23:52 29 July 2009 by Rachel Courtland A strange spot emerged on Venus last week, and astronomers are not sure what caused it. They hope future observations will reveal whether volcanic activity, turbulence in the planet’s atmosphere, or charged particles from the sun are to blame. Amateur astronomer Frank Melillo of Holtsville, New York, first …
Mysterious bright spot found on Venus – New Scientist Magazine Read More »
Permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south pole stay at a constant -240 °C – 10 °C colder than Pluto (Image: NASA) 18 September 2009 by MacGregor Campbell Poor Pluto. First it gets kicked out of the planet club, now it’s not even the coldest place in the solar system. Dark craters near the moon’s …
Messenger snapped these images over a span of four days as it approached Mercury for its third and last flyby on Tuesday. The image on the far right was captured on Monday, when Messenger was about 542,000 kilometres away from the planet’s surface (Images: NASA/JHU/APL/CIW) 29 September 2009 by Rachel Courtland NASA’s Messenger spacecraft is …
Mercury looms large as probe closes in for final flyby Read More »
30 September 2009 by Rachel Courtland THE mammoth black holes at the centre of most galaxies may be pushing the universe closer to its final fade-out. And it is all down to the raging disorder within those dark powerhouses. Disorder is measured by a quantity called entropy, something which has been on the rise ever …
Mammoth black holes push universe to its doom – New Scientist Read More »
2009-06-20 13:56 Geneva – The giant sub-atomic particle collider built to reproduce “Big Bang” conditions is set to restart in October, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) said on Friday. Scientists believe they have figured out how to prevent a repeat of the problems that caused the $9.2bn Large Hadron Collider to be shut …
