Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
Dusty Disks May Reveal Hidden Worlds
Images of gaps, rings, arcs, warps, and clumps in disks of dusty debris surrounding nearby stars are providing new clues about the nature of planets that lie beyond the solar system.
- Astronomy
Super Wallops: Tracking the origin of cosmic rays
Two new studies shed light on the longstanding mystery of where cosmic rays—the energetic charged particles that bombard our galaxy—originate.
- Astronomy
Strange Stars? Odd features hint at novel matter
Two stellar corpses thought to be made of neutrons may actually contain weird forms of matter never observed before.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Remodeling: Superwinds star in early universe
New measurements reveal that some of the earliest galaxies in the universe produced winds so powerful and persistent that they blew material from one galaxy to another, temporarily separating dark matter from visible matter and profoundly influencing the evolution of future generations of galaxies.
- Planetary Science
Jupiter’s Whirlpool
The surprising birth and rapid evolution of a giant vortex highlight the first movie of Jupiter’s polar regions seen in the ultraviolet. The movie and other Jupiter images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft are available online at the Cassini imaging team and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web sites. Go to: http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=58 and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_59.html
- Astronomy
Gamma-Ray Burst: A black hole is born
New evidence supports the notion that gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions in the universe, are the primal calling cards of newborn black holes.
- Astronomy
Galaxy Hunter
At the interactive “Galaxy Hunter” Web site, students use data from the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate a bewildering assortment of deep-space galaxies in various stages of evolution–and learn statistical concepts such as sample variability and size along the way. Go to: http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/ghunter/
- Astronomy
Long Ago and Far Away: Astronomers find distant galaxy, early cluster
Peering ever deeper into space and further back in time, two teams of astronomers have uncovered new details about the earliest galaxies and galaxy clusters in the universe.
- Astronomy
Repainting the cosmic palette
After all the hue and cry about the color of the universe, astronomers have now revised their findings: It’s not pale green, but boring old beige.
- Planetary Science
Mars Odyssey instrument revived
Flight controllers have revived an instrument on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft that measures the amount of radiation bombarding the Martian surface.
- Astronomy
Telescope Tuned Up: Back to work for orbiting observatory
A rejuvenated Hubble Space Telescope floated away from the space shuttle Columbia on March 9 after astronauts spent a week renovating the observatory.
- Planetary Science
Probing Jupiter’s big magnetic bubble
Simultaneous measurements by two spacecraft have probed in greater detail than ever before Jupiter’s magnetosphere, the invisible bubble of charged particles that surrounds the giant planet.
