solar

NASA’s daring Parker Solar Probe spacecraft zips past the sun again today

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The Parker Solar Probe is ready to make its 11th close flyby of the sun during its quest to understand how our neighboring star works. The plucky spacecraft, heavily shielded against the sun’s radiation and extreme heat, will dip to within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometers) of the solar surface on Friday (Feb. 25). … Read more

The Chelyabinsk Meteorite May Have Been Involved in The Smash That Formed Our Moon

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A meteor that exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 could have also been somehow involved in the giant impact that formed the Moon. This tantalizing finding comes thanks to a new way of dating collisions between rocks in space, based on microscopic analysis of minerals within meteorites. Although further investigation is warranted, … Read more

Mike Cannon-Brookes: Can a tech billionaire squash Australia’s coal industry by buying it?

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Frustrated with the Australian government’s inaction on climate change, software king Mike Cannon-Brookes is trying to buy several big coal plants so he can shut them down in favour of renewables Environment | Analysis 22 February 2022 By Alice Klein Open-cast coal mining in Hunter Valley, Australia PETER HARRISON/Getty Images Mike Cannon-Brookes, the third-richest person … Read more

Solar Orbiter spacecraft captures huge eruption on the sun (video)

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The Solar Orbiter spacecraft made a milestone observation in space as it captured a huge solar prominence, or eruption. It’s the largest such event ever observed in a single image along with the full solar disk and will add to the joint NASA-European mission to better understand solar activity, mission officials said in a statement. … Read more

The Sun Has Erupted Non-Stop All Month, And There Are More Giant Flares Coming

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The past few weeks or so have been a very busy time for the Sun. Our star has undergone a series of giant eruptions that have sent plasma hurtling through space. Perhaps the most dramatic was a powerful coronal mass ejection and solar flare that erupted from the far side of the Sun on February … Read more

The True Source of Earth’s Water Could Be Wildly Different to What You Think

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Nothing on Earth can live without water. The origin of water on Earth, therefore, is the origin of life in the Solar System (and the Universe) as we know it. Figuring out where and how our world obtained its water might be key to finding life on other worlds, but the truth is we don’t … Read more

Enigmatic High-Energy X-Rays Have Been Spied Coming From Jupiter

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Jupiter has finally been observed spitting out X-rays in high-energy wavelengths. Emanating from the giant planet’s permanent auroras, and detected by NASA’s space-based X-ray telescope NuSTAR, the emissions are the most energetic light seen coming from any planet in the Solar System (aside from Earth).   The detection could shed light on the most powerful … Read more

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has captured the first visible-light images of Venus

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In between its main mission, the Parker Solar Probe just made a novel contribution to Venusian science. New images from the sun-focused mission, captured during a close flyby of Venus, show the planet in visible light for the first time. With time and analysis, the new images will provide valuable information about the planet’s geology … Read more

Solar geomagnetic storms could threaten more satellites after Elon Musk’s Starlink

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX will lose 40 Starlink satellites to a geomagnetic storm as solar activity ramps up. But does this spell disaster for the future of satellites in space?  On Tuesday (Feb. 8), SpaceX revealed that likely 40 of its 49 newest Starlink satellites that launched last Thursday (Feb. 3) were affected by a geomagnetic … Read more