Pluto’s atmosphere is cold and hazy. Recent observations have shown it to be much colder than predicted theoretically, suggesting an unknown cooling mechanism. Atmospheric gas molecules, particularly water vapour, have been proposed as a coolant; however, because Pluto’s thermal structure is expected to be in radiative–conductive equilibrium, the required water …
Even as the recent photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope made news, radio observations made over the last three years by the NASA Deep Space Network anten- na at Goldstone, California, and the Very Large Array - a collection of radio telescopes outside Socorro, New Mtsdw - turned the spotlight …
AN ARRESTING array of photographs released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on November 2 provides amazing insights into the wonders of the cosmos. Captured through the Hubble Space Telescope, the images - of events thousands of years old but reaching the Hubble only this April - are …
SCIENCE fiction teleserials like Star Trek may not be gifts of over-stretched imagination, after all. Two independent sightings of a planet around a sun-like star dispel the notion that our solar system is unique. This has freshly fuelled inquiries into the possibility of extraterrestrial life-forms. The star, 51 -Pegasus, is …
WHEN the giant comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed against Jupiter exactly a year ago and took the world of science by storm, it also created water. Researchers working with Italy's National Research Council have been monitoring the impact, using a radio telescope equipped with a high-speed spectrometer. And they now claim …
BLACK holes provide an excellent laboratory to test the theories of astrophysics and gravity. There is, however, one small hitch: it is not possible to "see" a black hole because its high gravity doesn't let light produced inside it to come out. A group of researchers has now come closest …
THERE comes a day when every American president has his shot at immortality. Twenty years ago, in August 1975, Jimmy Carter, one of bullyboy America's rare presidential doormats, desperately wanted an unique event to pump steroids into his image of a gentle, bumbling urpacifist. He also wanted something to immortalise …
Atlantis and Mir did an intimately interlocked fandango for 5 days, and its crew of 6 Americans and 4 Russians sprinted through an impeccably and precisely scheduled series of 28 experiments, 15 of them aboard the Atlantis shuttle: the Atlantis' 60-feet-long bay carried a huge (by spartan extraterrestrial standards) laboratory …
THOMAS Crapper, the inventor of the commode, had never anticipated the headache involved in the act of hitting the pot in space. There has been a steady and gainless drain of US $3 million on R&D; on the no-gravity commode before every blastoff. The Russians, with more on their minds …
THE Solar System is usually thought of as the Sun and the 9 planets (with their moons) revolving around it. In this picture, the outer limit of the Solar System is obviously the orbit of the farthest planet Pluto at about 40 astronomical units (I AU is the distance from …
SINCE time immemorial, people have believed that the moon influences Earth's climate. Although many such beliefs remain unsubstantiated, very recent research by a group of American climatologists shows a significant emperical relation between lunar phases and daily temperatures on Earth over the past 15 years (Science, vol 1267 no 5203). …
PLANETS in our solar system share a mysterious mathematical relationship. If you take the sequence 0, 3, 6, 12, add 4 to each number and divide by 10, you arrive at a ratio repeated in other systems -- the distances of particular planets from the Sun: distance of Earth from …
AS scientists unravel more data on the crash of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, consensus among experts on the basic aspects of the impact seems to be fast disappearing. New evidence suggests that the size of the cometary fragments, for instance, might have been much smaller than believed. Most …
IN 1877 Italian astronomer Giovanni pwelli observed on the planet curious markings that he called 11channels). The discovery caused r to wonder if these channels A the creation of intelligent kas. In the 1890s, American Omer Percival Lowell went so far maest that the channels were is of crop fields …
THE bright side of moon may move many a heart to romantic verse, but for scientists, it is the faint glow on the dark portion of the crescent moon that matters. The glow is a reflection of sunlight bounced off the Earth by clouds, snow and dust hazes. The reflection, …
IN DAYS of yore, the heavens were a vast expanse of terror. Unusual movements in the sky evoked a sense of wonder and fear. Solar and lunar eclipses were thought to be caused by monsters devouring the sun and the moon. Comets -- which seemed to appear from nowhere, zipped …
NEW discoveries in astronomy are sometimes linked to serendipity. It was by chance that astronomer Alexander Wolszczan and his team at the Pennsylvania State University found evidence for what appeared to be the first planetary system outside our solar system. Another 3 years of data on the finding has confirmed …
"CARRYING capacity" is likely to be the Catchphrase of the Year. The term is liberally sprinkled throughout State of the World Report 1994, like some sort of mantra. To illustrate "a breach of carrying capacity", the report cites the reintroduction in 1944 of 29 reindeer to St Matthew Island in …
Life on earth may have started after an asteroid banged into her. Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California say that an asteroid collided with Earth between 3.6 and 4 billion years ago, thawing her frozen oceans and creating the right conditions for life to begin humming (New …
JUPITER will be the site of violent activity when fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the planet in the second or third week of July. The once-in-a-millenium event will offer astronomers a grand 6-day fireworks spectacle. The comet, now broken up into 21 large chunks, will bombard the planet and …
Whichever way we look at the future, nobody can deny that today's world is in deep crisis. The central task must be to provide adequate living conditions for a growing world population that restores and maintains a sustainable relationship with nature. This is not only a moral imperative but a …
