Latest news with #planetaryscience
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Swiss exoplanet pioneer reflects on Earth's place in the cosmos
In October 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz made a groundbreaking discovery: the first exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star. This moment marked the beginning of a new era in astronomy and planetary science, earning the Swiss pair the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. In a recent visit to the Sorbonne, Queloz shared some of his insights with Radio France Internationale. Since the first discovery, nearly 6,000 exoplanets have been confirmed, with thousands more candidates awaiting verification. Each one offers a small glimpse into the diversity of planetary systems across the galaxy. While both Mayor and Queloz are Swiss, they come from the French-speaking region of Switzerland and have long-standing academic ties to French institutions. Growing interest in exoplanets Their discovery reverberated strongly through the French scientific community, contributing to a surge of interest in exoplanetology in France. Professor Queloz, for example, has collaborated with Paris Sciences et Lettres University and recently delivered a public lecture at Sorbonne University. During his visit to Paris, Queloz explained: 'Looking for exoplanets is essentially looking for us.' His words capture the deeper motivation behind this cosmic quest - not merely cataloging distant worlds, but seeking to understand our own place in the universe. From the Lab: French researchers uncover why solar system planets are unlikely to collide Philosphy and science Read more on RFI EnglishRead also:From the Lab: French researchers uncover why solar system planets are unlikely to collideFrom The Lab: How researchers reconstructed the face of a Napoleonic soldierFrom The Lab: France's SOLEIL synchrotron shines light on secrets of matter
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Discovery of ancient riverbeds suggests Mars once wetter than thought
Thousands of miles of ancient riverbeds have been discovered in the heavily cratered southern highlands of Mars, suggesting the red planet was once a far wetter world than scientists thought. Researchers spotted geological traces of nearly 10,000 miles (16,000km) of ancient watercourses, believed to be more than 3bn years old, in high resolution images of the rugged landscape captured by Mars orbiters. While some of the riverbeds are relatively short, others form networks that stretch for more than 100 miles. The widespread rivers were probably replenished by regular rain or snowfall in the region, researchers said. 'Water has been found on Mars countless times before, but what's really interesting here is that this is an area where for a long time we've thought there wasn't any evidence for water,' said Adam Losekoot, a PhD student at the Open University. 'What we found is that the area did have water and it was very distributed,' he added. 'The only water source that could have sustained these rivers over such a vast area would have to be some kind of regional precipitation.' The most dramatic signs of ancient water on Mars are the huge valley networks and canyons, thought to have been carved by water flowing across the terrain. But some areas of the planet have few valleys, leading scientists to question how wet the regions once were. One region that particularly puzzled researchers was Noachis Terra, or Land of Noah, one of the oldest landscapes on Mars. According to computer models of the ancient Martian climate, the region should have had substantial rain or snowfall, sculpting the terrain as the water flowed. Faced with a lack of evidence for ancient riverbeds, Losekoot and his colleagues turned to high-resolution images of Noachis Terra captured by instruments onboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Global Surveyor. The images covered nearly 4m square miles of the planet's southern highlands, a land area much larger than Australia. The images revealed scores of geological features called fluvial sinuous ridges, also known as inverted channels. These form when tracks of sediment carried by ancient rivers harden over time, and are later exposed when the softer ground around them erodes. While some tracks are relatively narrow, others are more than a mile wide. 'We have lots of little ridge segments, and they are usually a couple of hundred metres wide and about 3.5km long, but there are some that are much, much larger than that,' Losekoot said. In one image from the MRO the pattern of fluvial sinuous ridges reveals a network of meandering tributaries and spots where the ancient riverbanks burst. Two rivers can be seen crossing into a crater, where water probably flowed in and filled it up before breaching the other side. The findings, to be presented on Thursday at the Royal Astronomical Society's national meeting in Durham, suggest an enduring presence of surface water in the Noachis Terra region of Mars about 3.7bn years ago. In its warmer, wetter past, the planet held vast bodies of water. Mars became the arid world we know today when its magnetic field waned, allowing the solar wind to erode its atmosphere and the water to escape into space. But some water may remain, unseen. Beyond Mars's polar ice caps, an international team reported in April, a vast reservoir of water could lie hidden deep beneath the Martian surface.
CTV News
02-07-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Why is there no life on Mars? Rover finds a clue
This image made available by NASA shows the planet Mars. (NASA via AP, File) Why is Mars barren and uninhabitable, while life has always thrived here on our relatively similar planet Earth? A discovery made by a NASA rover has offered a clue for this mystery, new research said Wednesday, suggesting that while rivers once sporadically flowed on Mars, it was doomed to mostly be a desert planet. Mars is thought to currently have all the necessary ingredients for life except for perhaps the most important one: liquid water. However the red surface is carved out by ancient rivers and lakes, showing that water once flowed on our nearest neighbour. There are currently several rovers searching Mars for signs of life that could have existed back in those more habitable times, millions of years ago. Earlier this year, NASA's Curiosity rover discovered a missing piece in this puzzle: rocks that are rich in carbonate minerals. These 'carbonates' -- such as limestone on Earth -- act as a sponge for carbon dioxide, pulling it in from the atmosphere and trapping it in rock. A new study, published in the journal Nature, modelled exactly how the existence of these rocks could change our understanding of Mars's past. Brief 'oases' Lead study author Edwin Kite, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago and a member of the Curiosity team, told AFP it appeared there were 'blips of habitability in some times and places' on Mars. But these 'oases' were the exception rather than the rule. On Earth, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the planet. Over long timescales, the carbon becomes trapped in rocks such as carbonates. Then volcanic eruptions spew the gas back into the atmosphere, creating a well-balanced climate cycle supportive of consistently running water. However Mars has a 'feeble' rate of volcanic outgassing compared to Earth, Kite said. This throws off the balance, leaving Mars much colder and less hospitable. According to the modelling research, the brief periods of liquid water on Mars were followed by 100 million years of barren desert -- a long time for anything to survive. It is still possible that there are pockets of liquid water deep underground on Mars we have not yet found, Kite said. NASA's Perseverance Rover, which landed on an ancient Martian delta in 2021, has also found signs of carbonates at the edge of dried-up lake, he added. Next, the scientists hope to discover more evidence of carbonates. Kite said the best proof would be returning rock samples from the Martian surface back to Earth -- both the United States and China are racing to do this in the next decade. Are we alone? Ultimately, scientists are searching for an answer to one of the great questions: how common are planets like Earth that can harbour life? Astronomers have discovered nearly 6,000 planets beyond our Solar System since the early 1990s. But only for Mars and Earth can scientists study rocks which allow them to understand the planet's past, Kite said. If we do determine that Mars never hosted even tiny micro-organisms during its watery times, that would indicate it is difficult to kick-start life across the universe. But if we discover proof of ancient life, that would 'basically be telling us the origin of life is easy on a planetary scale,' Kite said.
Forbes
28-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
White House Aims To Halt NASA Missions Across The Solar System
The New Horizons spacecraft sends back its sensational snapshots of Jupiter, and its volcanic moon ... More Io, before the mission's close encounter with Pluto (Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Trump administration's bid to terminate NASA's leading-edge flights of exploration 'across the solar system' may cripple American leadership in space, preventing discoveries that could reshape civilization in what is now considered the first Space Age, says one of the world's top planetary scientists. As space powers across the continents vie to map and image planets and moons, comets and ice-worlds circling the sun, slashes to NASA's funding would represent a great leap backward, crippling it even as rivals race ahead, says Alan Stern, a one-time leader at NASA and a globally acclaimed space scientist. The president's new proposed budget drastically cuts appropriations for NASA, with outlays for its planetary science missions—the exploration of Pluto and other celestial worlds by space-borne rockets and robots, cameras and telescopes—axed almost in half. Now facing the guillotine—inexplicably—are constellations of technologically advanced space probes developed by NASA and spearheading scientists across America, including the Juno imager now orbiting Jupiter, the Mars Odyssey and Maven spacecraft gliding above Mars and the asteroid hunter OSIRIS-Apophis. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, in orbit around Mars, is one of the leading-edge explorers slated to ... More be terminated by the White House. Shown here is an artist's impression of the orbiter. (Photo) Getty Images 'Incredibly, this budget proposes to turn off 55 perfectly working, productive spacecraft across the solar system,' Dr. Stern, who once headed NASA's Science Mission Directorate, tells me in an interview. Stern took up that post after conceiving and designing one of the American space agency's most sensational missions ever - the New Horizons spacecraft that aced a close approach with Pluto while sending back fantastical images of the otherworldly orb and its moons - a miniature planetary system that generated billions of hits when it began beaming down across NASA's website. While New Horizons continues its super-speed flight through the outer solar system, charting the mysterious frozen reaches of the Kuiper belt, the president's plan calls for the spacecraft to be cast away. Abandoning the $900-million mission in order to recoup the minimal costs of its ongoing operation makes no sense economically or scientifically, Stern says. The robotic photographer New Horizons images Pluto as it speeds through the outer solar system ... More (Photo by NASA/APL/SwRI via Getty Images) Getty Images 'With New Horizons,' he says, 'there are a lot of important scientific objectives still ahead, things no other spacecraft can do.' 'Terminating this mission would also represent a tragic loss of soft power projection for the U.S.' The Horizons craft, and its array of next-generation cameras and spectrometers, is exploring a region beyond Pluto that no other human-created probe has ever entered, with a treasure trove of potential discoveries waiting. 'This would be like sending a message to [Christopher] Columbus to sink his ships while they were in North America,' Stern tells me, upending a new age of discovery. 'With New Horizons, we have the power and the fuel to run this mission for another 20 years … and we have more Kuiper belt objects to explore.' The White House, in issuing its slashed budget plan for NASA, never provided a logical rationale for torpedoing some of the agency's world-leading missions to survey and image the solar system. Its inscrutable sinking of some of these vanguard voyages was unveiled with the terseness of a telegram: 'Operating missions that have completed their prime missions (New Horizons and Juno) and the follow-on mission to OSIRIX-REx, OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer, are eliminated.' The asteroid-hunter OSIRIS spacecraft, shown here at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is one of ... More the trailblazers set to be terminated by the White House. (Photo by Bruce Weaver / AFP) (Photo by BRUCE WEAVER/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images The OSIRIS spacecraft, which had been slated to rendezvous with the closely approaching Apophis asteroid ahead, is a precursor mission to defending the Earth's eight billion citizens against doomsday cosmic strikes by colossal comets or asteroids of the future. The robotic photographer Juno has snapped an endless kaleidoscope of imagery as it floats around Jupiter. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have posted raw impressions of the orb and its moons and invited 'citizen scientists' to Photoshop and launch them across the cybersphere. In the process, they are becoming part of the spacefaring civilization that is spreading out across the globe. Model of the $1-billion Juno spacecraft, which is now orbiting and photographing Jupiter (Photo by ... More) Getty Images During its own space odyssey, New Horizons has astounded stargazers, students and scholars worldwide with its technicolor panoramas of Pluto, covered in surreal ice-fields and cryo-volcanoes, and its age-old companion Charon. The twin netherworlds—named after the mythical Greek god of the underworld and the pilot who shuttled souls across the river Styx—circle more than five billion kilometers distant from the sun, along an orbit that Stern's Pluto expedition took nine years to reach. Now, even as it whizzes beyond all of the classical planets, New Horizons, and its future, has entered the purgatory of potential excommunication by mission controllers—and their masters—six worlds away. The New Horizons spacecraft, now speeding through the outer solar system, could be jettisoned under ... More a White House plan that would destroy American leadership in planetary science missions. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images) Heritage Images via Getty Images 'This is a vast and tragic mistake,' Stern says, 'because the issue is larger than just NASA, it also affects U.S. world leadership [and] responsible government that protects taxpayers from waste like this.' The administration's crash-and-burn dismissal of the solar system's trailblazing robotic discoverers has triggered trepidation across NASA, whose ranks of pioneering scientists are likewise set to be culled. Within NASA, Alan Stern is a pole star of cutting-edge exploration, helping guide more than two dozen missions. After his New Horizons spacecraft rendezvoused with Pluto, the agency bestowed its highest honor on him - the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. 'Stern led the team that returned remarkable imagery and other data from the Pluto system last summer, generating headlines worldwide and setting a record for the farthest world ever explored,' NASA's leaders said. "New Horizons represents the best of humanity and reminds us of why we explore,' added Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. "The first flyby of Pluto is a remarkable achievement.' Being given the chance to lead the close encounter with Pluto, Stern said on accepting the award, 'has been the greatest honor of my lifetime.' Around the same time, NASA film-makers paid tribute to Stern, his 2000+ Pluto mission colleagues, and the target of their interplanetary expedition in the captivating documentary ' The Year of Pluto .' Stern has himself chronicled his trek across the twilight reaches of the star system in a series of fascinating books, including Pluto and Charon: Ice Worlds on the Ragged Edge of the Solar System and Chasing New Horizons, and in a torrent of acclaimed papers . Scholar Stern predicts that if the White House's proposed death sentence for flotillas of pathfinding space missions is actually carried out, that would mark the decline and fall of NASA's planetary science breakthroughs, and the comparative rise of its competitors in the renewed space race of the 2020s. If NASA's funding and inter-planet journeys are decimated, he tells me, 'These cuts will absolutely destroy U.S. leadership in all the space sciences.' 'This is tragically misguided.' The potential death knell for an armada of space discovery missions has been reverberating not just across NASA, but also throughout the U.S. universities that help conceive or design these flights. 'Certainly termination of the New Horizons mission would be terrible,' says Kip Hodges , who as founding director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration helped transform the university into one of the top American space studies centers. 'This a real frontier mission at this point,' he tells me in an interview, 'delivering important new information about distant parts of our Sun's heliosphere.' Congress has the power to save NASA and its leading-edge robotic explorers across the solar system ... More (Illustration by Tobias Roetsch/Future Publishing via Getty Images) Future Publishing via Getty Images Professor Hodges , one of the top space scholars in the U.S., predicts that the Swords of Damocles now hanging above New Horizons and other new-frontier flights could still be lifted. If the White House plan to cut away at NASA and its revolutionary planetary scouting missions were enacted as is, he predicts, 'a great many folks in industry, the NASA labs, and academia will be disappointed.' Yet he adds that 'the budget for NASA evolves over several stages,' with the president's initial proposal just one of competing models—one that could be rejected as the Senate and House of Representatives look afresh at NASA's missions, goals and funding. After the twin chambers reach a consensus on reshaping NASA for the next phase of its evolution, Professor Hodges adds, 'Quite often, the appropriated budget is not the president's budget.' That means space aficionados across America who seek to overturn the president's capital sentence on NASA's boundary-breaking missions have a clear channel of recourse, Stern says. Would-be petitioners for a reprieve, he advises, 'should contact their elected representatives in Congress and tell them this is a huge mistake.'
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The Sun is twisting Mercury's crust in unexpected ways
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. As the planet closest to the Sun, Mercury has it rough. Not only is it the smallest planet in our solar system, but Mercury's crust is also fractured and sheared in several places. There are also craters across the entire surface of the little planet. The origins of these shearing cliffs and craters have always enthralled scientists, but now we may finally know where they came from. According to a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a group of scientists believe that Mercury's surface may have been shaped by what we call 'tidal stresses.' These forces have been largely overlooked in the past, as they were often considered too small to play any significant role in shaping a planet's surface. Today's Top Deals Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals Memorial Day security camera deals: Reolink's unbeatable sale has prices from $29.98 And while these tidal stresses aren't likely the main cause behind the way Mercury's crust has twisted and sheared over the centuries, it is considered an important factor in how the planet was shaped. Because of its close proximity to the Sun, Mercury has been the victim of our star's gravitational forces for quite some time now. These extreme forces have led to some intriguing designs across the surface of the planet. There is also no atmosphere, most likely stripped away by the sheer force of the Sun's energy slamming against the planet. The researchers looked at how the Sun's gravitational pull could have affected Mercury's crust over the past several billion years. To do this, they relied on simulations, which helped show how the gravitational pull from our solar system's star could have created tension on the planet, causing its surface to take the shape we see today. It's an intriguing development that could help us learn more about our star's closest neighbor. The findings here could also be applied to other planets, too, to help us understand how Earth formed, or even how other planets like Jupiter, Venus, and Mars came to be. The scientists behind the research are hoping to dig deeper into the research using data from BepiColombo, a 2018 mission that will study the surface of Mercury more closely. More Top Deals Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2025: Get $2,000+ free See the
