Scientific American

Swiss Cheese and Dust Devils: 7 High-Resolution Shots of Surface Activity on Mars [Slide Show]

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:00:00 EST

The arrival of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) at the Red Planet in 2006 ushered in a whole new era of Mars observation. With its ultrapowerful HiRISE camera, the orbiter has spied on the Martian surface to study curious features, some of them possibly linked to the presence of water, in unprecedented detail. And along the way HiRISE has also uncovered a few new phenomena. [More]

Exoplanet Building Blocks Found around White Dwarfs

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:40:08 EST

Watch for falling rocks. Those are words to keep in mind when you’re driving a mountain road. Or, it seems, when you’re cruising past a white dwarf star.

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Earth and Moon Got Water from Common Source

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:00 EST

Measurements of the chemical composition of Moon rocks suggest that Earth was born with its water already present, rather than having the precious liquid delivered several hundred million years later by comets or asteroids. And in finding a common origin for the water on Earth and the Moon, the results highlight a puzzle over the leading theory for the formation of Earth's satellite.

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A New NASA Mission Propels Detailed Investigations of Nearby Exoplanets

Thu, 02 May 2013 02:00:00 EST

NASA's Kepler mission has been a smash hit. It has discovered thousands of probable exoplanets--worlds orbiting stars other than the sun--more than 100 of which have already been vetted and confirmed. Many of those planets are among the most nearly Earth-size planets known: of the 25 smallest-diameter exoplanets discovered to date, all but one were spotted by Kepler. There is just one asterisk tacked to Kepler's immensely productive haul: the planets are hundreds or even thousands of light-years away, too distant to investigate in any detail.

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Moon Landing Faked!!! Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:30:00 EST

Did NASA fake the moon landing? Is the government hiding Martians in Area 51? Is global warming a hoax? And what about the Boston Marathon bombing…an “inside job” perhaps?

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Is There a Doctor in the Spaceship?

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:59:08 EST

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Space Scope Spots 3 Possibly Habitable Planets

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:37:08 EST

The search for habitable, Earth-like planets keeps turning up promising candidates. And although astronomers have yet to find an Earth twin, some newly discovered worlds are pretty interesting in their own right.

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Mars-Life Hypothesis Gets a Fresh Look

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:00:00 EST

The New Way to Look for Mars Life: Follow the Salt [More]

Obama s 2014 Science Budget Proposal Revitalizes STEM Education, Reduces Environmental Conservation

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:40:00 EST

Among the winners in Pres. Barack Obama’s 2014 federal budget: the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Education and National Science Foundation (NSF). The losers include agribusiness and the Environmental Protection Agency. Obama’s plan, announced April 11, is less a vision for a progressive science agenda than a reflection of political reality--specifically, the fact that he still must work with a conservative Congress. The budget gives a boost to science education and research, long-standing administration priorities. In a nod to fiscal conservatives it trims administrative costs and slashes subsidies for agribusiness. On the matter of fossil fuels, however, it largely maintains the status quo, preserving funding for drilling and fracking. Here’s a quick list of winners, losers and how the new White House budget would affect them.

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Amateur Astronomers Spot Missing Russian Mars Lander

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:00:08 EST

For a brief moment, it was the robot king of Mars. Then it shut down unexpectedly and was lost for good.

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A Private Spaceflight to the International Space Station [Video]

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:00:00 EST

In the April issue of Scientific American , veteran planetary scientist S. Alan Stern writes about how private spaceflight companies aren't just going to open space travel to wealthy tourists--they're going to revolutionize the way scientists study the environment around our planet. One of the programs that Stern and others are so excited about is SpaceX's Dragon space capsule. Last year the company became the first to launch to the International Space Station. In the future these capsules will offer space access to anyone, and at a price that is much lower than researchers currently have to pay to ride on a traditional rocket.

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Neighborhood Watch: New NASA Mission Will Propel Detailed Investigations of Nearby Exoplanets

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:00:00 EST

NASA’s Kepler mission has been a smash hit. It has discovered thousands of probable exoplanets--worlds orbiting stars other than the sun--more than 100 of which have already been vetted and confirmed. Many of those planets are among the smallest , most Earth-size planets known: of the 25 smallest-diameter exoplanets discovered to date, all but one were spotted by Kepler.

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Commercial Spaceflight Companies Will Revolutionize Space Science (preview)

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:30:00 EST

One of the most vexing problems in space research is that so little has changed in 50 years about the way we get to space. Consequently, space access remains both expensive and rare. It has still not reached the stage where scientists can themselves routinely travel there to conduct research, unlike oceanographers, who routinely reach the deep ocean, or geophysicists, who venture to the poles.

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Gentle or Jumping? The Varied Lives of "Hot Jupiters"

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:35:00 EST

Ever since Swiss astronomers astonished the world by finding a gas-giant planet orbiting close to its star , researchers have wondered how these so-called hot Jupiters arose. None exists in our solar system, where the planetary giants--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune--reside in the deep freeze beyond the asteroid belt. Now a surprising discovery is providing fresh insight, suggesting that the more iron a star was born with, the more likely it is that the star's hot Jupiter had a violent past.

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Recommended: Red Rover

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:00:00 EST

Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Curiosity Rover [More]

Puzzling Super-Dense Space Objects Could Be a New Type of Planet

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:30:00 EST

Mysterious dense bodies outside the Solar System could be the remnants of ice giants similar to Neptune that wandered too close to their suns, according to results presented this week at a meeting on exoplanets at the Royal Society in London.

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Theory Explains How Star Clusters Form and Evolve (preview)

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:02:00 EST

The night sky is a field of stars. In every direction, stars bright and dim fill the horizon to brimming. Some seem to form distinct patterns, which we recognize as constellations. Yet as beguiling as those patterns may be, most of them are no more than projections of the human mind. The vast majority of stars, in our own galaxy and in others, have no true physical connection to one another.

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Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Ancient Habitability

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:30:00 EST

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found what it went to Mars to look for: evidence of an environment that could have once supported life.

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Anybody Home? Next-Gen Telescopes Could Pick Up Hints of Extraterrestrial Life

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:00:00 EST

Even as astronomers work toward the hotly anticipated milestone discovery of an Earth-like twin orbiting another star, researchers are already asking what it will take to detect the existence of extraterrestrial life on such a planet.

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Sequestered Science: How Research Got Tied Up with Federal Dollars [Timeline]

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:00:00 EST

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