March 2017 (Page 7)

7 Questions For 7 New Planets NASA’s announcement last week of 7 new exoplanets is still causing great excitement. Any time you discover 7 “Earth-like” planets around a distant star, with 3 of them “potentially” in the habitable zone, it’s a big deal. But now that we’re over some of our initial excitement, let’s look at some of the questions that need to be answered before we can all get excited again. What About That Star? The star that the planets orbit, called Trappist-1, is a Red Dwarf star, much dimmer and cooler than our Sun. The three potentially habitable planets—TRAPPIST-1e, f, and g— getRead More →

How Far is Mercury from the Sun? Mercury is famously known for being a scorching hot world. On the side that is facing towards the Sun, conditions can get pretty molten, reaching temperatures of up to 700 K (427 °C; 800°F) in the equatorial region. The surface is also airless, in part because any atmosphere it could generate would be blown away by solar wind. Hardly surprising, considering it is the closest planet to our Sun. But just how close is it? On average, it’s slightly more than one-third the distance between Earth and the Sun. However, its orbital eccentricity is also the greatest ofRead More →

So it Begins, Red Dragon Delayed 2 Years to 2020 Artists concept for sending SpaceX Red Dragon spacecraft to land propulsively on Mars as early as 2020. Credit: SpaceX KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – With so many exciting projects competing for the finite time of SpaceX’s super talented engineers, something important had to give. And that something comes in the form of slipping the blastoff of SpaceX’s ambitious Red Dragon initiative to land the first commercial spacecraft on Mars by 2 years – to 2020. The Red Dragon launch postponement from 2018 to 2020 was announced by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell during a prelaunch pressRead More →

UFO Visualizations Show the Trends in Alien Spotting. Saucers Are Down, Lights Are Up When it comes to conspiracy theories and modern preoccupations, few things are more popular than unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and alien abductions. For over half a century, there have been rumors, reports, and urban legends about aliens coming to Earth, dabbling with our genetics, and conducting weird (and often invasive) experiments on our citizens. And while opinions on what drives this popular phenomenon tend to differ (some say hysteria, others that it is media-driven), a few things are clear. For one, sightings appear to take place far more in the UnitedRead More →