A Moon With Water

Astrobiologists searching the heavens for extraterrestrial life have a simple motto: “Follow the water, ”says The Washington Post. Water is an essential ingredient in all earthly biochemistry, so scientists believe it’s logical to look for life first on planets and moons with liquid water.New data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft indicate that Enceladus, a tiny, ice-encrusted moon orbiting Saturn, may be […]

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Black holes that wander

Supermassive black holes that have escaped their host galaxies may be wandering the universe alone. Intriguing new observations i by NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope have | revealed what appears to be a supermassive | black hole being “kicked out of a galaxy at enormous speed,” Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics tells Space.com. Astronomers observed two distinct light […]

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Earth’s magnetic shield getting weaker

Earth’s magnetic field is weakening, and could all but disappear within the next 500 years—exposing our planet to intense solar radiation that would scour its surface of life, Reuters.com reports. Researchers say I the geological record indicates that Earth’s * magnetic field tends to switch polarity f every 250,000 years—and that it’s about 550,000 years overdue for a swap, which […]

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