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Hot Topic
Deep Space
Cosmic Evolution
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From Death Comes Life
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
10/14/05 |
| A team of NASA exobiology researchers revealed organic chemicals that play a crucial role in the chemistry of life are common in space. |
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The Black Hole-y Grail
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
10/08/05 |
| Common wisdom holds that we can never see a black hole because nothing can escape it - not even light. Fortunately, black holes aren't completely black. As gas is pulled into a black hole by its strong gravitational force, the gas heats up and radiates. |
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Our Three-Brane Existence
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
10/02/05 |
| Physicists who work with a concept called string theory envision our universe as an eerie place with at least nine spatial dimensions, six of them hidden from us, perhaps curled up in some way so they are undetectable. |
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Pop Goes the Star
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
09/25/05 |
| What did the very first stars look like? How did they live and die? Astronomers have ideas, but no proof. The first stars are so distant and formed so long ago that they are invisible to our best telescopes. |
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Building Life from Star-Stuff
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
09/05/05 |
| If a planet or moon has only a slight rotational tilt, a tall mountain or crater rim can be forever bathed in sunlight. In 1994, NASA's Clementine mission found candidates for such "peaks of eternal light" on the moon's north and south poles. |
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A Milky Way Bar Please
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
08/20/05 |
| With the help of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have conducted the most comprehensive structural analysis of our galaxy and have found tantalizing new evidence that the Milky Way is much different from your ordinary spiral galaxy. |
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Solar System Forensics
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
08/17/05 |
| From chemical fingerprints preserved in primitive meteorites, scientists at UCSD have determined that the collapsing gas cloud that eventually became our sun was glowing brightly during the formation of the first material in the solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. |
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Dustiest Star Could Harbor Young Earth
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
07/26/05 |
| A relatively young star located about 300 light-years away is greatly improving our understanding of the formation of Earth-like planets. |
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Dusty Dwarfs
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
07/21/05 |
| Every rule has an exception. One rule in astronomy, supported by considerable evidence, states that dust disks around newborn stars disappear in a few million years. Most likely, they vanish because the material has collected into full-sized planets. |
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The Humble Space Telescope
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| Topic: Cosmic Evolution |
07/18/05 |
| Canada's MOST telescope, no larger than a suitcase, has been dubbed "the humble space telescope." But despite its diminutive size, it has already begun to make a giant contribution to our understanding of extrasolar planets. |
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