As the Rosetta spacecraft remains in orbit around the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the comet is slowly drifting toward its closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion. As the comet moves closer to the Sun, intense sunlight liberates gases and dust in streams of material that form clearly visible streaks. The orbiter is able to sample some of the material liberated from the comet, and for the first time it has seen the tell-tale signature of Molecular Nitrogen. Nitrogen is abundant on Earth as a gas, constituting the majority of our atmosphere. It is also present in the atmospheres of Pluto and Neptune’s...
Since the Huygens probe dropped down to the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, astronomers have pondered the idea of life on the distant world. With a liquid cycle not unlike Earth’s water cycle in form, but consisting of frigid liquid hydrocarbons, could a new variation of life exist, not as we know it? Jonathan Lunine, director for Cornell’s Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, is an expert on Saturn’s Moons and is a scientist on the Cassini-Huygens mission, which originally discovered the Methane-Ethane lakes on Titan a decade ago. Given a grant to study non-aqueous life, he needed help....
As the Kepler Space Telescope continues work on its second mission, the slow trickle of new exoplanet discoveries has begun. In the past few weeks scientists working with Kepler data have been able to identify new planets, and of course the variation continues to surprise us all. Most Recently, Kepler discovered a system of three planets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star EPIC 201367065, which is about half the size and mass of the Sun. The planets are all super-Earths, being only 2.1, 1.7, and 1.5 times the size of Earth and receiving 10.5, 3.2 and 1.4 times the light intensity of Earth...
