Submission + - Time Lapse Video of Earth from Space (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: This time lapse footage was taken by astronaut Don Pettit during his time on the International Space Station. It shows Earth from day to night and back to day again.
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Submission + - Solar Power Could Soon Compete with Oil (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the Stanford engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called "photon enhanced thermionic emission," or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.
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Submission + - What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan? (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: Two new papers based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. While non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan’s surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized “methane-based life.”
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Submission + - Strawberry Good Crop to Grow in Space (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: Astronauts could one day tend their own crops on long space missions, and Purdue University researchers have found a healthy candidate to help satisfy a sweet tooth – a strawberry that requires little maintenance and energy.
Bookmark Low-maintenance Strawberry Good Crop to Grow in Space (spacefellowship.com)
Submission + - Signs of water found on Saturnian moon Enceladus (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: Scientists working on the Cassini space mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus. Their findings, based on analysis from data taken in plume fly-throughs in 2008 and reported in the journal Icarus, provide evidence for the presence of liquid water, which suggests the ingredients for life inside the icy moon. The Cassini plasma spectrometer, used to gather this data, also found other species of negatively charged ions including hydrocarbons.
Bookmark Signs of liquid water found on Saturnian moon Enceladus (spacefellowship.com)
Submission + - Aboriginal folklore leads to meteorite crater (cosmosmagazine.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An Australian Aboriginal dreaming story has helped experts uncover a meteorite impact crater in the outback of the Northern Territory.
Submission + - Faster-Than-Light Pulsar Phenomena (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: Observational data from nine pulsars, including the Crab pulsar, suggest these rapidly spinning neutron stars emit the electromagnetic equivalent of a sonic boom, and a model created to understand this phenomenon shows that the source of the emissions could be traveling faster than light. The sources could be traveling up to six times light speed, or 1.8 million km per second. However, although the source of the radiation exceeds the speed of light, the emitted radiation travels at normal light speed once it leaves the source. This is not science fiction, and no laws of physics were broken in this model.
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Mars Images Reveal Evidence of Ancient Lakes 128
Matt_dk writes "Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology. Earlier research had suggested that Mars had a warm and wet early history but that between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, before the Hesperian Epoch, the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became cold and dry. In the new study, the researchers analysed detailed images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the red planet, and concluded that there were later episodes where Mars experienced warm and wet periods."
