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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

While the Spirit and Opportunity rovers continue to investigate Mars, scientists are already testing more advanced rovers for future missions. Nathalie Cabrol, a planetary geologist with NASA Ames and the SETI Institute, and a member of the Mars Exploration Rover team, has been testing

The detection of methane on Mars has generated a lot of speculation about what could possibly be producing it. Is it coming out of active volcanoes? Maybe the methane results from some geologic or chemical process we don't yet understand.

Meteorites and comets should have delivered vast amounts of organic chemicals to Mars, yet the Viking mission found no organics in the red soil. A new hypothesis by Sushil Atreya suggests how dust storms may zap away any chances for life on the martian