Da Nile ain’t just a river on Titan

(Click image for more info )PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission have spotted what appears to be a miniature, extraterrestrial likeness of Earth’s Nile River: a river valley on Saturn’s moon Titan that stretches more than 200 miles (400 kilometers) from its “headwaters” to a large sea. It is the first time images have revealed a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere other than Earth.

Rover hill, rover dale, as we hit the dusty trail

In the wake of the somewhat disappointing news about Mars Curiosity this week, there are reports of another rover in the works. That got me to think’n! We’re getting good at building these things and we might be on the cusp of a generalized rover design that would work in many places all over the solar system. A standardized, scalable and adaptable primary architecture and power train married to one of several reliable EDL packages that could turn this century into an age of discovery on par with the one kicked off by Columbus 500 years ago. Hey, a boy can dream. [Read more…]

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away …

Some people call a 13.7 billion year old universe ancient, but others think it’s held up nicely and doesn’t look an eon over five billion. Or in Bobby Jindal’s lesser epochs, a day over 5,000 years. But however one mismeasures time, lo those many billennia ago, there was at least one galaxy burning bright, and where there’s one modest-sized super massive black-hole embedded in dark matter cloud with a frothy retinue of stars and dust and maybe even planets, there’s probably a billion more: [Read more…]

Earth-sized planet found lurking in data around … Alpha Centauri

We are living in the greatest age of planetary discovery since Galileo looked at Jupiter, and that age may be on the verge of delivering one of the most exciting discoveries imaginable: earth-like planet[s] around Alpha Centauri, AKA Rigel Kent or ACen. Just the name Centauri brings on dreamy eyes in the sci-fi and space exploration community alike. At 4.37 light-years away, the three stars making up the Centauri system are by far our closest stellar neighbors. Via reader/writer “F,” planet hunters pouring over data from the most famous star system outside of ours have found strong hints of an earth-sized world, and there could be more: [Read more…]

Fascinating ideas on the history of Titan and Saturn

Look at Jupiter and you see a mini solar system right down to quasi-analogues of the planets, even a hint of scattered disk and Kuiper Belt objects. But look at Saturn and you see one large Jovian like moon, a hell of a lot of beat to shit frozen moonlets, and billions of icy shards.  The systems surrounding these two planets clearly diverged, violently by the look of it. Now some planetary scientists think they have an idea how it went down out Saturn’s way: [Read more…]

Trojans

I was exposed to MRSA taking care of a sick person and spent the last few days making sure it didn’t take. It’s a big deal because I take a drug called Humira that’s supposed to weaken my immune system. Any infection that gains a foothold could spread fast. But so far, so good! Lots of news, big debate tonight, and there’s this neat article about Jupiter’s Trojan satellites: [Read more…]