Mayan Civilisation Tracked Venus And Even Established A Leap Year For It
Experts have been analysing the Venus Table of the Dresden Codex – an ancient Mayan document on their astronomical data – for more than 120 years and found that it contains accurate observations and even calculations of a leap year. In a new paper from UC Santa Barbara’s Gerardo Aldana, a professor of anthropology and of Chicana and Chicano studies, … Continue reading
What Would Happen if Earth Stopped Spinning? How Fast are We Really Moving?
What would happen if Earth stopped spinning? There is no chance that you’ll be flung off to space right now (but make sure you read on), because the Earth’s gravity is so strong compared to its spinning motion. (This latter motion is called centripetal acceleration.) At its strongest point, which is at the equator, centripetal acceleration only counteracts Earth’s gravity … Continue reading
The Biggest Mysteries of Neptune
Neptune’s Unanswered Questions To date, there has been only one mission to Neptune, the Voyager 2 flyby of 1989. That flyby capped a “grand tour” of the outer planets that took advantage of a unique gravitational alignment to slingshot the spacecraft from Jupiter to Saturn to Uranus to Neptune. While there is no mission to Neptune currently funded, a Uranus … Continue reading
NASA Building ‘Space Habitats’ Near the Moon
It’s not quite the Star Trek Enterprise but NASA has revealed it’s developing “deep space habitats,” which will house astronauts in outer space in the future. The space agency’s NextSTEP-2 program, which has a budget of around $65 million, aims to both advance the commercial development of space while also allowing for the further exploration of deep space. The hope … Continue reading
How the Universe Will Freeze To Death And End Life As We Know It
THE UNIVERSE has been expanding since the dawn of time but if the second law of thermodynamics is an accurate prediction of its future, then the infinite expansion will inevitably be the end of life as we know. Thermodynamics is the study of heat and energy and how they influence each other. Its first law is energy cannot be created … Continue reading
Debris From Ancient Cosmic Supernovae Found In Pacific Ocean
A team of German scientists based out of the Technical University of Munich recently began a survey of ocean floor composition to study magnetotactic bacteria. These bacteria orient around magnetic fields and can absorb metals such as iron, allowing a window into the mysterious world of Earth’s magnetic fields. In a surprising find, these scientists’ recent research published in Proceedings … Continue reading
Scientists Preparing to Unveil New Earth-Like Planet That Orbits A ‘Nearby’ Star At A Life Favoring Distance
Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighbourhood which is “believed to be Earth-like” and orbits its star at a distance that could favour life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday. The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources. “The still nameless … Continue reading
Perseid Meteor Shower–Update
Yes, there was a Perseid outburst last night. Maybe two. Reporting via the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams, Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute writes that “predicted encounters with the 1-revolution and 4-revolution dust trails of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle were observed on Aug. 12” with peak rates as high as 190 meteors per hour. Preliminary data from the International Meteor Organization … Continue reading
NASA’s Juno Releases Treasure Trove of Jupiter Images
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has released its latest dispatch of images of Jupiter. The pictures were snapped at a time when the stormy planet is not visible to astronomers on Earth, making them a unique addition to the gallery. NASA’s release of the so-called “marble movie” shows that Jupiter is such a pretty planet, it doesn’t need a filter other than … Continue reading
Venus May Have Once Supported Life
If you were looking at our solar system from a planet orbiting another star, you might speculate that there’s life on two planets: Earth and Venus. They have about the same size and mass, both orbit in or close to the sun’s habitable zone and both have atmospheres. Of course, a closer look reveals that the high temperature on Venus, … Continue reading
