The European Space Agency's ExoMars spacecraft failed to find any traces of methane on the Red Planet during its hunt from April to August of 2018. This goes directly against recent positive reports of methane by ESA's own Mars Express spacecraft and NASA's Curiosity rover, which both saw methane in 2013.
ExoMars has a sensitive detector that can pick up just one-tenth the amount of methane that Mars Express witnessed. That leaves two options: either one set of observations ...read more
Editor's Note: This story has been updated from a previous version.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will likely launch on its first commercial flight today. The rocket launch was postponed from early April due to unspecified concerns, and then postponed again just this week due to weather. But Wednesday has a clear forecast with an 80 percent probability of a launch, so odds are good the mission will proceed. The launch window opens at 6:35 p.m. EDT this evening and extends until 8:32 p.m. EDT on T ...read more
At the northern tip of the Philippine island of Luzon lays Callao Cave, an expansive, seven-chamber limestone warren. Researchers report today they have uncovered the bones of a now-extinct, previously unknown human species near the far end of the first chamber. The discovery adds to growing evidence that human evolution and dispersal out of Africa is much more complicated than scientists once thought and and reinforces the importance of Southeast Asia in the history of our species. The rese ...read more
A massive international collaboration of researchers has released the first-ever direct image of the hellish environment surrounding a supermassive black hole. As part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, the team used a global array of telescopes to probe the fiery disk of material swirling around the gargantuan black hole at the center of the galaxy M87.
The results confirm that the hot gas swirling around a black hole is traveling at nearly the speed of light, creating a chaot ...read more
On Wednesday, astronomers revealed the first image ever taken of a black hole, bringing a dramatic conclusion to a decades-long effort. The iconic image offers humanity its first glimpse at the gas and debris that swirl around its event horizon, the point beyond which material disappears forever. A favorite object of science fiction has finally been made real on screen.
Their target was a nearby galaxy dubbed M87 and its supermassive black hole, which packs the mass of six and half billio ...read more
A black hole isn't an easy thing to photograph. The famously inscrutable objects are so dense that even light can’t escape their vicinity. By definition, they are invisible. So when the Event Horizon Telescope team released the first image of a black hole, but what they really released is an image of the black hole’s event horizon — the minimum distance from the black hole’s center where gravity is still weak enough for light to escape.
And how they imaged the super ...read more
Trying to take a picture of a black hole — an object that is, by definition, invisible—sounds like an exercise in futility. But for decades, theoreticians suspected it may just be possible to get a detailed view of a black hole’s perimeter, right up to the edge of the event horizon, the fabled point of no return. And a core group of astronomers spent years trying to turn that prediction into reality. Now, they finally have.
Astronomers announced Wednesday that they’d cap ...read more
Some 66 million years ago, a city-sized asteroid struck off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, killing 75 percent of life on Earth, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The space rock left a roughly 100-mile-wide crater and destroyed global ecosystems. Now, a new study shows that it took more than 10 million years of evolution before biodiversity recovered.
And the scientists behind the study say their find carries a grave warning for our current era of human-caused extinction, d ...read more
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will launch on its first commercial flight tomorrow. The rocket launch was postponed from early April due to unspecified concerns, and then postponed again just this week due to weather. But Wednesday has a clear forecast with an 80% probability of a launch, so odds are good the mission will proceed. The launch window opens at 6:35am EDT.
Falcon Heavy is a modified version of SpaceX’s standard Falcon 9 rocket, essentially made up of three Falcon 9’s strap ...read more
There are so many ways to engage in Citizen Science Day on April 13. Participate in any SciStarter affiliate project to earn a personalized certificate.
Start with the Stall Catchers Megathon, a gamified, online inter-generational game to accelerate research on Alzheimer's!
Join the virtual SciStarter Megathon team or organize or join an in-person Megathon meet-up. Find all you need on CitizenScienceDay.org .
Citizen Science Day and the Stall Catchers Megath ...read more
