Category: Tag: space
“Within the next 6 to 12 months, I suspect we’ll be able to detect and verify and announce planets that at least have the size of our own Earth.” –Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, University of California Berkeley “This changes our understanding of our role in the universe. We, in some sense, are not alone in terms […]
NASA scientists have deduced that the newly-discovered planet Kepler-10b is 4.6 times more massive than Earth with an average density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter, about the same density as bronze. How did they learn this from a telescope that detects light changes? (See earlier post about Kepler-10b’s discovery.) It turns out that knowing […]
On January 10, 2011, NASA confirmed that the Kepler space telescope had found its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Kepler-10b is really small, the smallest planet yet discovered outside of our solar system, at 1.4 times the size of Earth. The discovery of Kepler-10b was made possible by some major advances in technology: the ability […]
Use a VERY long sampling straw? Nope. Use a spectrometer? Yup. (Explore how this works in our “Is there life outside of Earth?” investigation.) Scientists at NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency collaborated to send the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn to get closer looks at the planet, its rings, and its […]
Scientists have used indirect measurements of movement to infer the presence of waves for a very long time. For example, how can you tell when it’s windy without going outside? You look to see the movements of the trees or flags or other flexible structures. Now, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are using lasers […]
Scientists may soon find out. Orbiting objects exert a gravitational pull on each other. This gravitational pull is what gives objects their weights; it’s the reason that you weigh 83% less on Earth’s moon than on Earth, without losing any of your mass. Scientists are currently using measurements of objects’ gravitational pulls to find new […]
In the fairy tale, Goldilocks was a little girl who walked into a house in the forest. She ate porridge, sat in chairs, and slept in beds. The first choices she tried were too hot, too big, and too hard. Her second choices were too cold, too big, and too soft. Her third choices were […]