Scientists and engineers have a new plan for getting NASA InSight’s heat probe, also known as the “mole,” digging again on Mars. Part of an instrument called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), the mole is a self-hammering spike designed to dig as much as 16 feet (5 meters) below the surface and record temperature. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-insight-team-strategy-mole.html…
Tag: Temperature
Martian sands move in unearthly ways
Mars is a desert world, with sand dunes similar to those on Earth. But the processes that create them can be quite different from those on our planet, according to a new study from the University of Arizona. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sand-dunes-deserts-mars-earth-hirise-mro-university-of-arizona-space…
Mud ball meteorites rain down in Costa Rica
“Mud ball” meteorites – full of clays, organics and water – are unique among space rocks. And a lot of them fell in April 2019 on a small town in Costa Rica, much to the delight of scientists. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mudball-meteorite-fall-aguas-zarcas-costa-rica-2019…
A method for producing 3-D Bose-Einstein condensates using laser cooling
Researchers at the MIT-Harvard Center for ultracold atoms and research laboratory of electronics have proposed a new method for producing 3-D Bose-Einstein condensates using laser cooling only. In their study, featured in Physical Review Letters, they demonstrated the efficacy of their technique in producing Bose-Einstein condensates, achieving temperatures that are well bellow the effective recoil temperature. …
James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has successfully cleared another critical testing milestone, taking this ambitious observatory one step closer to its 2021 launch. The spacecraft has gone through its final thermal vacuum test meant to ensure that its hardware will function electronically in the vacuum of space, and withstand the extreme temperature variations it will encounter on its mission. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-james-webb-space-telescope-emerges.html…
April 2019 2nd hottest on record for globe
April 2019 was the 2nd-hottest April in the climate record, dating back to 1880, and the period from January-April was the 3rd-hottest year-to-date on record. In the Arctic, sea ice coverage shrunk to a record April low. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/april-2019-2nd-hottest-on-record-for-globe…
Springtime in northern Europe starting earlier and earlier
New analyses of satellite data show that the start of the spring growing season in northern Europe has advanced by 0.3 days per year from 2000 to 2016. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/earlier-start-spring-growing-season-northern-europe…
Brown Dwarf Atmospheres As The Potentially Most Detectable And Abundant Sites For Life
RockDoctor writes: Yet another provocative paper emerges onto Arxiv from Harvard’s Lingam and Loeb. Today they estimate the volume of space occupied by habitable zones (regions where liquid water is stable) in brown dwarf not-quite stars. They find that it could be orders of magnitude greater than the volume in the atmospheres of Earth-size planets. Brown dwarfs are masses of gas…
In a first, scientists took the temperature of a sonic black hole
A lab-made black hole that traps sound, not light, emits radiation at a certain temperature, as Stephen Hawking first predicted. Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-scientists-took-temperature-sonic-black-hole4…
Google Revives Controversial Cold-Fusion Experiments
According to a peer-reviewed paper revealed this week, Google is continuing its experiments into the controversial science of cold fusion — the theory that nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun, can produce energy in a table-top experiment at room temperature. While Google’s recent project found no evidence that cold fusion is possible, it did make some advances in measurement…