WHAT'S NEW?
Alien life exists in the Solar System. Discover why in my new book, co-authored with astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch
David returns to Coast-to-Coast AM radio for a 3-hour interview with George Noory on March 22. Be there!
My debate on C2C with Richard Hoagland about the nature of Iapetus
My interview with Adam Lee Davies for the Star Trek issue of Little White Lies
Children's Encyclopedia of Science
DAVID'S BOOKS
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LATEST SPACE & SCIENCE NEWS
Archeo- | Eco- | Health | Living world
Paleo- | Robot diaries | Strange news | Tech-
 The stars behind the curtain
(Feb 9, 2010) ESO is releasing a magnificent VLT image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603, in which stars are continuously being born. Embedded in this nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters of young, massive stars in our Milky Way. The cluster also hosts the most massive star to be “weighed” so far.
Read more. Source: European Southern Observatory |
 CERN gears up its computers for more atom smashing
(Feb 9, 2010) A deluge of high-energy physics data is headed toward servers in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month. That's because the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) now says it plans to restart its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) soon for a run that could last as long as two years at a collision energy of seven TeV (tera–electron volts, 3.5 TeV per beam).
Read more. Source: Scientific American |
 Cassini detection adds to Enceladus liquid water story
(Feb 8, 2010) There seems little doubt that Saturn's moon Enceladus hides a large body of liquid water beneath its icy skin. The Cassini probe, which periodically sweeps past the little moon, has returned yet more data to back up the idea of a sub-surface sea. This time, it is the detection of negatively charged water molecules in the atmosphere of Enceladus.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida
(Feb 8, 2010) The US space shuttle has made its final night launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Endeavour orbiter soared into the Florida sky on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Found: Hawking's initials written into the universe
(Feb 8, 2010) Is Stephen Hawking a galactic graffiti artist? Hidden away in the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang, the initials "SH" are clear to view (see picture). We took a closer look and spotted a donkey, a deer and a parrot.
Read more. Source: New Scientist |
 Shuttle Endeavour delayed in night flight to ISS
(Feb 7, 2010) Low cloud at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida has prevented shuttle Endeavour from launching on its latest mission to the space station to deliver a connecting unit and a large observation window. NASA officials stood the orbiter down with under 10 minutes left on the countdown clock. Endeavour encountered no technical issues as it prepared to lift off and will try again on Monday morning.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Could life exist on Jupiter moon?
(Feb 5, 2010) Are we alone in the Solar System? In his novel, 2010: Odyssey Two, the sequel to the hugely successful 2001, Arthur C Clarke imagined a manned space mission discovering biological life on one of Jupiter's icy moons, Europa. And 400 years after Galileo first discovered Europa, scientists believe that more recent data on this icy moon might just prove Clarke right.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Hubble spots Pluto blushing in space
(Feb 5, 2010) NASA scientists say that dwarf planet Pluto, on the edge of our solar system, is becoming increasingly red. Images taken by the Hubble space telescope show that the planet is some 20% redder than it used to be. Experts say they believe this is because of changes in Pluto's surface ice as it enters a new phase of its 248-year-long rotation.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 NASA extends Cassini's tour of Saturn
(Feb 5, 2010) NASA will extend the international Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons to 2017. The agency's fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued study of the ringed planet. This second extension, called the Cassini Solstice Mission, enables scientists to study seasonal and other long-term weather changes on the planet and its moons.
Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
 Exoplanet gas spotted from Earth
(Feb 4, 2010) Astronomers have used a new ground-based technique to study the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System. The work could assist the search for Earth-like planets with traces of organic, or carbon-rich, molecules. Astronomers spotted evidence of methane gas in the atmosphere of an exoplanet (HD 189733b).
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Suspected asteroid collision leaves trailing debris
(Feb 3, 2010) NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has observed a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before.
Read more. Source: NASA |
 China leads way in race to return to Moon
(Feb 3, 2010) The Chinese space agency could land its first astronauts on the Moon within a decade in a move that would mark the beginning of a new age of lunar exploration, experts said today. The decision by the Obama administration to scrap NASA's plans to return to the Moon leave China well placed to become the second nation to land humans on the lunar surface.
Read more. Source: The Guardian |
 Large Hadron Collider to jump to maximum energy
(Feb 3, 2010) The Large Hadron Collider is going to skip medium-energy proton collisions, jumping straight to its maximum energy in 2013, after it finishes collecting lower-energy data and has its circuitry upgraded. The particle accelerator has recovered from its 2008 accident, and in 2009 broke the world record for particle collision energy when its two oppositely directed proton beams each reached 1.18 TeV, for a total energy of 2.36 TeV.
Read more. Source: New Scientist |
 Obama cancels Moon return project
(Feb 1, 2010) US President Barack Obama has cancelled the American project designed to take humans back to the Moon. The Constellation program envisaged new rockets and a new crewship called Orion to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2020. But in his federal budget request issued on Monday, Mr Obama said the project was "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation".
Read more. Source: BBC |
 The coolest of orbs
(Jan 30, 2010) An international team of astronomers using several telescopes has discovered what appears to be the coolest star-like body known, a brown dwarf called SDSS1416+13B. The dim ball of gas has a temperature of roughly 200°C (400°F). NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope helped nail down the temperature of the object by observing at a particular range of light called mid-infrared.
Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
 Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes
(Jan 29, 2010) A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show. The controlled fusion of atoms – creating conditions like those in our Sun – has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source. However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 'Farthest' star-mass black hole
(Jan 28, 2010) Astronomers have spied a star-sized black hole much further away than any such object previously known. It has a mass 20 times that of our Sun and is sited six million light-years away in the galaxy NGC 300. The discovery was made using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility on Mount Paranal in Chile.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Aliens can't hear us, says astronomer
(Jan 27, 2010) Human beings are making it harder for extraterrestials to pick up conversations and make contact, the world's leading expert on the search for alien life warned yesterday. At a special meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), the US astronomer Frank Drake – who has been seeking radio signals from alien civilizations for almost 50 years – told scientists that earthlings were making it less likely they would be heard in space.
Read more. Source: The Guardian |
 ESO 137-001: Two tails to tell
(Jan 27, 2010) Two spectacular tails of X-ray emission have been seen trailing behind a galaxy using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray tails were created when cool gas from ESO 137-001 (with a temperature of about ten degrees above absolute zero) was stripped by hot gas (about 100 million degrees) as it travels towards the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 3627.
Read more. Source: NASA/Chandra |
 NASA accepts Spirit Mars rover 'stuck for good'
(Jan 26, 2010) NASA has conceded defeat in its battle to free the Spirit rover from its Martian sand trap. The vehicle became stuck in soft soil back in May last year and all the efforts to extricate it have failed. NASA says Spirit, which landed on the Red Planet just over six years ago, will now live out its remaining days as a static science station.
Read more. Source: BBC |
 Groovy hills rising from Titan's surface
(Jan 26, 2010) Hills with a wrinkly radial pattern stand out in a new radar image of Titan captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 28, 2009. The grooved mounds in the picture, which are located in a northern hemisphere region known as Belet, are about 80 km wide and about 60 meters high. The shapes of these landscape features have not been seen on Titan before, though they bear similarity to spidery features known as coronae on Venus.
Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
 Aliens visiting Earth will be just like humans, scientist claims
(Jan 25, 2010) Governments should prepare for the worst if aliens visit Earth because beings from outer space are likely to be just like humans, a leading scientist is claiming. Extraterrestrials might not only resemble us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others' resources, says Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University.
Read more. Source: The Guardian |
 The first of many asteroid finds for WISE
(Jan 24, 2010) NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light. The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by WISE Jan. 12.
Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
 Panel calls for global 'asteroid defence agency'
(Jan 23, 2010) The world should organize its defences now in case an asteroid is found on a collision course with Earth, says a group of US scientists. There are huge numbers of asteroids that come close to Earth's orbit, called near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). Millions of them are large enough to do serious damage in an impact, including the asteroid Apophis, which has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2036.
Read more. Source: New Scientist |
 Hunt for Earth-like worlds looks in the mirror
(Jan 23, 2010) To find Earth-like worlds around other stars, scientists should take a page from our own planet, a new study found. In particular, observers should look for glints of sunlight reflected by oceans or lakes, such as what's seen by spacecraft looking back on Earth. These glints are tell-tale signals of liquid, which could indicate the presence of liquid water, considered one of the fundamental necessities for life.
Read more. Source: space.com |
 Hidden asteroids are stalking the Earth
(Jan 22, 2010) A tiny asteroid that buzzed Earth last week highlighted our planet's vulnerability to objects whose peculiar orbits put them in a game of hide-and-seek with us. An Earth-based telescope spotted the 10-meter space rock hurtling our way just three days before a near miss on 13 January, when it flew by at just one-third of the distance to the Moon.
Read more. Source: New Scientist |
 On the trail of a cosmic cat
(Jan 22, 2010) ESO has just released a stunning new image of the vast cloud known as the Cat's Paw Nebula or NGC 6334. This complex region of gas and dust, where numerous massive stars are born, lies near the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, and is heavily obscured by intervening dust clouds.
Read more. Source: European Southern Observatory |
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NASA Ames award for excellence in information on astrobiology
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