

Although a beautiful spectacle to behold, it is important to remember the colors we are seeing are not really there at all, at least not as visible light. The colors are actually a result of the infrared imaging. Otherwise, the image would just look like a big, fuzzy, dust smudge with small, lighter bits. That dust, by the way, is obscuring the light from Zeta Ophiuchi. Astronomers believe it would be 65,000 times brighter without the surrounding dust cloud.


But wait a minute, you say, back up! Stars move? Yes, they do indeed, says Thronateeska’s staff astronomer, Jim Friese. “I don’t think people realize that stars are not fixed,” he says, “and some move a lot. This is a great example of how dynamic and changeable stars are; it just takes a long time.”


Credit: SPACE.com.

A Roving update, 01.18.11

Almost one month ago, the Mars Rover Odyssey set a new working lifespan record on the red planet. Having landed in 2001, Odyssey set a new record on December 22, 2010 as the longest-serving spacecraft on Mars. It surpassed the previous record set by the Mars Global Surveyor, another NASA spacecraft that orbited Mars for almost a decade, ending in 2006.


Odyssey has been highly valued by NASA, as it is utilized to create the most detailed maps that have ever been made of Mars. Evidence collected by Odyssey prompted the Phoenix Lander mission in 2008, which confirmed the presence of frozen water just beneath the Martian surface, theorized by hydrogen readings gleaned from Odyssey. Odyssey has also been used to gather data that will assist NASA with planning a manned mission to Mars in the future.


 Odyssey is certainly not the only star of the show, though. Recent findings by the previously mentioned Phoenix Lander have caused some astronomers to breathe a huge sigh of relief, thirty years in the waiting. Soil tests made in 2008 by Phoenix have not only cleared up a supposed chemical waste disposal oversight, but have also confirmed the presence of organics in the Martian soil. In 1976, NASA’s Viking Mars Landers reported the presence of chloromethane and dichloromethane, a story Thronateeska reported on in its September 10, 2010 issue of the Word from the Wetherbee. The situation arose through the discovery of two chemicals—chloromethane and dichloromethane—classified as organics, which were previously thought to be contaminates when they were found in Martian soil. The Phoenix Lander is causing scientists to reexamine the discovery of these two chemicals through the consideration of another chemical—perchlorate—that has been found to destroy the evidence of the two organics. By heating the perchlorate, it becomes a strong oxidant and destroys the other chemicals, which means NASA could have had evidence of life over 30 years ago but missed it.


This is especially good news for present and future rovers that will be sent to the red planet. Take, for example, NASA’s Mars Opportunity. It is gleaning preliminary information about the mineral deposits around it before it even has to conduct any experiments on its own, a huge time-saving device. How, you ask? It is actually having information relayed to it from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is making use of a mineral-mapping instrument know as the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The CRISM, riding 150 miles above Mars on board the Reconnaissance Orbiter, is able to analyze the ground surface of Mars and send back detailed information to the rover regarding specific mineral deposits. Every known element has its own frequency on the light spectrum, and the CRISM analyzes the light spectrum it “sees” to let Opportunity know where to start digging before it even has to move. Therefore, Opportunity is not aimlessly roaming about, conducting experiments that are more likely to glean promising results. It is almost like CRISM is telling Opportunity when it is “getting warmer” as it approaches specific mineral deposits. According to NASA, CRISM is able, despite its great height from Mars, to provide Opportunity with mineral maps as small as a tennis court.


 Advances like this will take further leaps and bounds when Curiosity, the next Mars rover, is launched later this year. Curiosity is equipped with the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, a device which, believe it or not, zaps rocks with lasers. Like something out of a science fiction movie, Curiosity will go roaming about Mars conducting much of its research by shooting the rocks around it with a pin-head sized laser beam, the point being that the resulting “pouf” of dust will emit the minerals inherent in the soil, and its light spectrum can be captured and analyzed. A much faster method than digging and baking sample upon sample of soil, the ChemCam is capable of detecting 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light, and all from a laser the size of a cigar, which “drills” a hole with megawatts of energy per square millimeter in just a few nanoseconds, also providing much faster and wide-ranging results. Curiosity will be able to “shoot” its laser at samples up to 23 feet away, and will further enable the rover to make better “decisions” about where it should go dig by providing it with a more detailed chemical overview of the soil types surrounding it. The ChemCam is pictured below, undergoing a laboratory test.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL.

Credit: NASANews, NASA JPL.

Mars' moons created by ancient blast? 09.24.10

Research was released recently that suggests the moons of Mars were actually created from particles from the Martian surface. The research also supports the presence of liquid water in the soil at some point in the past. Dr. Marco Giuranna, of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, recently made the presentation at the 2010 European Planetary Science Congress in Rome.


According to the presentation, Mars’ small orbiting moon Phobos is most likely made from rocks that were blasted off the very surface of Mars in a catastrophic event. Another theory suggests that it was made from the remnants of a previous moon—which could have itself been made from Martian rocks and soil— that could have been destroyed by Mars’ gravitational pull. Using a piece of technology known as a PFS (Planetary Fourier Spectrometer), scientists discovered that Phobos contains some of the same compounds as its parent planet, Mars. Jim Friese, staff astronomer at Thronateeska, notes that this means the moons of Mars formed in the same way that the Earth’s moon formed, by being blasted off the surface and joining into solid bodies. The impact on Mars made several moons instead of one like ours. Friese says both Earth and Mars are losing their moons; the Earth’s moon is drifting further away about 1.5 inches a year, and Mars’ moons Deimos and Phobos are falling in, doomed to eventually collide with their parent planet.


In the same research, another discovery was made using PFS: a mineral compound which is only formed through contact with liquid water. This means that at one point in time, whether on Phobos or even on Mars, the soil came into contact with liquid water.


Credit: BBC News Science & Environment.

Planet's lack of odor could rewrite chemistry, 09.17.10

The rules of chemistry are being reevaluated. Scientists at the University of Central Florida recently published the results of a study that report a planet with chemistry that is leaving scientists puzzled because it is missing one of the most common and plentiful compounds found on gas giants: methane. On Earth, methane—a particularly odorous compound—is perceived as evidence of life, but on alien planets it is merely common chemistry.


The planet in question is Giant Planet GJ 436b, 33 light years away in the constellation Leo. The planet is about the size of Neptune and has an atmosphere mostly composed of carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas. According to scientists Kevin Stevenson and Joseph Harrington, both of UCF, these discoveries of the planet’s chemistry were made by analyzing the planet’s spectrum, a technology that takes advantage of each chemical compound’s unique frequency on the light spectrum.


The scientists have several theories for where the methane on the planet, if any at all, may be going. They have postulated that either it is being broken down by intense UV radiation from the planet’s star, or that it is being carried away by strong vertical winds. One other theory they have is that the planet may have an alien chemistry. According to the researchers, this planet could be the first evidence that chemistry does not always follow the same ‘rules’ as it does in our own solar system. If this is the case, most of what scientists think they know about chemistry could be radically altered.


““GJ 436b is telling us something important,” says Harrington: “We’re not in Kansas anymore.””


Credit: NASA Science, Dr. Tony Phillips, Dauna Coulter, and Science@NASA.