Scientists have proven: there are asteroids – piles of rubble that carry water, carbon and amino acids
Scientists have proven that there are asteroids that are resistant to external influences. This means that the tested methods are not suitable for protecting the Earth from such objects. Scientists have discovered possible “seeds of life” in the matter of asteroids: The idea that life originated outside our solar system has been around for a very long time, and now analysis of new asteroid samples is providing evidence for this “panspermia” theory.
Heavy hydrogen used in nuclear energy and water turned out to be older than Earth
In protoplanetary disks, water is virtually omnipresent. Recent studies of the water content of early planetary systems like ours show that water is an abundant and ubiquitous molecule, originally synthesized on the surface of tiny grains of interstellar dust by hydrogenation of frozen oxygen, reports the journal Elements. In the molecular cloud from which a new planetary system will emerge, oxygen attaches and freezes to the dust grains it encounters. Once a hydrogen molecule intersects with this frozen oxygen, water ice is formed.
Europa, a moon of Jupiter, generates enough oxygen to breathe for a million people during the day
NASA’s Juno mission measures the amount of oxygen on Europa. Jupiter’s ice-covered moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours—enough to keep a million people breathing for a day. But the rate of oxygen production on Jupiter’s moon Europa is significantly slower than most previous studies. The results, published March 4 in the journal Nature Astronomy, were obtained by measuring hydrogen evolution from the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon using data collected by the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument.
Astronomers paid attention to the “seasons” of Uranus and Neptune, and also discovered their new satellites
The James Webb Space Telescope recently took aim at the strange and mysterious Uranus, a side-rotating ice giant. What Webb discovered was a dynamic world with rings, moons, storms and other atmospheric features, including a seasonal polar cap. With his exceptional sensitivity, Webb captured images of Uranus’ faint inner and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta Ring, the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. He also took pictures of many of the planet’s 27 known moons, even seeing some of the smaller moons inside the rings.
Saturn’s moons: organic compounds discovered on Enceladus; Mimas has a subglacial ocean
The Cassini probe delivered new information about the moons of Saturn. In the subglacial ocean of Enceladus, Saturn’s moon, many organic compounds involved in the synthesis of proteins and DNA were discovered. This is very similar to the “primordial soup” that existed on Earth billions of years ago. There may be life on a distant, icy world at the edge of the solar system. Saturn has 146 moons, the most in the solar system. The largest one, Titan, has long been considered the most interesting. The Huygens lander was sent to it as part of the Cassini mission in 2005. Behind the dense atmosphere, the probe saw a lifeless, cold world, shrouded in smog, with seas and lakes of methane. Some evidence suggests that there is an ocean below the surface.
Uranus and Neptune are actually the same blue color, new color images show
While Voyager 2’s familiar images of Uranus were released in a form closer to “true” color, the images of Neptune were actually stretched and enhanced, and therefore artificially made too blue.
Roscosmos: nuclear tug “Zeus” will go to explore the natural satellites of Jupiter
Today, the satellites of Jupiter – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – attract the closest attention of scientists around the world and are even considered as objects for colonization in the distant future. It has been established that some of them have oceans covered with ice, from under which steam sometimes escapes, and some tectonic activity is observed, which indicates a hot core of the celestial body. Heat and water are necessary conditions for the existence of life. The presence of people on the nuclear tug during the research is not planned at this stage.
Venus has attracted special attention from the Russian scientific community
Phosphine, a byproduct of anaerobic biology, was discovered on Venus.
Subglacial water and organic hydrocarbons discovered on Saturn’s moon Titan
On Titan, a moon of Saturn, researchers have detected the presence of hydrocarbons, ice and water in the form of an ocean 100 kilometers below the surface of the moon. In addition, scientists suggest that life may exist on Titan, explaining its occurrence by the mixing of water and organic matter in the crater of a fallen comet.