Subscribe:
RSS feed
"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts filed under »Astrochemistry«
Mars Rock Touched by NASA Curiosity has Surprises
Target: Jake Matijevic Rock This image shows where NASA’s Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a rock known as “Jake Matijevic.” The red dots are where the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument zapped it with its laser on Sept. 21, 2012, and Sept. 24, 2012, which were the 45th and 48th sol, or […]
How to Find a Meteorite in 5 Steps
May 3, 2012
To start, get permission to keep what you find, find a barren spot like the Mojave Desert or Great Plains, and track down ‘dark flight trajectories’ from recent fireballs By Natalie Wolchover and Life’s Little Mysteries Earth is under constant bombardment by space rocks. When they crash and burn through the atmosphere, most of the […]
Mars is too dry to support life on its surface…
February 5, 2012
… but it could be lurking in the depths Scientists have virtually ruled out the possibility of life on Mars having revealed the planet experienced a 600 year water drought. Samples of soil found that the surface had been starved of any moisture that might enhance the view that there are living organisms on the […]
Possible life in the Martian trenches?
September 21, 2011
A team of scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, have drawn attention to a couple of small mineral-rich depressions on Mars that, perhaps relatively recently in the red planet’s history, could have been places for life. The troughs were discovered at Noctis Labyrintus, also known as ‘the labyrinth of the night’ – […]
The chemical history of molecules in circumstellar disks
September 10, 2011
Context: The chemical composition of a molecular cloud changes dramatically as it collapses to form a low-mass protostar and circumstellar disk. Two-dimensional (2D) chemodynamical models are required to properly study this process. Aims: The goal of this work is to follow, for the first time, the chemical evolution in two dimensions all the way from […]
The Star That Should Not Exist
August 31, 2011
A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible. They discovered that this star is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only remarkably small amounts of other chemical elements in it. This intriguing composition places it […]
Life in the Universe by Stephen Hawking
August 28, 2011
In this talk, I would like to speculate a little, on the development of life in the universe, and in particular, the development of intelligent life. I shall take this to include the human race, even though much of its behaviour through out history, has been pretty stupid, and not calculated to aid the survival […]
Extraterrestrial dust reveals asteroid’s past and future
August 26, 2011
Talk about seeing a world in a grain of sand. A sprinkling of asteroid dust that slipped into Japan’s Hayabusa probe when it touched down on the asteroid Itokawa six years ago has revealed surprising details about the space rock’s past and its likely future. Hayabusa was meant to land on the 500-metre-wide asteroid in […]
Molecules in supernova ejecta
July 29, 2011
The fir rst molecules detected at infrared wavelengths in the ejecta of a Type II supernova, namely SN1987A, consisted of CO and SiO. Since then, con rmation of the formation of these two species in several other supernovae a few hundred days after explosion has been obtained. However, supernova environments appear to hamper the synthesis of large, complex species due to […]
October 12, 2012
0