Building Blocks of Life Discovered on #Comet67p - http://clapway.com/2015/07/31/building-blocks-of-life-discovered-on-comet-67p123/

As much as most space enthusiasts are reluctant to do so, it may be time for us to look not to the extrasolar planets, not to dwarf planets, not to black holes or quasar punches or solar storms–but to comets. Comet 67P, specifically, which the European Space Agency’s Philae lander has been investigating since November of last year, has just identified compounds that are also the necessary building blocks of life.

A SIGNIFICANT FIND ON COMET 67P

This was thought to be the case for quite some time, as there was simply no other way to explain how life on Earth got started. For years, scientists have thought that comets acted as seeds to an early Earth, bringing in basic materials with which Earth was later able to furnish life, and a thriving ecosystem.

HOLES IN THE THEORY

However, precisely how life originated on Earth is a mystery still annoying scientists to this day. So far, the general consensus is that we understand the few essential ingredients involved. Water and a few chemical building blocks had to be present, but they certainly weren’t always. Perhaps these things were delivered to the Earth over three billion years ago.

HOW DO COMETS GET HERE?

Most comets persist in places like the Kuiper Belt, far beyond the reach of most studying probes (save, perhaps for New Horizons), but every once in a while, a stray comet is moved out of its wide orbit. Comets’ trademark tails are formed by the increased heat they experience as they approach the sun, as has been observed for several centuries. The cool thing this tells us about comets today is that they carry large quantities of water.

But before the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft left for comet 67p in 2004, no one really knew if there was anything in the realm of necessary building blocks in comets. Was it just water and rocks?

BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE ON COMET 67P

The answer is a resounding yes. Published in the journal Science, Philae found 16 organic compounds, and four of them–methyl isocyanate, acetone, propionaldehyde, and acetamide–were not known to even exist on comets. Of more interesting note, it also found benzene, which is a cyclic hydrocarbon, and plenty of C02.

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Building Blocks of Life Discovered on Comet 67p

#Complex #physics would be needed for #NASA to #launch this #Jupiter #windbot mission. - http://clapway.com/2015/07/23/nasa-looking-into-sending-fleet-of-windbots-to-jupiter-245/

How does one monitor the weather patterns of a planet that’s hundreds of millions of miles away? NASA postulates that the answer is ‘windbots’.

Uh, Windbots?

The idea is based on using Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere to our advantage by using its incredible winds to actually power the space probes indefinitely. That is to say, for at least a very long time.

“One could imagine a network of windbots existing for quite some time on Jupiter or Saturn, sending information about ever-changing weather patterns,” said Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineer Adrian Stoica.

The JPL team has recently been awarded $100,000 to help fund the research on how to get a project like this up in the air. The thought is that sending these probes out will help astronomers not only get a closer look at the atmosphere of these gas giants, but to also gain a deeper understand of our own planet’s weather.

How do we get the ball rolling?

Just like any other space probe, NASA needs to figure out a way for the windbot to be entirely self-reliant. This continuously proves to be a difficult task since each planet’s atmosphere and environment typically differ from each other in a radical fashion. The JPL research team will be figuring out how to harness Jupiter’s wind, temperature changes, and magnetic field to help accomplish this goal.

NASA’s last attempt at gathering meaningful data from the gas giant was with the Galileo probe. Unfortunately, the probe was only able to send a few hours of data back to NASA before it was lost in Jupiter’s violent atmosphere. This new probe would need to be able to maintain a safe height by bobbing similar to a fishing float or bobber, though JPL references dandelion seeds as a more proper example.

“[Dandelion seeds] rotate as [they] fall, creating lift, which allows [them] to stay afloat for a long time, carried by the wind,” said Stoica.

What is NASA hoping to accomplish?

Once the new windbots are all set to to fly, their mission will be simple in theory: explore Jupiter’s atmosphere. Using the sensors attached to the body of the probe, it will send information about turbulent weather, which NASA hopes will help scientists better understand extreme weather patterns back on Earth, such as hurricanes.

As of right now research is just getting underway, and NASA currently has no scheduled missions that would utilize windbots, but there is a time and place for everything.

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NASA Looking Into Sending Fleet of Windbots to Jupiter

Closeup Images of Pluto - http://clapway.com/2015/07/16/closeup-images-of-pluto878/

When New Horizons executed its flyby of Pluto on July 14th, 2015 at a distance of 47,800 miles (77,000 km), it snapped a series of hi-res, closeup images. The first ever, in fact. The two NASA revealed to us in a Live Stream conference yesterday, one closeup image of Pluto and the other of its moon, Charon, have given reason for the scientists to come up with new theories to how planets form.

PLUTO AND CHARON ARE ACTIVE PLANETS

The new photos show that both the dwarf planet and its moon Charon have recently been geographically active. From Pluto’s closeup image we can see massive ice mountains, while on Charon we can actually see a canyon so deep you can actually see through the edge of the planet (at about 2 o’clock, roughly 5 miles deep!).

“The most striking thing about this image is, we have not yet found a single impact crater on this region,” said John Spencer, member of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado during a news briefing this Wednesday. If you look again at the closeup image of Pluto, you may ask yourself why you didn’t notice that right away. This is very significant, because the presence (or absence) of craters indicated a planet’s crust’s age.

PLUTO’S SURFACE AS OLD AS DINOSAURS

“Just eyeballing it, we think it has to be probably less than 100 million years old,” estimated spencer, deputy leader of New Horizons’ geology and geophysics investigation (CGI) team. This means that Pluto’s geology was probably active while the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And that is very recent, on a cosmic scale. “It might be active right now. With no craters, you just can’t put a lower limit on how active it might be.”

To be clear, all of this new scientific knowledge was garnered from one photo of one percent of Pluto’s surface. Jeff Moore, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said of the surface: “[it’s] one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system.”

OTHER ACTIVE BODIES, OTHER EXPLANATIONS

A few other small planetary bodies in our solar system have shown ongoing geologic activity. Enceladus, a geyser-shooting moon of Saturn, and the hot and volcanic Jovian satellite Io. The difference is that these planets’ interiors are heated by the gravitational tugs of Saturn and Jupiter, respectively. This process is known as tidal heating.

“This can’t happen on Pluto, because there is no giant body that can deform it on a regular basis,” wondered Spencer. “This is telling us that you do not need tidal heating to power geologic activity on icy moons. That’s a really important discovery that we just made this morning,” he concluded in deadpan humor to applause of the audience.

The thing is that Pluto and Charon aren’t tugging on one another, though, because “Pluto and Charon are in tidal equilibrium,” objected Alan Stern. “Charon orbits equivalent of geosynchronous orbit, and it is also spinning at the same rate that pluto spins. So there is no significant change in tidal energy anymore.”

PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES

One hypothesis as to how Pluto and Charon have managed to remain active is by having never lost their internal radioactive heat for a much longer amount of time than scientists had estimated possible. There is also the possibility that both Charon and Pluto once possessed subsurface Oceans, like Europa, which froze so gradually that heat was continually released into either body’s crusts.

Whatever it is we continue to learn of the Plutonian system as images and data of this brief flyby continue to return to Earth, one thing is for certain: the cost and risk involved in sending this piano-sized probe to flyby Pluto was worth the quantity and significance of scientific knowledge we are gaining, and we know this with one closeup image of Pluto.

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Closeup Images of Pluto

As if space didn"t have enough mysteries, this mountain shows up. - http://clapway.com/2015/06/22/odd-mountain-on-ceres-adds-to-the-dwarf-planets-mysteries-125/

New photos from NASA show a huge mountain on Ceres—a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This is just the latest mystery to emerge on this fascinating and perplexing world.

A LONE MOUNTAIN

The photo showing the unusual mountain was taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on June 6, 2015. This pyramid-shaped mountain on Ceres rises out of what appears to be relatively smooth terrain. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), this mountain rises approximately three miles above the surface.

THOSE MYSTERIOUS SPOTS

Dawn also snapped closer photos of the bright mysterious spots on Ceres’ surface that have perplexed scientists. But the new photos don’t provide any new clues to help definitively identify them.

The strange illuminated area on Ceres was photographed by Dawn before the spacecraft entered orbit in March 2015, which is comprised of two bright spots within a basin on the surface. Speculation about the source of these odd lights began immediately after Dawn’s photos were published by NASA. Perplexed scientists suggested light reflections off ice or water vapor, or a volcano as possible explanations. And others presented the possibility that the illumination could be from an extraterrestrial civilization.

The mystery remains. And, until Dawn can get a better look, NASA actually launched a website inviting public suppositions regarding the bright spot on Ceres.

A CLOSER LOOK

The recent images of Ceres were taken by Dawn from 2,700 miles above the planet. The spacecraft is scheduled to maneuver down to 900 miles above the planet in August 2015. The closer approach will hopefully yield even better photos and give scientists a better idea about what is causing those weird bright spots.

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Odd Mountain on Ceres Adds to the Dwarf Planet"s Mysteries

This is not the first time a mohawk has been associated with Mars. - http://clapway.com/2015/06/21/scientists-discover-that-mars-has-a-mohawk-345/

Many already consider Mars to be the Earth’s coolest neighbor. But the red planet just got a whole lot cooler because scientists discovered that Mars has a mohawk.

THE PUNK ROCK PLANET

Data from NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft reveals that Mars might have a bit of a punk rock attitude.

The key objective of the MAVEN mission, which was launched in November, 2013, is to investigate how Mars lost most of its atmosphere. MAVEN scientists discussed early results from data collected by MAVEN at a workshop held at the Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, CA June 19-21.

According to researchers, space radiation converts atoms in the upper atmosphere of Mars to electrically charged ions. And these charged ions are stripped away from the upper atmosphere by the electric and magnetic forces in solar winds, which would explain the thinning of the Martian atmosphere over time.

Scientists have been studying plumes of atmospheric particles at the planet’s poles. And, based on theoretical models, they believe the forces in solar winds might push ions towards one pole or the other. “When tracing particle trajectories in the models, the plume looks a bit like a mohawk,” says MAVEN scientist David Brain.

COPYING THE MOHAWK GUY?

This is not the first time a mohawk has been associated with Mars.

In 2012, JPL flight engineer Bobak Ferdowsi took some of the spotlight away from the successful landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. During NASA TV’s live broadcast of the historic event, Ferdowsi was positioned prominently in front of the camera. And he was sporting a mohawk. The media loved it, and his hairstyle made almost as many headlines as the rover’s landing. The flood of media attention resulted in his becoming known as “The Mohawk Guy.”

Ferdowsi even posted on Twitter in response to the news that he and Mars share the same hairstyle.

I suppose it was only a matter of time between me & Marvin the Martian that we see a real Mars mohawk. https://t.co/ZOrynx2nlp

— Bobak Ferdowsi (@tweetsoutloud) June 20, 2015

MAVEN’S FUTURE

MAVEN continues studying the atmosphere of Mars in order to better understand the planet’s history and potential habitability. Its mission was scheduled to run through November, 2015. But its success has resulted in the extension of the mission through September 2016.

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Scientists Discover That Mars Has a Mohawk