NASA's New Horizons' team released the first close-up images from Ultima Thule on Wednesday afternoon. Even at the speed of light, signals from the outer solar system take a long time to reach Earth. But the pictures were well worth waiting for. They reveal Ultima Thule is actually two objects stuck together. That's prompted scientists to dub the big one "Ultima" and the small one "Thule."
And while the first images may still be a bit disappointing, the best pictures will be arriving ...read more
With the holiday season over, millions of people are taking down their Christmas trees. Only a few days ago, the iconic symbols brought visions of the sugar plum fairy and the magic of Santa. Yet, the trees will get tossed out with the rest of the week’s trash by week’s end to decompose in landfills. But now, researchers from Britain say they've found a way to bring second life to Christmas trees.
“A potential solution is to convert these used Christmas trees ... into useful m ...read more
As we get older, our chances of dying go up. To that, you might say, well, duh. But, when we hit around 80 years old or so, a funny thing seems to happen: Our odds of dying stop increasing and instead start leveling out. So you’ve got the same shot — about 50/50 — of croaking at, say, 110 (an age that would classify you as a so-called supercentenarian) as you would at 95.
It’s an odd phenomenon that’s left experts puzzled for years. Researchers have floated ma ...read more
New Horizons successfully "phoned home" at 10:28 a.m. EST, letting NASA scientists know all of its systems survived the flyby of Ultima Thule. The first real images will now slowly trickle in over the coming hours and days.
"We have a healthy spacecraft," Mission Operations Manager, "MOM," Alice Bowman announced to a crowd of cheering scientists Tuesday morning.
New Horizons, Phone Home
Not long after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, as 2018 gave way to 2019, NASA's New Horizon ...read more
A New Year's Flyby
A billion miles past Pluto, at 12:33 a.m. EST tonight on New Year’s Day, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will swoop in close to the most distant object humans will have ever visited. For just a moment, the craft will fly within 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of Ultima Thule, a primitive space rock from the Kuiper Belt far beyond Neptune.
This will be over three times closer than the craft flew to Pluto, according to New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.
If New ...read more
As most of America’s East Coast counts down toward midnight tonight, ushering in a shiny new year, a group of NASA scientists and their attendant press will instead be counting down to a more spectacular event: the most distant flyby of a planetary object in history.
After zipping past Pluto in 2015, snapping breathtaking photos and revolutionizing our understanding of the dwarf planet, the New Horizons probe has drifted farther and deeper into the solar system. Tonight, some billion mile ...read more
Novelists have "It was a dark and stormy night." For planetary scientists, the equivalent cliche is, "We expect to be surprised." The story of every new space mission seems to begin that way. No matter how intensely researchers study some solar-system object, no matter how they muster the best resources available on Earth, they are inevitably caught off-guard when they get to study it up close for the first time. And no matter how worn and familiar that cliche may sound, it also rings true e ...read more
It's that time, once again, to give out the Pliny. Since 2009, my readers have voted on what they think was the most significant volcanic event of the year. Sometimes the vote is very close and sometimes, well, you can guess what the outcome will be before the envelope is opened. Let's start off with some honorable mentions that garnered votes from some of you:
Sierra Negra: Back in June of 2018, Sierra Negra in the Galápagos erupted for the first time since 2005. Lava flows poured down ...read more
