Like the Moon, Mercury is also airless. Once its bulk density was determined I became less scientifically interested in it. Density is an important piece of data for modeling the evolution of the solar system. Continue reading
This is one of the best photos of Mars ever taken from Earth or Low Earth Orbit. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this close-up of the red planet Mars when it was just 88 million kilometers away. This color image was assembled from a series of exposures taken within 36 hours of the Mars closest approach… Continue reading
A team of scientists led by NASA space scientist James Mason have proposed the idea of using a mid-powered laser and telescope to nudge pieces of space junk out of the way and slow it down to avoid collisions. Continue reading
Unlike conventional rockets, launch loops can have many launches per hour, independent of weather, and are not inherently polluting. Rockets create pollution such as nitrates in their exhausts due to high exhaust temperature, and can also create greenhouse gases depending on propellant choices. Continue reading
Thirty-five years ago, Gerard K. O’Neill wrote: “We are so used to living on a planetary surface that it is a wrench for us even to consider continuing our normal human activities in another location”. He concluded that the best place for a growing industrial society is not on the Earth… Continue reading
Ferengi smugglers shake in their boots as the first step towards tractor beams is announced. In the past, lasers have been used only to impart forward momentum to their targets. They hit objects with photons, and those objects move forward with the beam of light (or burst into flame). Continue reading
Wormholes are one of the stranger objects that arise in general relativity. Although no experimental evidence for wormholes exists, scientists predict that they would appear to serve as shortcuts between one point of spacetime and another. Continue reading
The Milky Way has an estimated 160 orbiting globular clusters -hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of stars all bound together in a tight ball due to their gravity- of which one quarter are thought to be ‘alien’ invaders from other galaxies, according to research from Swinburne University of Technology (Australia). Continue reading
Lonely Earth-like planets with tumultuous cores could conceivably support life even if they had no stars, a new study says. Researchers Dorian Abbot and Eric Switzer at the University of Chicago have dubbed these theoretical worlds “Steppenwolf planets,” because… Continue reading
A launch loop (also known as a Lofstrom loop) is a proposed design for a very efficient non-rocket spacelaunch method. It is a much simpler concept than the space elevator, but still more complex than tether propulsion systems such as the rotovator. Continue reading