Deep Science | Documentary Tapes

  NASA's MAVEN Reveals Most of Mars' Atmosphere Was Lost to Space This artist’s concept depicts the early Martian environment (right) – believed to contain liquid water and a thicker atmosphere – versus the cold, dry environment seen at Mars today (left). NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution is in orbit of the Red Planet to study its upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind.  Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Solar wind and radiation are responsible for stripping the Martian atmosphere, transforming Mars from a planet that could have supported life billions of years ago into a frigid desert world, according to new results from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft. "We've determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space," said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), University of Colorado in Boulder. The team made th

Hubble Captures Giant Star on the Edge of Destruction In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at a brilliant "celebrity star," one of the brightest stars seen in our galaxy, surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust. The price for the monster star's opulence is "living on the edge." The star, called AG Carinae, is waging a tug-of-war between gravity and radiation to avoid self-destruction. In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at a brilliant "celebrity star," one of the brightest stars seen in our galaxy, surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust. Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI The expanding shell of gas and dust that surrounds the star is about five light-years wide, which equals the distance from here to the nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri. Th

What is wrong with Mercury's orbit? | Mercury Planet Exploration Mercury Orbit Explained   The 200-year-old mystery of Mercury's orbit — solved! It wasn't too long after Newton published his laws of motion that people noticed something was off about them. To be specific, they were off by the orbit of an entire planet. And they remained off until Einstein, and general relativity explained why Mercury moves the way it does. The laws of motion were, and remain powerful tools for understanding the world. When they debuted, Newton used them to explain the motions of pendulums and the motions of planets. Both the earthly and the celestial fell into the realm of the explainable, and people settled back, comfortable with their conception of the universe. That is until something about Mercury's orbit seemed just a tad off. The Precession of Mercury The orbits of the planets are slight ovals, with the sun located toward one end of the oval. The point at which the planet comes clo

  Unidentified flying object Captured           UFO Captured by Public Unidentified flying object (UFO) , also called  flying saucer , any aerial object or optical phenomenon not readily identifiable to the observer. UFOs became a major subject of interest following the development of rocketry after  World War II  and were thought by some researchers to be intelligent  extraterrestrial life  visiting  Earth . History Flying saucers and  Project Blue Book The first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947, when businessman  Kenneth Arnold  claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects near  Mount Rainier  in  Washington  while flying his small  plane . Arnold estimated the speed of the crescent-shaped objects as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like saucers skipping on water.” In the newspaper report that followed, it was mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, hence the term  flying saucer . Autographed front cover of Kenneth Arnold's  The Fly