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Most of the Moon's water might have come from asteroids
For a while, scientists believed that water inside the Moon largely came from comets. However, they might have to rethink that belief. Researchers looking at Apollo mission lunar samples now suspect that most of the Moon's water came from asteroids smacking into the celestial body between 4.3 billion and 4.5 billion years ago, when it (and the Earth) was covered in a magma ocean. The key was to look at hydrogen isotopes. While comet water tends to be rich in deuterium, less than 20 percent of the Moon's water shows signs of it -- the isotope ratios were generally closer to that of the Earth, pointing to an asteroid origin.
Watch Mercury cross the Sun starting at 7AM Eastern
Mercury might orbit the Sun every 88 days, but seeing it cross in front of the Sun is much rarer. That only happens roughly 13 times each century, and the technology to safely watch this happen hasn't been widely available until recently. However, you're in for a treat this time around. Mercury is poised to transit across the Sun on May 9th starting at about 7:12AM Eastern, and numerous sites (including NASA and Slooh) are offering live footage of the crossing until it finishes at around 2:42PM. Given that you probably don't have a telescope and the solar filter needed to protect your eyes, this is likely the best way to watch.
Scientists find a tailless comet from Earth's early days
It's well-established that the many asteroids and comets in the Solar System are the result of its violent early history, but finding an untouched example from the inner system is difficult. However, an astronomy team has discovered just that -- and it might shed a lot of light on our homeworld's early days. Thanks to both Pan-STARRS 1 and the Very Large Telescope, they've spotted a tailless, predominantly rocky comet (C/2014 S3) that has all the telltale signs of a "pristine" asteroid formed in the inner Solar System around the same time as the Earth, roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Its long, 860-year orbit hints that it was kicked towards the Oort Cloud (the system's extremely distant bubble of comets and other icy bodies) in the ancient past and only recently got pulled back toward the Sun.
Scientists observe the largest solar system ever discovered
Astronomers have discovered that a huge planet and star 104 light years from Earth form the largest solar system ever seen. The planet, dubbed 2MASS J2126-8140, and its red dwarf star are a full 7,000 astronomical units (AUs) apart, or a trillion miles (an AU is the distance between the Earth and the sun). Researchers previously thought the planet was "rogue," roaming the galaxy alone. In fact, they're so distant that if the star exploded, citizens of planet 2MASS wouldn't know about it for a full 62 days. Given its bizarre characteristics, however, it's unlikely that anyone lives there.
Astronomers may have found the Solar System's 9th planet
Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology (CIT) announced on Wednesday that they have found evidence to suggest that our solar system does indeed have a ninth planet -- a rather enormous one at that. This as-of-yet unnamed planet, which is being referred to as "Planet Nine" for the time being, is thought to be between five and ten times the size of the Earth and orbits so far beyond Pluto that it circles the sun just once every 10,000 to 20,000 years.
Watch Pluto's mesmerizing space weather
Ever wondered what the cosmic weather is like, especially around more distant worlds? NASA's happy to help. It recently published a simulation of the Solar System's weather (specifically the Sun's flares, winds and other behaviors) around the time New Horizons swung by Pluto. The color-coded imagery, which reflects the density, pressure and temperature of outgoing plasma, is more than a little hypnotic -- the plasma slowly spirals out, with coronal mass ejections creating shockwaves (the blue you see above) that travel to the farthest reaches of the system.
This is your closest look yet at a Kuiper Belt object
That moving dot you see in the picture above may not seem like much at first glance, but it's a pretty big deal -- it's humanity's closest-ever look at an object in the Solar System's distant Kuiper Belt. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft recently caught 1994 JR1 on camera from "just" 170 million miles away, or 15 times closer than any Kuiper Belt object has been seen before. That's no mean feat when the celestial body is a whopping 3.3 billion miles away from the Sun, putting it beyond Pluto's current position and into the realm of even tinier dwarf planets like Haumea and Makemake.
Astronomers discover the most distant Solar System object to date
Little by little, the furthest corners of the Solar System are starting to come into focus. Astronomers have identified the most distant object yet in our planetary system, roughly 15.5 billion kilometers (or 103 astronomical units) from the Sun. For comparison, one astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and our enormous neighbourly star. Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, announced the discovery of the dwarf planet -- catalogued as V774104 -- at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. It was observed with Japan's Subaru Telescope (above) and measures 500 to 1,000 kilometers across. A fascinating find, although scientists will need to track it further to work out its exact shape and orbit.
The Big Picture: NASA shows off Pluto's largest moon
As the long, slow download of data from the New Horizon's mission continues, NASA has posted some new high-res enhanced color pictures of Pluto's largest moon, Charon (shown above in the upper left corner). Other than a reddish polar region, the images also reveal a surprisingly detailed landscape with canyons, mountains and more. A video composite of images (embedded after the break) takes us flying over a canyon NASA says is four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep. NASA says even better pictures are on the way, although with the spacecraft 3.1 billion miles away and still going, we'll be waiting a year to get everything.
ICYMI: Worm mind control, a creepy new Barbie and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-630410{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-630410, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-630410{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-630410").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A new $75 Barbie with speech recognition software can talk to your kids and give them career advice, as well as store previous conversations to refer back during girlfriend chats. Holy hell, yes? Meanwhile, some scientists figured out how to use mind control on worms in a lab with an ultrasonic pulse that gets the slimy suckers to change course. And a group of friends gathered in the desert in Nevada to build a scaled seven mile solar system. Bummer alert: They left off Pluto.
To scale Solar System model built across seven miles of Nevada desert
If you treat the Earth as a marble, what would an accurate, to-scale model of the Solar System actually look like? Something much larger and expansive than a textbook illustration would suggest. To explain the sheer scale of our planetary system, Wylie Overstreet, Alex Gorosh and some friends decided to build their own model at a dry lakebed in Nevada. Using a reported scale of 1 astronomical unit per 176 metres, the group leveraged seven miles of empty desert to plot the planets and etch their orbital lines into the dirt. Sure, you can't print it out or keep it on your desk, but it's a novel idea and does a fantastic job of putting our Solar System into perspective. After you've finished watching the short below, we recommend heading here to see how it was all put together.
NASA mission sends back fuzzy, color 'movies' of Pluto
Sure, Pluto doesn't have full-fledged planetary status anymore, but we're still excited to get some pictures from the edge of the Solar System. The New Horizons spacecraft is carrying a "Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera" that takes stills in blue, red, and near-infrared, then puts them together for a color picture. It took a series of pictures between May 29th and June 3rd that show the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon revolving around their shared center of gravity. The mission will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14th when it gets about 7,800 miles above the surface (shown above in an artist rendering). You can check out the low-res animation after the break, and mark your calendar for the better look that's just 24 days away.
NASA thinks we'll find signs of extraterrestrial life in 20 years
The quest to find proof of life beyond Earth hasn't been without its setbacks, but NASA isn't deterred. If anything, it's optimistic -- Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan now claims that there will be "definitive evidence" of extraterrestrial life within the next 10 to 20 years. Given the sheer number of oceans within just our solar system, she argues, it's "not an if, it's a when." The more pressing questions are what kind of life we'll find, and how we'll find it. It'll most likely involve a probe or rover detecting microscopic organisms rather than a close encounter of the third kind, so there probably won't be much drama involved. Still, the very fact that we could find alien species within our lifetimes is exciting. [Image credit: Lynette Cook, NASA]
The Big Picture: Neptune's largest moon, Triton
Neptune has more moons than we have planets in our Solar System, with a total of 14 (and counting) orbiting around it. Its largest, Triton, is big enough to practically be considered a planet, so much so that scientists often compare it to Pluto. (You know, the planet which isn't really a planet, but some people think it should be a planet? Yeah, that's the one.) Now, courtesy of old NASA footage from the Voyager 2 spacecraft, we're getting a closer look at Triton and how it looked back in 1989. Not only that, but NASA's taken images from the aged trek and used them to create the best global map of Triton yet, with color schemes which "are a close approximation to Triton's natural colors." The map, according to NASA, features a resolution of 1,970 feet per pixel, which makes for very, very interesting viewing action.
NASA creates the first topographic map of Titan, Saturn's largest moon
Scientists observing Saturn's moon Titan with NASA's Cassini spacecraft have boldly gone where no man has gone before -- visually, anyway. Using radar imagery collected from nine years of Cassini flybys, researchers were able to patch together the first global topographic map of Titan, published in the July 2013 issue of Icarus. Ralph Lorenz, a member of the Cassini radar team at Johns Hopkins, said, "Titan has so much interesting activity -- like flowing liquids and moving sand dunes -- but to understand these processes it's useful to know how the terrain slopes." In particular, understanding the moon's terrain can reveal a lot about its dynamic climate system. Like Earth, Titan's atmosphere is composed primarily of nitrogen, but the liquids and vapors on the moon's surface are made of methane and other organic chemicals integral to the creation of complex life. By studying the relationship between atmosphere and terrain, researchers hope to learn more about the evolution of life in its earliest stages, and inspire curious minds to turn their eyes toward Titan.
Voyager 1 reaches 'magnetic highway,' gets a taste of interstellar space
We're trying, with all our might, to avoid mention of final frontiers. Really we are. But, NASA's Voyager 1 is at the last point before crossing one. Currently the spacecraft is passing through what scientists are calling a "magnetic highway." This region is where the sun's magnetic field lines connect out to interstellar ones, which allows charged particles from our heliosphere (a surrounding cloud of charged particles encasing the sun) to pass out, while higher-energy particles from outside stream in. This area is still considered inside our solar bubble -- due to the lack of change in the direction of magnetic field lines -- but thanks to the ingress of external particles, it does give NASA a taste of conditions in deeper areas of the galaxy. Likewise, the agency believes this is the final... stage before reaching interstellar space, which it's estimated Voyager 1 will encounter in anything from a few months, to a couple of years' time.
NASA's Voyager 1 marks 35th anniversary of its launch, gets photo retrospective in tribute
It's hard to believe at times that the Voyager 1 probe is older than many of us reading this article, but it's true. The official first part of NASA's Voyager program launched just over 35 years ago on September 5th, 1977, carrying not just cameras and sensors to capture the trip but the famous Golden Record documenting humanity for any curious aliens. To mark the occasion, Wired has gathered together one heck of a photo album that covers both Voyager 1's trip as well as that of Voyager 2, which technically launched earlier (August 20th the same year) but took a more roundabout route through the solar system. The gallery reminds us of the amazing scenery beyond Mars and puts our tiny blue ball of a planet in perspective; Earth was just a speck at best when photographed late into Voyager 2's journey. Perhaps the best news surrounding the milestone is simply that both Voyager probes are still running. At 11 billion miles from the Sun, Voyager 1 may be on the cusp of interstellar space and easily represents the most distant human object ever made, not to mention a record-setter for signal transmissions. There's even a chance we'll still be hearing back from the probe for its 50th anniversary -- its power could keep it chatting up to roughly 2025.
Visualized: Mercury
It may look like a spotty, monochromatic water melon, but we're taking NASA's word on this one -- the image above is the very first taken from an orbiting spacecraft of our solar system's innermost planet. Mercury has been snapped by NASA's MESSENGER probe, which is currently preparing itself to start on its elliptical trajectory around the planet and commence collecting data about it in earnest. Hit the links below to learn more about this bold exploration project.
NASA's MESSENGER begins orbit around Mercury, will start beaming back science early next month
Mercury, the innermost planet of our humble little solar system, is getting itself an orbital friend. The MESSENGER space probe (known as MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging to his nearest and dearest) is concluding a six-year sojourn through the dark void of space with an elliptical orbit around the tiny and otherwise inhospitable planet. Systems are about to get turned on and fully checked next week, before the data-gathering phase kicks off in earnest on April 4th. Science, isn't it beautiful?
Why did Pluto lose its planet status? Because it never mattered enough
It's kind of hard to accept, Pluto has always been our favorite underdog, but the truth is that the Solar System's ninth planet was never really significant enough to earn that designation. Such is the coldly logical reason given for its removal from the planetary annals by a man who had a lot to do with its demise. Caltech astronomer Mike Brown discovered Eris, what he'd hoped was the tenth planet, back in 2005, but its extreme distance from the Sun and diminutive (by planetary standards) dimensions disqualified it from consideration. Unfortunately, its discovery is what doomed Pluto to be downgraded to a "dwarf planet," though Mike's not shedding too many tears over it. In fact, he's gone and written a book about the whole thing, the smug planet destroyer that he is. You don't have to buy it to learn more, however, as the source link has an interview with Mike all ready and waiting.
