Month: June 2011

Icy moon’s lakes brim with hearty soup for life

Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes, seen here in radar images, boast life-friendly chemistry (Image: NASA/JPL) 23 November 2009 by David Shiga Saturn’s frigid moon Titan may be friendlier to life than previously thought. New calculations suggest Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes are loaded with acetylene, a chemical some scientists say could serve as food for cold-resistant organisms. At about …

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Historical article – The Science of Astronomy – Scientific American Oct 10 1846

THE NEW YORK SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Published Weekly at 128 Fulton Street, (Sun Building,) New York. BY MUNN & COMPANY. RUFUS PORTER, EDITOR. TERMS.–$2 a year–$1 in advance, and the remainder in 6 months. The Science of Astronomy. DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY. Mercury, the nearest planet to the sun, is a globe of about 3140 miles in diameter, …

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Hermanus Magnetic Observatory helps put micro-satellite in space

Brought to you by:  Hermanus Times 01/10/2009 02:01 PM – (SA) South Africa and more particularly, the HMO (Hermanus Magnetic Observatory) have been engaged in an exciting space technology programme which resulted in the launch of the second SA satellite, Sumbandilasat, on 17 September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia. This satellite was designed and built …

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Galaxy study hints at cracks in dark matter theories – New Scientist magazine

30 September 2009 by Stuart Clark Dark matter is either weirder than we thought or does not exist at all, a new study suggests. A galaxy is supposed to sit at the heart of a giant cloud of dark matter and interact with it through gravity alone. The dark matter originally provided enough attraction for …

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Galaxies coming of age in cosmic blobs

Artist concept of a galaxy inside of a glowing hydrogen “blob.” Image credit: Nasa/CXC/MWeiss The “coming of age” of galaxies and black holes has been pinpointed, thanks to new data from Nasa’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (Chandra) and other telescopes. This discovery helps resolve the true nature of gigantic blobs of gas observed around very young …

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