In the year 1610, it was commonly believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe, that all bodies rotated around the perfect planet, placed by god with the heavens around it. Galileo Galilei dealt a major blow to this idea, by using an early telescope to improve his vision and look up at some surprising dots. These dots formed a line that went straight through the bright planet Jupiter. As Galileo looked again and again, night after night, he noticed that they not only persisted, they moved. Their motion was predictable, and Galileo realized that they were orbiting Jupiter, just...
Mice are a common laboratory animal for pre-human testing. Everything from drugs to medical treatments to surgeries have been tested on mice, and the effects of spaceflight are no exception. Animals such as Laika the dog and Rhesus monkey Albert 1 have had their own test flights, but mice offer an easy alternative when there’s not much extra room on a spacecraft. In a recent study, mice flown on the space shuttle Atlantis were shown to have developed early signs of liver disease. Could humans in space exhibit the same symptoms? “Prior to this study we really didn’t have much information...
I feel like I’ve been covering a lot of stories on magnetic fields over the past few months. Fields around the Earth, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter’s Moons, and exoplanets are just some of the places in the universe where we are looking at magnetic field behaviour. The intention is to use our understanding of magnetism to figure out what is inside these worlds, and how they interact with their space environment. You would expect us to understand the Earth’s magnetic field and interior very well, after all, we are stuck here. But it turns out it’s very difficult to study the interior of...
One of the most surprising and intriguing finds during the decade-long Cassini mission has been the discovery of geysers on the Moon Enceladus. Originally spotted in 2005, scientists have spent the last decade trying to understand how they work. And now they finally have a working model. How does an eruption on a frigid Moon last so long? Eruptions on Earth are not long-lived, and if they are, they are very spread out. For Enceladus to have a ton of localized geysers in the South polar region, you need some pretty specific scenarios. Aside from the fact that a constant stream of material could clog...
After falling continuously for an entire year, Scott Kelly is ready to hit the ground. With the goal of studying the long-term effects of microgravity on humans, his year is space has been something to keep an eye on. Always in good spirits, he is probably excited to come home, albeit apprehensive due to the dangers of returning to gravity after such a long time. Next Tuesday, March 1st, he will experience significant forces once again as he undocks from the ISS and is ferried home by the Soyuz capsule. Like wearing a weighted suit, coming home will be an...
We know that solar systems form in a disk shape, with the star forming in the middle and any other rocks, presumably planets, form out from the center in whatever dust and gas remains. But what about the space between stars? Is it truly empty? And if there is something out there, how could we find it? How did it get there? For years, astronomers and chemists (believe it or not) have been trying to answer these questions and more. The specific problem is that when we take a spectrum of a distant star, we see a collection of 400...
