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| Just How Earth-Like is the Newest Planet? |
| Topic: New Planets |
06/15/05 |
| In the land rush known as extrasolar planet hunting, the most prized real estate is advertised as "Earth-like." On Monday, June 13, scientists raced to plant their flag on a burning hunk of rock orbiting a red star. |
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| July Fourth: Crashing the Party |
| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
06/13/05 |
| Having a comet run into your spacecraft sounds like a catastrophe, but Deep Impact mission scientists are hoping for just such an event. They have sent their spacecraft out on a collision course with comet Tempel 1. |
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| Titan's Icy Volcanoes Erupting Methane? |
| Topic: Titan |
06/08/05 |
| Saturn's moon Titan is shrouded in a thick smoggy atmosphere. Methane gas breaks down to form the organic smog particles, but it's a mystery where all that methane is coming from. According to a new report in the journal Nature, icy volcanoes on Titan may be a source. |
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| Opportunity Escapes Sandtrap |
| Topic: Mars |
06/04/05 |
| The Opportunity rover has been stuck in a soft, shallow dune on Mars for weeks. Its extraction today was greeted with celebration by the science team. The sandtrap analogy echoes back to the 'hole-in-one' landing that improbably placed the rover into a crater rich with bedrock and water evidence. |
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| Titan's Face Lifted |
| Topic: Titan |
05/25/05 |
| How old is Titan's surface? For years, Saturn's moon Titan was thought to have mastered the cosmetic surgery of the cosmos, with barely a mark or wrinkle to betray its true age. Close-up views provided by Cassini instruments show that Titan is nearly as flawless as it seems from a distance. |
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| Stopping the Suicide Spiral |
| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
05/11/05 |
| Young stars in the Orion Nebula have quite a temper, flashing powerful X-rays every few days. Scientists wonder if such X-ray flares could rough up the calm sea of a proto-planetary disk, and thereby rescue burgeoning planets from certain oblivion. Does a temperamental youth ensure the existence of future planets? |
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| A Volcanic Dinosaur Debate |
| Topic: Biosphere |
05/09/05 |
| Scientists can recite a long list of the devastating environmental consequences of a large meteorite impact, but they cannot prove these effects have led to the simultaneous loss of life around the globe. |
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| Has Spirit Found Bedrock in Columbia Hills? |
| Topic: Mars |
04/29/05 |
| Since arriving at the Columbia Hills, Spirit, one of the Mars Exploration Rovers, has encountered some mysterious phenomena. The rover's right front "arthritic" wheel that plagued Spirit's 2-mile trek across the plains is now suddenly working perfectly. |
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| State-of-the-Art Mineralogy for Mars |
| Topic: Mars |
04/25/05 |
| Aiming to nail down whether Mars could have nurtured life in the past, the Mars Science Laboratory will live up to its name, with a state-of-the-art internal chemical and mineralogical laboratory. The rover will pick up rocks, chew, swallow, then analyze the minerals in detail as no Mars mission ever has. |
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| Choked in Dust |
| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
04/20/05 |
| Looking at a star similar to our sun, the Spitzer Space Telescope has detected a dusty inner solar system. Violent collisions within a large asteroid belt may be generating all this dust. Such an asteroid belt also would present a danger to any habitable planets orbiting the star. |
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