"A cello sounds like a cello because of its size and shape,” said astronomer Jacqueline Goldstein. “The vibrations of stars also depend on their size and structure."
It seems like play, but they're serious. Every year, at the Planetary Defense Conference, asteroid experts from around the globe run days-long simulations of asteroids headed for major cities. In 2019, it was New York City's turn.
Before we send people to Mars, we need to understand more about how Martian dust could affect astronauts and their equipment. Here are 3 things we’ve learned from the planet’s 2018 global dust storm.
Analysis of data from the Gaia satellite shows a powerful burst of star formation - a stellar baby boom - in our Milky Way galaxy 2 to 3 billion years ago. This single burst might have created half the stars in the galaxy's flat disk.
The moon's south pole has never been explored from the ground, but India's new Chandrayaan-2 mission will attempt a 1st-ever landing there, with a rover, this September.
Distant water exoplanets might have oceans thousands of miles deep. That's in contrast to Earth's ocean, which is about 6.8 miles (about 11 km) deep at its deepest point.
Pluto's orbit is very elongated. Right now, it's in a part of its orbit where its distance from the sun is steadily increasing. That fact is devastating its atmosphere.
Researchers have discovered water in tiny dust particles from asteroid Itokawa. Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft brought the asteroid dust to Earth in 2010.