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The ionosphere is the final layer of atmosphere before space. This highly dynamic region is constantly exposed to the full intensity of the Sun, harsh ultraviolet radiation breaking down molecules and atoms. Highly charged ions and free electrons therefore fill the ionospheric layers. Critical to terrestrial communications, the ionosphere also plays host to the largest lightshow on Earth, the Aurora. Now NASA-funded research has developed a live "4D Ionosphere" plugin for Google Earth. Now you can fly through the atmosphere's uppermost reaches without even leaving your desk…

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© Ian O'Neill for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Can a planet like Earth be considered a single living organism? After all, the human body is composed of hundreds of billions of bacteria, and yet we consider the human body to be a single organism. The Gaia Hypothesis (or popularly known as "Gaia Theory") goes beyond the individual organisms living on Earth, it encompasses all the living and non-living components of Earth's biosphere and proposes that the complex interacting systems regulate the environment to a very high degree. So much so, that the planet may be viewed as a single organism in its own right. What's more this hypothesis was developed by a NASA scientist who was looking for life on Mars…

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© Ian O'Neill for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Steve Squyres and the Mars Exploration Rover team knew from the beginning that dust could cause a problem for the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. When a thick layer of dust coats the solar panels, it blocks the sunlight that generates power for the six-wheeled robots. In the summer of 2007 a huge dust storm blanketed Mars, and deposited a fair amount of dust on solar panels of both rovers. Spirit, especially accumulated a lot of dust on its solar array. Currently, only about one-third of incoming sunlight is able to penetrate dust on Spirit’s solar panels to be converted to electricity. As a result, Spirit is experiencing the lowest energy levels to date and accumulating a backlog of data waiting to be transmitted to Earth. If only a dust devil would come along…

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Read the rest of Spirit's Dust Dilemma (286 words)

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It’s fairly certain that the Mars Polar Lander and the Beagle lander crash landed on Mars, never to be heard from again. Well, what if crash landing was no problem? What if a robotic spacecraft could just reassemble and fix itself if there was a mishap on the way to another planet’s surface? That type of science fiction is getting closer to reality. A group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have developed a robot made of separate modules that can recognize each other and reassemble itself if they crash or get kicked apart. Maybe this could solve the problems of landing on Mars!
Except we haven't figured out how to reassemble people, yet.

Take a look a the video. It's pretty remarkable, although I have to admit, I had visions of the Terminator after watching it….

Original News Source: New Scientist

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The past couple of weeks we've had a 'mystery' image, and asked our readers to guess what world in our solar system was featured in the image. Most everyone seemed to enjoy it, and it was fairly popular, so we've decided to make it a regular feature. I was going to call it the 'Wednesday Where in the World (and What World) Is This?' but that's just too long, not to mention too many W's in one headline. So to brief it up, and since this is "Universe Today," we've decided to call it "Where In The Universe?" Look for it every Wednesday.

Above is this week's mystery image. If you keep an eye on the images being released by the various spacecraft traveling our solar system, you may have seen this one before. Remember, you have 8 planets, 169 known moons, a handful of dwarf planets and lots of asteroids in our solar system to choose from. Don't cheat — make your guess before you click to continue…

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Read the rest of Where In The Universe? (151 words)

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Cape Canaveral's Titan launch pad gantry was demolished on Sunday. The tower was built in the 1990's to support the US Air Force Titan 4 rocket program. The site has been used for NASA missions as well, including the launch of the Cassini-Huygens Saturn mission in 1997. Launch Complex 40 is being demolished and then refurbished to make way for the new SpaceX Falcon rocket launch facility. Now the gantry is rubble, the clean up operation can begin…

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Read the rest of Titan Launch Pad Tower Blown Up at Cape Canaveral (Gallery) (392 words)

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Cassini scientists know for sure their spacecraft isn’t in Kansas anymore. Cassini’s been keeping an eye on a powerful electrical storm that’s been raging on Saturn for five months now, with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth. But Cassini has also been busy flying by moons like Enceladus and Titan during this time, and therefore can’t constantly watch the storm. So amateur astronomers have been assisting the Cassini science team by monitoring this tempest in the “Storm Alley” region of Saturn. It’s no Great Red Spot, but it's the longest lasting electrical storm ever detected in our solar system.

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Read the rest of Cassini Watches Five-Month-Long Lightning Storm Rage on Saturn (263 words)

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For the first time, the most extreme collision to occur in the cosmos has been observed. Galaxies are known to hide supermassive black holes in their cores, and should the galaxies collide, tidal forces will cause massive disruption to the stars orbiting around the galactic cores. If the cores are massive enough, the supermassive black holes may become trapped in gravitational attraction. Do the black holes merge to form a super-supermassive black hole? Do the two supermassive black holes spin, recoil and then blast away from each other? Well, it would seem both are possible, but astronomers now have observational evidence of a black hole being blasted away from its parent galaxy after colliding with a larger cousin.

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Read the rest of Supermassive Black Hole Kicked Out of Galaxy: First Ever Observation (527 words)

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