Astronomers have discovered an object in our Solar System which is 120 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. This makes it the most distant body ever observed within this Solar System. The object has been provisionally designated 2018 VG18, and …Continue reading
NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex probe reaches Bennu asteroid
A NASA explorer has successfully completed its 1.2 billion mile, two-year-long journey to reach the asteroid Bennu this Monday. This involved executing a maneuver that changed its trajectory, so that instead of flying towards Bennu it was flying around it. The Origins, …Continue reading
Attack the sun to fight climate change, propose Ivy League researchers
Researchers at Harvard and Yale have proposed a novel and unorthodox method to combat global warming: spraying Sun dimming sulfates into the lower stratosphere. This technique is called stratospheric aerosol injection, and the scientists proposing it have said it could cut the …Continue reading
Kepler space telescope runs out of juice
NASA’s first planet hunting mission finally drew to a close on October 30, 2018. After spending nine years in deep space circling the Sun in an orbit somewhat wider and slower than the Earth’s and collecting data that indicated the existence of …Continue reading
Earth going through mass extinction event, warns WWF
WWF’s latest Living Planet Report (LPR), which is published every two years to assess the state of the planet’s wildlife, bears some grim warnings. According to the charity, population size of vertebrate species — including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians — …Continue reading
Mars could be home to aerobic life
Prevalent assumptions that the environment on Mars could not support aerobic organisms were shattered this past Monday when researchers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California revealed that they had discovered oxygen in the planet’s salt-water reservoirs. In certain specific …Continue reading
Astronomers may have found a stray moon
Using NASA’s Hubble and Kepler space telescopes, astronomers have found evidence for what could be a moon orbiting a planet outside our solar system. This would be the first time this phenomenon has been observed. The moon ‘candidate’, which is 8,000 light-years …Continue reading
Japanese space agency successfully drops observation device on asteroid
An observation device, built in collaboration by the space agencies of Germany and France, has safely landed on the asteroid Ryugu. The device was released from an unmanned Japanese spacecraft on Wednesday. The device — known as the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout …Continue reading
Longest ‘blood moon’ eclipse of the century to take place tonight
The longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century will take place on Friday, July 27, 2018 and will be visible into the morning of July 28. A lunar eclipse takes place when the moon lines up perfectly with the Earth and …Continue reading
The days on Earth are getting longer – thanks to the moon
If you have ever wished there were more hours in the day, you’re in luck because scientists have discovered that our days are getting longer. A new study published in the international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reconstructed …Continue reading