Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Hawaiis Supreme Court begins to hear 30 Meter Telescope Case

By: Eric Betz

Published: Thursday, August 27, 2015

The Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii started construction on a 30 meter telescope on

top of the Mauna Kea Mountains on the large island. This telescope, when finished, would
become the largest telescope in the world. The 30 meter telescope is in addition to the 13 other
telescopes that are already built on the land. The construction on the island is not only on this
telescope but on another telescope, a 4-meter Solar Telescope. Another that could be the largest
of its kind.
In April protesters stopped all construction on the telescope, they continued to show their
dislike of the telescope by blocking the road with large boulders. Protesters stated that there are
enough telescopes already built, that the telescopes are destroying land that is sacred to their
culture. Astronomers say that the skies on the island are some of the best in the Northern
Hemisphere. They add that they received approval for the telescope through the government,
which was a long process for them.
In early August the site was back open. There is a rule that is still in effect for the site
though; visitors are restricted to only parts of the mountain. Some say that this rule makes their
star gazing activities illegal and stops many photographers. Nothing has been to change the rule
yet.
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/08/hawaiis-supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-thirty-metertelescope-case

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Hell on Earth: NASA Recreates Venus Extreme Atmosphere

By: Irene Klotz

Published: Wednesday, September 2, 2015

NASA built new testing equipment in the Glen Research Center in Ohio. The equipment
built is called GEER, Glenn Extreme Environment Rig, it was made to simulate the conditions
on extreme places in the solar system such as Venus.
GEER was nicknamed Hell on Earth due to some of the conditions that it can simulate.
GEER is a 14 ton, stainless steel, chamber. It is three by six feet. The chamber can reach
temperatures beyond 900 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than the surface of Venus. The
chamber is also able to reach 100 times the pressure of Earths atmosphere. Inside of the
chamber you are able to add gases and other chemicals to fully replicate Venus atmosphere. The
chamber is also able to be set up to replicate Jupiter and Saturn.
Scientist plan to add devices to see the interaction of the atmosphere with other materials.
GEER has the ability to become a cold planet simulator if cooling walls were added to the
chamber. In addition to scientific research the chamber will be used to test equipment, making
sure that the equipment can with stand the temperature and pressure.

http://www.space.com/30447-hell-earth-nasa-recreates-venus-extreme-atmosphere.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Gigantic Slab of Ice Found on Mars Just Below the Surface

By: Charles Q. Choi

Published by: Thursday, September 10, 2015

Evidence has been found in previous years that water exists on Mars. A giant piece of ice
was recently discovered below Mars surface. Researchers say that the slab of ice is roughly the
size of California and Texas combined. Researchers are saying that the ice is left over from
probable snowfall millions of years ago. The evidence of ice still on the planet lead researchers
to believe that other bodies of water and possibly life was on the planet at one time.
On Earth, where ever water has been found to exist some form of life usually exists close
by. Researchers are thinking the same may be true for the now cold planet of Mars; that life
possibly existed on the planet when it was a wet planet or that life could still exist on the planet
in some aquifers that are hidden within the planet.
On earth the tilt of the axis and our large moon keeps our planet from shifting on the axis,
Mars isnt as lucky; with the constant shift on its axis Mars deals with extreme temperature
changes such as Ice Ages. Ice has been trapped in Mars for millions of years; researchers have
focused on the craters that have the majority of ice stored in them. These craters are not like
normal craters that are bowl shaped; these have walls and contain more than just ice. They
contain rocks and other materials that may further the research of life once existing on the planet.

http://www.space.com/30502-mars-giant-ice-sheet-discovery-mro.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

An Ocean Flows Under Saturns Icy Moon Enceladus

By: Nola Taylor Reed

Published on: Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Geysers of water have been seen erupting from Enceladus, Saturns moon, providing
evidence of a reservoir below its icy crust. Scientists are unsure if the body of water is large
enough to be an entire ocean or a small lake concentrated at its south pole.
The water is said to be sloshing around inside of Enceladus; the proof of the water
sloshing around inside of the moon is that it has a slight wobble as it orbits around Saturn.
Enceladus isnt solid ice to the core like scientist had previously thought. The research that took
place in the discovery of Saturns moon took over seven years of gathering images and piecing
together their findings. Over the course of the seven years precise measurements were taken
from the images to determine how the inside of the moon would be affected due to the wobble as
it orbits.
The explanation that the water found on the moon is a global ocean is related to the
wobble in its orbit; if the core of the moon and its crust were directly connected the wobble
would be far smaller or possible none at all. This shows that there is a liquid layer separating the
surface from its core.

http://www.space.com/30559-saturn-moon-enceladus-has-ocean.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

NASA Mars Probe Marks One Year at Red Planet

By: Mike Wall

Published on: Wednesday, September 23, 2015

NASA's newest Mars probe has now been circling the Red Planet for a year. The Mars
Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft arrived in orbit around the Red Planet on Sept. 21,
2014, 10 months after blasting off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
MAVEN endured a two-month checkout phase on orbit and then began studyingMars'
atmosphere, in an attempt to determine how fast the planet's air is escaping into space.
Such information will help researchers better understand how and when Mars shifted
from a relatively warm and wet world in the ancient past to the cold and dry planet it is today,
NASA officials have said. MAVEN's first year at Mars has been quite eventful.
Observations by MAVEN, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Europe's Mars
Express spacecraft revealed that dust and other material shed by the comet created a temporary
layer high up in the Red Planet's atmosphere. The spacecraft can also serve a relay function,
helping link up communications between NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers and their
handlers on Earth.
MAVEN's primary, one-year mission will end this November, but NASA has extended
the probe's operations through at least September 2016.

http://www.space.com/30630-nasa-maven-spacecraft-one-year-mars.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Intense Solar Flare Released from Unruly Sunspot

By: Sarah Lewin

Published on: Tuesday, September 29, 2015

An intense solar flare, M7-class, caused a black out in low-frequency radio

communications over South America and the Atlantic Ocean with weaker effects farther away.
The unstable sunspot is likely to erupt again. There is a 40-percent chance of another, similarly
sized solar flare and a 5 percent chance of a powerful X-class flare during the next 24 hours.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft captured an amazing video of the solar
flare from space. At 10:53 a.m. EDT, the medium-size M7-class solar flare burst from the
sunspot called Active Region 2422.
Sunspots are caused by knots and complications in the sun's magnetic field, and the
particularly tangled field within AR2422 generated this recent solar flare when it released a
buildup of magnetic energy suddenly - causing a burst of high-energy radiation that rushed to
Earth and supercharged the atmosphere.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is an observational spacecraft that has been
orbiting the sun since 2010, taking incredibly high-resolution images of the solar surface,
gathering data about the sun's magnetic activity and helping to predict solar storms' impacts on
Earth.
http://www.space.com/30682-solar-flare-unrduly-sunspot-video.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Pulsars Have Crunchy Crust, Super Smooth Interiors, Study Suggests

By: Jesse Emspak

Published on: Tuesday, October 6, 2015

A new study suggests that pulsars occasionally exhibit a "glitch" in their timing because
they are filled with a "superfluid" that can flow over any surface without friction. There is more
support to the theory that these glitches are created by an interaction between the pulsar's outer
shell and the "superfluid" inside it, which has zero viscosity. But once in a while, pulsars exhibit
a "glitch," suddenly spinning faster for a short time and thus increasing the rate of their "pulsing"
light.
When massive stars grow old and die, they explode, sometimes leaving behind a neutron
star a small, incredibly dense nugget of collapsed, leftover star material. Pulsars, the left-over
remains of exploded stars, are considered some of the most accurate natural timekeepers in the
universe, but even these excellent cosmic clocks aren't perfect, but much of the star's mass
remains.
A pulsar is a special type of neutron star that spins at hundreds of revolutions per second.
Pulsars also emit a steady beam of light, often as radio waves, which may sweep across the
Earth, creating the illusion that the pulsar is blinking on and off.
Neutron stars, including pulsars, have intense magnetic fields that beam radio waves out
into space along their two poles. Because these poles don't always line up with the pulsar's
rotational axis, the radio waves are like the beams of a lighthouse, moving across the sky as the
pulsar spins. The immense pressures inside neutron stars create temperatures of billions of
degrees. What's left is a ball of neutrons, surrounded by a crust of neutrons and protons.

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

http://www.space.com/30748-pulsar-glitches-due-to-superfluid-interior.html
Pluto is Beautiful, Complex and Thoroughly Puzzling
By: Mike Wall

Published on: October 16, 2015

Making sense of all the new information - that is, getting a relatively complete
understanding of the evolution of Pluto and its five moons - is going to take some time, said New
Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern.
The $720 million New Horizons mission has given Pluto its first close-up. On July 14,
the spacecraft zoomed within just 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet's surface, capturing a variety of
data about the Pluto system with seven different scientific instruments.
The new study, which came out online today in the journal Science, reports the discovery
of Norgay Montes and Hillary Montes, the water-ice mountain ranges on Pluto that rise 1.2 miles
to 1.9 miles above surrounding terrain, as well as other, lower peaks. "If you have enough heat
released during Pluto's early years, you can melt ice and form an ocean - but the ocean's on the
inside, and as it refreezes, it will give back that heat. "New Horizons wasn't solely focused on
Pluto during the flyby; the probe also studied the 750-mile-wide Charon as well as the tiny
satellites Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx, all of which are less than 35 miles across.
New Horizons' observations have also greatly reduced uncertainties about Pluto's size,
finding that the dwarf planet is 1,475 miles wide, give or take about 5 miles. The measurement
reveals that Pluto is only about 10 percent denser than Charon.
http://www.space.com/30836-pluto-flyby-new-horizons-science-results.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

2 Comets Collided to Form Rosetta's 'Rubber Ducky' Target

By: Nola Taylor Redd

Published on: October 22, 2015

The strange shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which the European Space

Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has been studying for more than a year, arose from the long-ago
collision of two separate, slow-moving comets, researchers say.
Two main hypotheses emerged - that a single comet had eroded to form the connecting
"Neck," or that two comets had merged. Matteo Massironi, of the University of Padova in Italy,
led a team that identified more than 100 terraces on the surface of the comet, along with parallel
layers of material in exposed walls and pits.
The scientists then developed a 3D-shape model of the comet to determine the directions
of the terraces' slopes and visualize how they extended below the surface. A deep pit reveals the
layers of the comet, while the irregular and fractured morphology of the comet is also shown.
In one case, they modeled the comet as a single body with a center, while in another they
worked with two separate merging comets. The structural similarities throughout the comet
suggest that the precursor comets formed through similar accretion processes.
Although erosion didn't create the narrow neck of Comet 67P, the team pointed out that it
plays a role in how the comet continues to evolve. The frozen gases embedded in the layers of
the comet are not necessarily distributed evenly through its body.

http://www.space.com/30884-rosetta-rubber-duck-comet-mystery-solved.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

New Disk of Young Stars Found in Milky Way

By: Calla Cofield

Published on: 10/28/15

A group of young stars, 655 new candidate Cepheid stars, has been caught loitering near
the center of the Milky Way galaxy, a region previously thought to be dominated by a more
mature population.
The thick forest of dust located at the Milky Way's galactic center is a place where even
the bright flame of a burning star can be nearly impossible for astronomers to see. The entire
group of young stars has not been seen directly, but its presence is deduced by the detection of a
group of very bright, very unusual stars called Cepheids.
Cepheids are a type of variable star, meaning they change over time. By mapping out the
locations of a class of stars that vary in brightness called Cepheids, a disc of young stars buried
behind thick dust clouds in the central bulge has been found.
Cepheids are brighter than most non variable stars - several thousand times brighter than
Earth's sun, for example - which makes these stars easier to spot, said Istvan Dekany of the
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Stars are typically born in large groups, so the presence
of the young, classical Cepheids indicates that there are other sibling stars nearby.
Scientists previously thought of the galactic bulge as a home to mostly old stars, but
finding a population of young stars there is not totally surprising, Dekany said. The disk of
young stars "Smoothly extends to the Milky Way's core," which scientists didn't know before
now, Dekany said.
http://www.space.com/30949-new-disk-young-stars-found-milky-way.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Newfound Moon Craters Point to Asteroid Puzzle

By: Charles Choi

Published on: November 4th, 2015

Newfound lunar craters suggest that asteroids that smashed into the moon long ago were
very different from the ones that now occupy the asteroid belt, researchers say. Scientists think
swarms of asteroids and comets pummeled Earth, the moon and the other worlds of the inner
solar system during an era known as the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4.1 billion to 3.8
billion years ago. The many giant, round craters known as lunar basins that pockmark the moon's
surface now stand as mute testimony to this violent time.
To learn more about impact basins on the moon, scientists relied on gravity data gathered
by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission, which consisted of two spacecraft
named Ebb and Flow that were in the same orbit around the moon. Tiny changes in the distance
between the GRAIL probes caused by the gravitational pull of clusters of rock have allowed
researchers to probe the moon's structure and composition in unprecedented detail.
These newly identified craters - named Asperitatis, Bartels-Voskresenskiy, and
Copernicus-H - are located on the lunar near side, and substantially increase the known number
of large impacts on the moon. The new findings support previous research suggesting that the
asteroids that pummeled the moon long ago differed in surprising ways from the rocks now seen
in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Neumann said. If ancient asteroids occupied
the same size range as modern asteroids, there are more intermediate-size lunar impact basins
than one would expect, and half as many giant impacts "That would obliterate almost half the
moon," Neumann told Space.com.
http://www.space.com/31003-moon-asteroid-impacts-mystery.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

The Dust Devils of Mars Could Pack a Seismic Punch

By: Ian ONeill

Published on: November 13th, 2015

Recent studies have shown that Martian dust devils, which can reach as high as several
miles, play a key atmospheric role in transporting fine particles of dust from the surface,
injecting it high into the atmosphere. These whirlwinds change the albedo of Mars' surface - dark
lanes of recently exposed regolith, or Mars "Soil", are often left in the dust devils' wake potentially altering the solar heating effect on the Martian surface, therefore impacting
atmospheric temperatures.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became very used to seeing dust devils race
around its area of scientific study in Gusev Crater before the mission was declared lost in 2010.
Spirit's sister rover Opportunity, which still roves on Meridiani Planum over a decade since
landing, is indebted to Mars' dust devils - its dust-clogged solar panels have undergone numerous
"Cleaning events" where the up draft from these whirlwinds have blown over the rover,
hoovering the dust away.
From space, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is very familiar with the "Etch A
Sketch" patterns created by swarms of dust devils, dark channels running haphazardly across
bright plains and dune fields, criss crossing one another, often converging to create vast, dark
plains of disturbed dirt.
"While on Earth dust devils are generally just an occasional nuisance and meteorological
curiosity," said Ralph Lorenz, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., in a Seismological
Society of America press release, "On Mars, they are major agents of dust-raising, which is a
major factor in the climate, and in the operation of solar-powered vehicles on Mars.".

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

"In essence, the dust devil sucks on the ground, pulling it upwards like a tablecloth
pinched between thumb and forefinger. So the ground tilts away from the dust devil." Now the
researchers have correlated a drop in pressure related to the passage of dust devils with their
seismic signature on Earth, they hope that analysis of seismic signals detected by In Sight might
reveal the passage of Martian dust devils.
http://www.space.com/31106-dust-devils-mars-pack-seismic-punch.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Pluto Goes Psychedelic in Brilliant New Photo

By: Sarah Lewin

Published on: November 16, 2015

Pluto's the prettiest dwarf planet at the party in this new, brilliantly colored image
recently released by NASA. Researchers used a process called principal component analysis to
create the false-colored photo of Pluto, which highlights the subtle color differences among the
different regions, NASA officials said in a statement.
The original image was captured by the Ralph/MVIC color camera on NASA's New
Horizons spacecraft as it passed within about 22,000 miles from Pluto during its flyby in July.
Pluto's geography has already proven astonishingly varied as New Horizons continues to
send back detailed observations from its flyby. Flattened, icy plains; jagged ridges; deep craters;
and even enormous mountains that are potential icy volcanoes all have been spotted on the dwarf
planet.
The New Horizons spacecraft just recently got in place to fly past the Kuiper Belt object
2014 MU69, a small, cold target more than a billion miles outward from Pluto, a trip that will
take an additional 3 years - and as it continues its long journey, scientists will keep poring over
its Pluto flyby transmissions.
http://www.space.com/31120-pluto-psychedelic-color-photo.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

Meteor Showers on Mercury May Explain Astronomical Puzzle

By: Elizabeth Howell

Published on: November 23rd, 2015

The new Mercury finding came after scientists were puzzled by a strange pattern in
calcium observed in the thin atmosphere of the crater-filled planet.
Mercury can experience meteor showers as Comet Encke periodically peppers the
planet's tenuous atmosphere with dust, new research suggests. Earth has several meteor showers
every year, generally occurring when the planet plows through the dust trail left behind by a
comet or asteroid passing near the sun.
Based on observations from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists found that
calcium measured near the planet's surface varies regularly through Mercury's year. A mystery
arose when a model predicted that Mercury's calcium peak should instead occur just before
perihelion, based on when the planet moves through interplanetary dust near the sun.
With the comet's short orbit of just 3.3 years, the sun's energy has affected the body so
much that a dense dust stream formed over millennia. The timing was still a puzzle: At first, the
team thought the comet's dust could hit Mercury's surface and blast calcium particles from the
planet into space, but the calcium peak falls a week before Encke's closest approach to Mercury.
The model suggested that the comet's dust trail spreads along the path of the comet. In the
model, the dust stream eventually lagged behind Encke, to a spot similar to where the calcium
peak was observed in real life.
http://www.space.com/31186-mercury-may-have-meteor-showers.html

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

This is the Hottest White Dwarf in Our Galaxy

By: Elizabeth Howell

Published on: December 2nd, 2015

New observations of a white dwarf reveal that it is a scorcher, at roughly 250,000 degrees
Celsius - about 2.5 times hotter than a typical star remnant that is just beginning to cool. What's
more, scientists discovered the dwarf lives just at the edge of the Milky Way, contradicting
previous research showing it is from outside the galaxy.
The new observations come courtesy of ultraviolet observations performed by the Hubble
Space Telescope, suggesting that the star was once five times more massive than our own Sun.
No one is quite sure how this star got so hot, and its chemical composition still needs to be
analyzed.
"The strange thing about this white dwarf is the surface composition," wrote lead author
Klaus Werner of the University of Tbingen in Germany, in an e-mail to Discovery News. "It is
carbon and oxygen without hydrogen and helium. Currently, there is no good explanation for this
phenomenon. Commonly, white dwarfs have either hydrogen-dominated or helium-dominated
atmospheres."
It appears the star's temperature peaked at more than 400,000 degrees Celsius about 1,000
years ago. It was spotted in X-ray images about 20 years ago because it was so hot, but it
originally was believed to be in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy outside of our own.
"Future X-ray surveys combined with optical surveys might reveal more of this kind of
white dwarf with unusual surface composition," Werner added. The research was recently
published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Science in the New Journal

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007

http://www.space.com/31253-this-is-the-hottest-white-dwarf-in-our-galaxy.html
Sun Could Unleash Devastating Superflare
By: Mike Wall

Published on: December 7th, 2015

The sun is capable of firing off an incredibly powerful superflare that could wreak havoc
on Earth's technology-dependent society, a new study suggests. The same basic processes drive
the "Normal" flares of high-energy radiation emitted by the sun and superflares blasted out by
faraway stars, which can be thousands of times more powerful, researchers found.
This result "Supports the hypothesis that the sun is able to produce a potentially
devastating superflare," study co-author Anne-Marie Broomhall, from the University of Warwick
in England, said in a statement. The research team analyzed a superflare emitted by the binary
star KIC9655129, which lies about 1,500 light-years from Earth, using NASA's planet-hunting
Kepler space telescope.
Observations made using Kepler revealed key similarities between KIC9655129's
superflare and eruptions on Earth's sun, researchers said. "We have found evidence for multiple
waves, or multiple periodicities, in a stellar superflare, and the properties of these waves are
consistent with those that occur in solar flares."
Strong solar flares can cause temporary radio blackouts, and they're often accompanied
by massive explosions of solar plasma called coronal mass ejections that can be even more
disruptive. So the consequences of a superflare could be disastrous, Pugh said. "Fortunately, the
conditions needed for a superflare are extremely unlikely to occur on the sun, based on previous
observations of solar activity," Pugh said.

Science in the New Journal

http://www.space.com/31295-sun-catastrophic-superflare-possible.html

Kendra Koester
Phys 1040-007