Measuring a "Super-Earth". Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It's high time AstrobioWire did its first all-in-one news round-up, so here it is. These are some of the best news articles to come out of NASA so far this year (we'll focus on NASA this time, since their research is so very news-friendly).
You may have seen some of these nuggets orbiting the social mediasphere already, while others may have eluded your scopes entirely. Either way, stand by for awesomeness in 3...2...1...
- Supercritical Water Starts Fires in Space: "When supercritical water is mixed with organic material, a chemical reaction takes place—oxidation. It's a form of burning without flames."
- Super-Earth Measured With Extreme Accuracy: "A team led by Sarah Ballard, a NASA Carl Sagan Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle, recently measured the diameter of a "super Earth" to within an accuracy of 148 miles total or about 1 percent — remarkable accuracy for an exoplanet located about 300 light years from Earth."
- NASA to Conduct Astronaut Twin Experiment: "The interesting thing about Scott is, he's a twin. His brother Mark is also an astronaut, now retired. While Scott, the test subject, spends one year circling Earth at 17,000 mph, Mark will remain behind as a control."
- Is Saturn Forming a New Moon? "We have not seen anything like this before. We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right."
A moon is born? NASA's Cassini captures a disturbance in Saturn's outer ring. Source: NASA
- Teleconnected Clouds Interact Poles Apart: "New data from NASA's AIM spacecraft have revealed "teleconnections" in Earth's atmosphere that stretch all the way from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again, linking weather and climate more closely than simple geography would suggest."
- There's Definitely Water in the Asteroid Belt: "This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere."
If that didn't whet your appetite, check out the Science News section at NASA for more great stories.
