When Worlds Collide: NASA Telescope Spots Debris

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Telescope sees planets collide

A Nasa space telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets orbiting a young star.

Astronomers say the cosmic smash-up is similar to the one that formed our Moon some four billion years ago, when a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth.

In this case, two rocky bodies are thought to have slammed into one another in the last few thousand years.

Details are to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The collision involved one object that was at least as big as our Moon and another that was at least as big as Mercury.

The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporising huge amounts of rock and flinging plumes of hot lava into space.

Infrared detectors on Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporised rock, along with fragments of hardened lava, known as tektites.

Technorati Tags: astronomy, NASA

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Non-Carbon-Based, and Extra-Planetary, Life Forms a Possibility

"The Black Cloud" - Could Non-Carbon Life Exist in Cold Clouds of Interstellar Dust?

[P]hysicists have discovered over the last few years intriguing evidence of life-like double-helix structures formed from inorganic substances in space which raises the question of whether extraterrestrial life could be composed of corkscrew-shaped formations of interstellar dust. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond Earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks and they may also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

The international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organized into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are more usually associated with organic compounds and life itself.

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Methane Indicates Something Passing Gas: What's Happening on Mars?

Mars, methane and mysteries

Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought. The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive.

The methane mystery started soon after December 2003, when ESA's Mars Express arrived in orbit around the red planet. As the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) began taking data, Vittorio Formisano, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario CNR, Rome, and the rest of the instrument team saw a puzzling signal. As well as the atmospheric gases they were anticipating, such as carbon monoxide and water vapour, they also saw methane.

"Methane was a surprise, we were not expecting that," says Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Lead Scientist. The reason is that on Earth much of the methane in our atmosphere is released by evolved life forms, such as cattle digesting food. While there are ways to produce methane without life, such as by volcanic activity, it is the possible biological route that has focused attention on the discovery.

The Mars Express detection of methane is not an isolated case. While the spacecraft was en route, two independent teams of astronomers using ground-based telescopes started to see traces of methane. After five years of intensive study, the suite of observations all confirmed the discovery and presented planetary scientists with a big puzzle.

Methane is thought to be stable in the martian atmosphere for around 300 years. So, whatever is generating the methane up there, it is a recent occurrence. In January 2009, a team led by Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center published results that the methane they saw in 2003 was concentrated in three regions of the planet. This showed that the methane was being released at the present time and was being observed before it had time to distribute itself around the planet.

Things then took a strange turn. Instead of taking 300 years to disappear, the methane had almost entirely vanished by early 2006. Clearly something unusual is going on at Mars. "We thought we understood how methane behaved on Mars but if the measurements are correct then we must be missing something big," says Franck Lefèvre, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, CNRS, Paris and a member of Mars Express's SPICAM instrument team.

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Titan: Little Earth with Really Bad Climate

Earth's little brother Titan among moons | News.com.au Top stories | News.com.au

Artist's rendition



IT BEARS a striking resemblance to our own Earth - right down to the smog-ridden atmosphere.

Using radar to pierce the thick atmosphere, scientists have mapped a third of the surface of Saturn's planet-sized moon, Titan.

And despite the alien environment, they have revealed an uncanny likeness to Earth, with mountain ranges, dunes, numerous lakes and suspected volcanoes.

And just as on Earth, the weather on Titan appears to have erased most evidence of meteorite craters.

"It really is surprising how closely Titan's surface resembles Earth's," said planetary geologist Rosaly Lopes, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California.

"In fact, Titan looks more like the Earth than any other body in the Solar System, despite the huge differences in temperature and other environmental conditions."

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Kepler Planet-Seeking Satellite Does its Job Well

National Briefing - Science - Kepler Satellite Quickly Spies a Planet - NYTimes.com

Kepler, the satellite launched by NASA in March to hunt for planets around other stars, found a planet in its first 10 days of operation, astronomers said. Astronomers already knew about the planet from other kinds of observations that swing around a yellow star in Cygnus known as HAT-P-7. This planet is too hot and massive for life, but the ease and precision with which Kepler was able to discern its presence bodes well for the satellite’s ability to find more hospitable Earth-like planets, the Kepler astronomers said in a news release and in a paper to be published in the journal Science on Friday.

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Spitzer Space Telescope Discovers Galaxy, "Wild Creature of the Dark"

NASA - Coiled Creature of the Night

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark -- a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center.

The galaxy, called NGC 1097, is located 50 million light-years away. It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white.

The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. Our Milky Way's central black hole is tame in comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.

The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.

The galaxy's red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy. Astronomers say it is unclear whether this companion poked a hole in the larger galaxy, or just happens to be aligned in a gap in the arms.

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