Did Viking Mars landers find life’s building blocks? Missing piece inspires new look at puzzle

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2010) — Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life. "This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. McKay coauthored a study published online by the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Planets, reanalyzing results of Viking's tests for organic ... Read More

New mission to skim the Sun: NASA selects science investigations for Solar Probe Plus

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2010) — NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018. The small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star's surface. It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun's biggest mysteries. "The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics -- why is the ... Read More

New solar prediction system gives time to prepare for the storms ahead

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — A new method of predicting solar storms that could help to avoid widespread power and communications blackouts costing billions of pounds has been launched by researchers at the University of Bradford. Solar storms involve the release of huge amounts of hot gas and magnetic forces from the surface of the sun into space at around a million miles an hour. The next major solar storms are expected in 2012-13 as part of the sun's 11-year weather cycle. A 2008 US National Academy of Sciences report estimated that modern reliance on electronics and satellite communications means a ... Read More

A decade of studying the Earth’s magnetic shield, in 3-D

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — Space scientists around the world are celebrating ten years of ground-breaking discoveries by 'Cluster', a mission that is illuminating the mysteries of the magnetosphere, the northern lights and the solar wind. Cluster is a European Space Agency mission, launched in summer 2000. It consists of a unique constellation of four spacecraft flying in formation around Earth, studying the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. The spacecraft each carry an identical set of 11 scientific instruments, which together capture 3D information about the magnetosphere -- Earth's 'magnetic shield'. A key instrument -- PEACE -- was ... Read More

Tracing the big picture of Mars’ atmosphere

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2010) — One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere. The joint European-American mission, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, will seek faint gaseous clues about possible life on Mars. This instrument, called the ExoMars Climate Sounder, will supply crucial context with its daily profiling of the atmosphere's changing structure. The European Space Agency and NASA have selected five instruments for ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The European Space Agency will provide one instrument and the spacecraft. ... Read More

IceCube neutrino observatory nears completion – 93th Edition

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — In December 2010, IceCube -- the world's first kilometer-scale neutrino observatory, whiuch is located beneath the Antarctic ice -- will finally be completed after two decades of planning. In an article in the AIP's Review of Scientific Instruments, Francis Halzen, the principal investigator of the IceCube project, and his colleague Spencer Klein of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory provide a comprehensive description of the observatory, its instrumentation, and its scientific mission -- including its most publicized goal: finding the sources of cosmic rays. "Almost a century after their discovery, we do not know from where the most ... Read More

IceCube neutrino observatory nears completion – 93th Edition

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — In December 2010, IceCube -- the world's first kilometer-scale neutrino observatory, whiuch is located beneath the Antarctic ice -- will finally be completed after two decades of planning. In an article in the AIP's Review of Scientific Instruments, Francis Halzen, the principal investigator of the IceCube project, and his colleague Spencer Klein of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory provide a comprehensive description of the observatory, its instrumentation, and its scientific mission -- including its most publicized goal: finding the sources of cosmic rays. "Almost a century after their discovery, we do not know from where the most ... Read More

Did Viking Mars landers find life’s building blocks? Missing piece inspires new look at puzzle

(Sep. 4, 2010) — Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life. "This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. McKay coauthored a study published online by the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Planets, reanalyzing results of Viking's tests for organic ... Read More

When galaxies collide: How the first super-massive black holes were born – 92th Edition

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2010) — Astronomers believe they have discovered the origin of our universe's first super-massive black holes, which formed some 13 billion years ago. The discovery fills in a missing chapter of our universe's early history, and could help write the next chapter -- in which scientists better understand how gravity and dark matter formed the universe as we know it. In the journal Nature, Ohio State University astronomer Stelios Kazantzidis and colleagues describe computer simulations in which they modeled the evolution of galaxies and black holes during the first few billion years after the Big Bang. Our universe is thought ... Read More

When galaxies collide: How the first super-massive black holes were born – 92th Edition

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2010) — Astronomers believe they have discovered the origin of our universe's first super-massive black holes, which formed some 13 billion years ago. The discovery fills in a missing chapter of our universe's early history, and could help write the next chapter -- in which scientists better understand how gravity and dark matter formed the universe as we know it. In the journal Nature, Ohio State University astronomer Stelios Kazantzidis and colleagues describe computer simulations in which they modeled the evolution of galaxies and black holes during the first few billion years after the Big Bang. Our universe is thought ... Read More