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Have you ever wanted to see auroras, the rippling lights that sometimes paint the heavens with unearthly blues or greens and make you feel like you're in a van Gogh painting? If you live in a northern U.S. state, Tuesday might be your chance. Residents in some parts of at least 15 states across the country may be able to see the awe-inspiring phenomenon, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Monday. "The further north you are -- say, upstate New York or upper Michigan -- the more likely you are to see the aurora," Rodney Viereck, a...

The push for a space elevator took a step forward this week when a team of researchers from Shizuoka University in Japan announced that they will launch an experiment to the International Space Station next week. In the experiment, which will be the first of its kind in space, two ultrasmall cubic satellites, or "cubesats," will be released into space from the station. They will be connected by a steel cable, where a small container — acting like an elevator car — will move along the cable using its own motor. A camera attached to the satellites will record the...

-snip- The researchers found that the real division between planets and other celestial bodies, such as asteroids, occurred in the early 1950s when Gerard Kuiper published a paper that made the distinction based on how they were formed.However, this reason is no longer considered a factor that determines if a celestial body is a planet.“The IAU’s definition was erroneous since the literature review showed that clearing orbit is not a standard that is used for distinguishing asteroids from planets, as the IAU claimed when crafting the 2006 definition of planets,” said Dr. Kirby Runyon, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied...

Want to see a comet whizzing by Earth? A great chance to catch one of these celestial visitors is overnight tonight, when Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner will be best visible in binoculars or a telescope. The comet, also known as "21P," will make its closest approach to Earth at around 2:30 a.m. EDT Monday (630 GMT). The bright-green comet should reach a visual magnitude of 6.5 to 7, according to EarthSky.org. This makes 21P almost bright enough to see with the naked eye — but not quite. [Bright Comets of 2018: When, Where and How to See Them] To find Comet 21P...

Just because Jupiter's moon Europa is coated in ice doesn't mean all that ice is the same temperature. And now, scientists have mapped the hot and cold spots on the moon's surface using data gathered from Earth, with accuracy down to 125 miles (200 kilometers). While most of the temperature variations they measured can be explained by sunlight's influence on the ice, there's one unusually cold spot that is stumping the scientists behind the new research. That spot, which falls on the moon's northern hemisphere, stood out in images taken at different times of the day, which surprised the scientists....

In this final preview clip before the premiere episode of John Michael Godier's Event Horizon. We discuss the possibility of there being life on Mars, specifically in the ground water, and what we should do with it if we colonize Mars, with Dr. Robert Zubrin the founder and President of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means.

Elon Musk thinks we're all probably trapped in a "Matrix"-like pseudo existence. The universe is 13.8 billion years old, so any civilizations that may have arisen throughout the cosmos have had loads and loads of time to hone their technological know-how, the SpaceX founder and CEO explained early this morning (Sept. 7) during a long, wide-ranging and very entertaining appearance on comedian Joe Rogan's popular podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience." "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will end. One of those two things will occur," Musk said. "Therefore, we are most...

The larger planets such as Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus remarkably put off more energy than they absorb from our sun. If they were actually in the billions of years of age, should they not have become frozen and expired an incalculable length of time ago. Scientists in this field have come up with many reasons as to the how that these celestial entities kept their heat as far as their theories; however, their noses are firmly planted in a major wall that repels everything they've come up with. Volcanism observed on Jupiter's Io and the geyers with Saturn's Enceladus command...

A remarkable ring of bright X-ray sources — black holes or neutron stars — has been discovered in a galaxy approximately 300 million light years from Earth. This ring was forged when one galaxy smashed through the middle of another, creating ripples in the gas. “Where did the ring of black holes or neutron stars in this galaxy — the so-called ring galaxy AM 0644-741 — come from? We think that it was created when one galaxy was pulled into another galaxy by the force of gravity,” said Dr. Anna Wolter of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera and co-authors.“The first...

will pass by Earth at about half the distance between us and the moon this weekend. There's no need to worry, though. While the newly discovered near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC will make a relatively close pass by our planet, it will still safely clear the neighborhood with no chance of a collision. The University of Hawaii's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) first spotted the asteroid on Monday, and it's estimated to measure up to 233 feet (71 meters) in diameter. That's the same height as the 17-story will pass by Earth at about half the distance between us and...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is starting to earnestly evaluate space resources for future mining.  Since its establishment in the 1870s, the USGS has focused pretty much solely on Earth. But now it's also investigating what benefits may or may not exist in tapping extraterrestrial water, minerals and metals. The agency seeks to portray accurately how humanity could exploit off-Earth assets — a no-nonsense approach that contrasts with the pie-in-the-sky estimates of trillions of dollars of profit proffered by some less scientifically minded space-mining advocates.Proven expertise This past June, several USGS experts took part in a Space Resources Roundtable held at...

Many scientists firmly believe that our universe and Solar System are billions of years old. However, massive data recorded by 50 years' worth of unmanned probes traversing space shows without a doubt that the planets with their moons and comets are actually very young. Our sun powers through its nuclear fuel, and as such it slowly changes constitution. Famed solar astronomer John A. Eddy was quoted, and others in his field believe billions of years ago the sun was dimmer and thus the Earth became a frozen ball. But Mr. Eddy has also recognized that all our information about the...

After last month's impressive G3 geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection, it is time to welcome back a familiar solar feature on our nearest star today. We have a small coronal hole facing our planet today. The high speed solar wind stream flowing from this coronal hole will likely take about three days to arrive at Earth which means the solar wind stream should impact Earth somewhere this Friday, 7 September. Active geomagnetic conditions are likely which is great news for northern hemisphere high latitude sky watchers who finally enjoy proper dark nights again.

The seven planets orbiting the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 are mostly rocky, with some potentially holding more liquid water than Earth. New research reveals the density of the worlds within this crowded system to a greater precision than ever before. The findings reveal that some of the planets could have up to 5 percent of their mass in liquid water form, about 250 times as much water as found in Earth's oceans. "All the TRAPPIST-1 planets are very Earth-like — they have a solid core, surrounded by an atmosphere," In addition to narrowing down the composition of the exoplanets, the...

The image has been doing the rounds over the past few days, racking up tens of thousands of views and retweets on social media. But the image was created using computer graphics. Some people have confused the image for a real photo simply because it appeared on the NASA website, but the description of the image makes it clear that it’s just an artist’s depiction: This artist’s concept shows an over-the-shoulder view of Cassini making one of its Grand Finale dives over Saturn. The Cassini probe was a joint project between NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), and the Italian...

By hacking a domestic knitting machine, a software engineer advanced modern knitting and made a massive equatorial star map in tapestry form. Australian software engineer Sarah Spencer spent years hacking and programming a 1980s domestic knitting machine for fun. This hobby grew into much more, however, as Spencer developed a new computer algorithm that did something never before accomplished with such machines. Her accomplishment — knitting with bird's-eye backing using one knit per pixel in three colors — might not mean much to anyone outside of the knitting community. But this achievement allowed Spencer to make something truly out of...

One of the key differences between the two is that SpaceX was awarded $2.6 billion, while Boeing receiving $4.2 billion. SpaceX completed a pad abort test in 2015, while Boeing hopes to be able to achieve this milestone possibly this year. Boeing's abort test had been scheduled for this summer, but it was delayed due to a leak of highly-toxic hydrazine from one of the abort engines. The leak occurred after the command was issued to shut down the engines. Several of the abort engine valves failed to fully close. As early as July 11, 2018, NASA internally believed (as...

Mars, NASA NASA Is Preparing A 17 Year Old Girl To Become The First Human On Mars Lauren WebberJuly 10, 2018, 10:15 amJuly 10, 2018 The 17-year-old is training to be on the first NASA trip to the red planet, where she’ll spend two to three years. (Photo: NASA Blueberry) Alyssa Carson fell in love with space when she was only 3 years old and now is making it her life’s work to be the first human to land on Mars.The 17-year-old is training to be on the first NASA trip to the Red Planet, where she says she’ll...

MU69 is a relatively small Kuiper Belt object. It is estimated to have a diameter of 30 miles (48 km) — that’s more than 10 times larger and 1,000 times more massive than typical comets, but only about 0.5 to 1% of the size of the dwarf planet Pluto. This object was discovered in June 2014 by astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.Also known as PT1 and 1110113Y, and nicknamed Ultima Thule, MU69 orbits the Sun once every 293 years at a distance of more than 4 billion miles (6.5 billion km) from Earth.The MU69 flyby will be the...

Close encounters with medium-size black holes can reanimate dead stars, if only momentarily, a new study suggests. A team of astronomers performed computer simulations to determine what happens when a burned-out stellar corpse known as a white dwarf passes close to an intermediate-mass black hole — one that harbors between 1,000 and 10,000 times the mass of Earth's sun. The researchers determined that the black hole's powerful gravity can stretch and distort the white dwarf's previously inert innards so dramatically that nuclear-fusion processes can reignite for a few seconds, converting helium, carbon and oxygen into heavier elements such as iron....