Does ocean on Enceladus hold life?

Scientists seeking life on Mars may be looking for aliens in the wrong place, a NASA space probe has found. New research reveals that a vast ocean lies underground on Saturn's moon Enceladus, spewing plumes of water into space. The discovery would make the distant world the only place in the solar system other than Earth where liquid water is known to exist. An underground ocean is also suspected on one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, but water found on Mars is all ice. It means conditions may be ideal on Enceladus for life to have evolved and aquatic aliens to be swimming around in a warm sea. UK scientists led by John Zarnecki, of the Open University, are making plans for a special European space mission called Tandem to explore Enceladus and Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which is thought to resemble a young earth and may have an ocean full of organic chamicals too. Enceladus is only 318 miles wide but still geologically active. It is crossed by surface vents that squirt vast plumes into space at supersonic speeds. NASA's Cassini probe flew through one of these geysers in March and found traces of organic chemicals. Scientists had wondered whether tidal forces from Saturn might be opening the vents and releasing jets of ice. But latest evidence shows that the jets are not caused by Saturn's pull and instead the tides are keeping liquid water warm inside the moon. The discovery, revealed in the science journal Nature, was made by scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the University of Colorado and the University of Central Florida. One of the scientists, Assistant Professor Joshua Colwell, said: "There are only three places in the solar system we know or suspect to have liquid water near the surface - Earth, Europa and now Saturn's Enceladus. "Water is a basic ingredient for life, and there are certainly implications there. If we find that the tidal heating that we believe causes these geysers is a common planetary systems phenomenon, then it gets really interesting." Picture: A geyser spewing water from Enceladus, imaged by Cassini. (Photo: NASA). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Sweet news points to alien life

Astronomers have discovered a type of sugar in deep space and say it indicates that alien life could be common throughout the galaxy. The sugar - an organic molecule directly linked to the origin of life - was detected in a region of our Milky Way where habitable planets might be found. UK astronomer Dr Serena Viti, of University College London, was part of the European team that found the sugar in a vast region of space, 26,000 light-years from Earth, where stars are being born. She and colleagues from Italy, Spain and Switzerland, used a radio telescope at the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps to make the discovery within our own Milky Way galaxy. Previously the molecule, called glycolaldehyde, had only been detected towards the centre of the galaxy where conditions are thought too extreme for worlds with life. The new discovery is in a region far from the galactic centre and so may be widely spread throughout the universe. Experts say it boosts the chances that the sugar exists alongside other molecules vital for life including regions where planets like Earth might be found. It comes after Spitzer data suggested that up to 60 per cent of nearby stars could have rocky worlds like Earth orbiting them. And around 300 planets have so far been detected around other stars, with some even being imaged. Dr Viti, whose discovery is published online this week, said: "This is an important discovery as it is the first time glycolaldehyde, a basic sugar, has been detected towards a star-forming region where planets that could potentially harbour life may exist." Picture: Telescopes at the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps (Photo: Institut de RadioAstronomie Millimétrique). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Space fans find new breed of galaxy

An army of space fans have made a major discovery about the universe by taking up an addictive online computer challenge called Galaxy Zoo. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers - ordinary members of the public - signed up for the task of identifying more than a million newly photographed galaxies. And the amateurs have surprised professional astronomers by discovering a new type of galaxy that had previously gone completely unrecognised. Experts say the newly discovered objects - red spirals - are a "missing link" in their understanding of how these vast cities of billions of stars evolve. Their results, which reveal a swathe of such galaxies spread through the universe, are independently confirmed today by a second British team which used the Hubble space telescope. Amazingly, the cosmic breakthrough was made by enthusiasts from all walks of life who signed up to Galaxy Zoo, a UK-led project, last year. They call themselves Zooites and have formed a close-knit community. Galaxy Zoo was dreamed up by Chris Lintott, co-presenter with Sir Patrick Moore of The Sky At Night on BBC TV. Chris, an astrophysicist at Oxford University told Skymania News: "We had more than a million galaxies to analyse and we quickly realised that was too many for one or two researchers to handle. "I gave a few talks to promote the Galaxy Zoo idea last year and interest was astonishing. Within days of launching our website people were checking out 75,000 galaxies an hour! "It must be the equivalent to one of the most powerful computers in the world to have all those human brains wired together. The success of the project has exceeded our wildest dreams." The Zooites were asked to click through a selection of more than a million distant galaxies newly recorded by a robotic scan of the heavens called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For many of these galaxies when the volunteers checked them out, it was the first time they had ever been viewed by human eyes. The volunteers were asked to note if the blobs of galaxies were spiral or an elliptical shape like a rugby ball. If they were spiral, they had to judge if they were wound clockwise or anti-clockwise. But an unexpected result was to find so many spirals with a red hue. Professional astronomers say they are a newly identified population of galaxies which have been stripped of the gas needed to form new stars. They get their colour from a shroud of dust that has spread around the stars. Spiral galaxies usually appear a bluish-white because they are vigorously giving birth to new stars like the sun. Elliptical galaxies are a mass of mostly old, dead red stars crowded together. Chris added: "These red spiral galaxies had been lurking in the data and no-one had spotted them. They were staring us in the face. Now we know that a third of spirals around the edges of some clusters of galaxies are red. "Before, every astronomer knew that spiral galaxies were full of young stars and were blue. It turns out they were wrong! "Old elliptical galaxies have undergone violent events. But it seems these red galaxies are being gently strangled. It is like the difference between squeezing someone's neck gently and ripping their head off." Galaxy Zoo users often say the challenge is like a drug because you always want to check out "just one more galaxy" before you stop. One keen Zooite who runs the Galaxy Zoo forum is Alice Sheppard, 26, from Pembrokeshire. She said: "Galaxy Zoo has taken over my life, because it's the most interesting thing I've ever done and feels like the truest and the most worthwhile. "The fact that ordinary people can make such a discovery is tremendously exciting. It is not always seen as cool or fashionable to be interested in science but I think people are much more curious about the universe than they admit." The independent galaxy survey, called STAGES, that confirmed the Galaxy Zoo work was led by Meghan Gray, of the University of Nottingham. She said: "Our two projects have approached the problem from very different directions. It is gratifying to see that we each provide independent pieces of the puzzle pointing to the same conclusion." The work of both teams - professional and enthusiastic Zooites - will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Picture: The photos show three types of galaxy, blue spiral, red spiral and elliptical as ued by the Zooites (top row) and STAGES team (bottom row). (Credits: Galaxy Zoo/SDDS and Hubble/STAGES team). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

An alien planet - for your eyes only

A spectacular observatory which features in the latest James Bond movie has photographed a giant alien planet orbiting a star outside our own solar system. The new world, close to a baby star just 70 light-years away, was spotted using Europe's Very Large Telescope high in Chile's Atacama Desert. It is around eight times bigger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our own solar system, and around eight times further away from its home star as the Earth is from the sun. The observatory, built in the driest place on Earth, features in dramatic scenes in Bond's latest movie outing Quantum Of Solace as a hide-out for villain Dominic Greene. The landscape resembles Mars and the high altitude makes it difficult for visitors to breathe. But the thin atmosphere also made it the perfect place for such a discovery. French astronomers took pictures in infrared light of a dusty disk surrounding the star, Beta Pictoris, which is only 12 million years old. By comparison, the sun's age is around 4 billion years, making it middle-aged. The dust is thought to be a newly forming solar system around the star, in the southern constellation of Pictor, the Painter. By using a special technique called adaptive optics to counter distortion from turbulence in our own atmosphere, the French team recorded a point of light close to the star. They also had to mask the overpoweringly bright light from the star itself. The team say they need to make further observations to be completely sure that the object is not another star in the same line of sight. But no such star has been logged by the Hubble space telescope and the object's position and characteristics fit those of a planet. When confirmed, this candidate companion - labelled Beta Pictoris b - will be the closest planet from its star ever imaged. News of the achievement, in the journal Astrnomy & Astrophysics, come just a week after reports of two separate successes of picturing planets around two other stars. The latest discovery team's leader Anne-Marie Lagrange said: "Our observations point to the presence of a giant planet, about eight times as massive as Jupiter and at about the distance of Saturn in our solar system." Picture: With the glare of the star removed, the new planet is visible in the disk of dust around Beta Pictoris. (ESO/A.-M. Lagrange et al.) • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Vast glaciers hide water on Mars

Vast glaciers of water ice have been discovered buried on Mars, NASA revealed today. The find could provide vital supplies for manned missions. Scientists were surprised to find the ice buried under rocky debris much closer to the martian equator than they expected. Previous underground ice was found in the polar regions of the red planet. Now an orbiting spaceprobe called Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found buried glaciers extending for many miles from the edges of mountains and cliffs in middle latitudes. They are being compared to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica. The discovery is revealed in the journal Science. Lead author John Holt, of Texas University, said: "Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is not in the polar caps. "Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to half a mile thick. And there are many more. "In addition to their scientific value, they could be a source of water to support future exploration of Mars." NASA used a radar instrument built in Italy on the probe to find the buried ice. The rocky covering stopped the water from evaporating into space. Holt and 11 colleagues report the buried glaciers lie in the Hellas Basin region of Mars' southern hemisphere. The radar also has detected similar-appearing aprons extending from cliffs in the northern hemisphere. Earlier evidence suggests that oceans covered Mars billions of years ago but the water was lost undergound or vaporised. Picture: The Hellas Basin is the light oval region at the bottom of the image above. (Photo: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

New evidence for oceans on Mars

NASA scientists have discovered new evidence that huge oceans covered much of ancient Mars, boosting the chances that there was once life. The red planet is now a huge desert except for ice below ground and around its poles. But an orbiting spacecraft reveals evidence for two vast seas over a third of the planet just a few billion years ago. One, ten times the size of the Mediterranean, covered the northern plains of Mars. The other was twice as big - around 20 times the size of the Med. The evidence was gathered by an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey probe that detects gamma rays emitted by rocks. By checking the distribution of potassium, thorium and iron, the space scientists were able to fix a likely location for shorelines marking the edges of ancient oceans. They found a greater concentration of the elements in the lowlands and believe they were carried there from the higher lands by flowing water. It follows other research reported last month that concluded that there was still water flowing on Mars as recently as two billion years ago. Direct evidence of water-ice just below the surface was found by NASA's Phoenix lander in the northern plains earlier this year. The probe has now shut down after losing power. The Gamma Ray Spectrometer, operated by William Boynton's team at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, can detect elements buried more than a foot, or a third of a meter, below the martian surface. The instrument was previously used to make the dramatic discovery in 2002 that there is abundant water-ice near the surface of Mars at high latitudes and around the poles. Professor Victor Baker, of the University of Arizona, believes that volcanic eruptions a few million years ago unleashed floods far greater than Brazil's Amazon River. They filled the northern lowlands of Mars, forming seas and lakes that triggered relatively warmer and wetter conditions lasting tens of thousands of years. Geologist James Dohm, who led the latest study, said: "We compared data on potassium, thorium and iron above and below a shoreline believed to mark an ancient ocean that covered a third of Mars' surface, and an inner shoreline believed to mark a younger, smaller ocean." The latest research will be published in a special issue of the journal Planetary and Space Science. Photo: An image of the northern plains of Mars from another probe, Mars Global Surveyor. Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Amazing images of new solar system

An international team of scientists have taken the first ever photos of a system of planets orbiting another star. The pictures, released today, provide the first visual proof that alien worlds exist. The photos, taken with the giant Gemini North telescope and neighbouring W M Keck Observatory on a mountaintop in Hawaii, shows a new solar system in the constellation of Pegasus, the flying horse. Three planets, each much larger than Jupiter, can be clearly seen in the pictures orbiting their own sun - a star called HR 8799, which is around 60 million years old and 130 light-years away from Earth. Observations over several months confirmed that they were moving with and travelling around the star which is also circled by dust. Two of the planets, labelled b and c, are visible in the image on the right which has the central star hidden. Around 300 so-called extrasolar planets have been discovered in recent years but their existence has been detected by such things as a wobble in the starlight and they have never been directly seen. A previous picture, said to be of an extrasolar planet, has not been confirmed. Dr Jenny Patience, of the University of Exeter, in England, was part of the team that made the new discovery. She told Skymania News: "We've been trying to capture images of extrasolar planets around stars for many years and now we have pictures of three at once. "This is a really nice result. It is a chance to study young planets - they are much bigger than Jupiter and still very hot so the conditions will not be right yet for life. "But our discovery makes this star a prime target now for finding smaller Earth-like planets. We'll be extending the search too to other stars. The hunt for other planets to discover how common solar systems like our are in space is incredibly exciting." By coincidence, NASA scientists revealed today that the Hubble space telescope has photographed a planet too, around Fomalhaut, one of the brightest stars in the sky. The Hubble image shows a planet shaping a disk of dust around Fomalhaut, which is 200 million years old and lies just 25 light-years away in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish. The planets in the Gemini North pictures were revealed using a technique called adaptive optics that removes the "twinkling" of starlight caused by turbulence in our own atmosphere. See the full Gemini release here. No such problems faced Hubble, high in orbit above the atmosphere. But in both cases the blinding light of the star had to be masked out because it was millions of time brighter than the planets. Hubble's photo shows a disk of ice and dust, similar to a band called the Kuiper Belt in our own solar system, which was first pictured in 2004. Now the new planet has been photographed 3 billion kilometers inside the ring's inner edge. Images taken 21 months apart show how far it has moved in its orbit around Fomalhaut. See the Hubble release here. Both the stars with new planets are much younger than the sun which is around 4 billion years old and half way through its life. Their planets are therefore likely to be at a much younger stage of evolution. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Galaxies galore in view back in time

Sometimes a picture comes along that blows your mind. This image covers about the same area of sky as a half moon - yet that tiny patch contains tens of thousands of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. I have not actually counted them all - no one has. But I estimate that there are more than 50,000 star cities in the colourful patchwork released today by the European Southern Observatory. The 27 megapixel picture gives the deepest ever view into the universe from Earth, revealing galaxies nearly 12 billion years back in time. Amazingly, astronomers say the view will be similar across the entire sky since galaxies are evenly distributed. It was taken with instruments including the Very Large Telescope from Europe's Paranal Observatory in Chile, a scientific outpost that stars in the latest James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace. This remote spot in the Atacama Desert is high enough and dry enough to allow images to be taken in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum. It was built up over 55 hours spread across many years. Some of the galaxies are a billion times fainter than could be seen with the unaided eye. There are only a handful of actual stars in the picture, foreground objects in our own Milky Way galaxy. The image is of a region called the Chandra Deep Field South and is one that is especially closely observed by astronomers seeking to build a census of what is in the sky. ESO's chief press officer, Henri Boffin, tells me the strip shown measures just 14.1 x 21.6 minutes of arc (arcmin). For comparison, the full moon has an angular diameter of approximately 30 minutes of arc. ESO's publicity team compare viewing this amazing picture to diving into a pool of millions of distant galaxies of different shapes and colours. You can read their whole release and see the big picture in all its glory here. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Another asteroid skims past Earth

Earth had a near miss with a passing asteroid this week. The space rock, labelled 2008 VM, was only discovered on Monday (3 November) at 5.49 UT as it raced towards us. Hours later, at 22.29 UT, it skimmed by at a distance of just 28,000 miles - around an eighth as far the moon. The find was made by a robotic telescope in Arizona, part of the Catalina Sky Survey which constantly scans the sky for potentially hazardous objects. The cosmic missile is thought to have been around 3 meters wide (10ft). It came just a month after a similar sized space rock scored a direct hit on Earth, crashing in a remote part of the Sudan on 7 October. Neither asteroid was large enough to do any damage, but they show once again the importance of campaigns such as Spaceguard in watching out for larger objects that could cause untold devastation. An impact with an asteroid called Apophis in 2036 has still not been ruled out, although the chances are slim. Picture: A larger asteroid called Gaspra, photographed by the Galileo spaceprobe in 1991. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Shields up! Star Trek defences for real

Scientists have invented a defence barrier for spaceships just like in Star Trek. It may not withstand attacks from Klingon battleships just yet. But it will protect astronauts from space weather - deadly radiation blasts on journeys to Mars. UK scientists from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, created their space shield by mimicking a natural force field that protects us all. And they did it with a simple, shop-bought magnet costing around $20. Earth acts like a giant natural magnet, creating a barrier that deflects the radiation that bombards our planet during storms on the sun. This barrier, called the magnetosphere, produces the spectacular northern lights that dance in the night sky. The British team, which also included scientists from universities at York, Strathclyde and Lisbon, invented a similar barrier that could surround spacecraft. Radiation has been seen as the greatest danger facing astronauts on long spaceflights. Powerful enough blasts could even kill a crew. The team, led by Dr Ruth Bamford, of RAL, announced their idea for a protective bubble last year. They were not sure that their set-up would be powerful enough to work when they experimented with a model in the laboratory. But it worked first time. Dr Bamford told Skymania News: "These initial experiments have shown promise and it may be possible to shield astronauts from deadly space weather. NASA have shown a lot of interest in our work. We've shown this is possible and not just science fiction. It is all very encouraging." "NASA are bound to face all sorts of problems when they return to the Moon or fly to Mars but protecting astronauts from radiation is one of the greatest concerns. "We are already in regular correspondence with Dr Frank Cucinotta of NASA's Space Radiation Laboratory. Practical application to a spaceship is still some years away but it is all looking very positive." She says it will take 15 to 20 years to develop a full-scale model for a real spaceship. But that would make it available in time for the first manned missions to Mars in a few decades time. Dr Bamford pointed out that science fiction shows had got their ideas for defence fields from the Earth's own protective field. "The shields in Star Trek were inspired by the magnetosphere in the first place," she said. The results are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. Picture: An artist's impression of NASA's next big space endeavour, an Ares-1 rocket launching an Orion capsule into space. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Toxic tank set to crash to Earth

A toxic tank twice the size of a domestic fridge is set to crash to Earth tomorrow (Monday) -- and NASA says it could land on any continent except Antarctica (see update below). The giant tank, weighing more than half a ton, and full of ammonia, was thrown overboard from the International Space Station more than a year ago. It was jettisoned by spacewalking astronaut Clayton Anderson on July 23, 2007, because NASA considered it too dangerous to bring home on the shuttle. Normally the space agency is opposed to turning space into a rubbish dump but the ammonia, which had been used to cool electronics on the orbiting outpost, was considered a risk to the crew. The machine, called the Early Ammonia Servicer, or EAS for short, has been circling the Earth since it was dumped in a steadily decaying orbit. Now predictions how it will re-enter sometime today, creating a fireball as brilliant as the full moon as it disintegrates. However as many as 15 chunks are expected to survive and crash into the ground at 100mph. Unfortunately the space agency cannot be precise about just when the EAS will re-enter in a window 30 hours long, meaning it could come down almost anywhere. For latest details check out Spaceweather.com. In September, Europe's new spacecraft, the Jules Verne, burned up in a fireball but that was a controlled re-entry targeted on an unpopulated region of the Pacific Ocean. A previous toxic threat was the spy satellite USA-193 which the US military shot down over the Pacific earlier this year. A spokesman said: "NASA expects up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the searing hot temperatures of re-entry, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces to nearly 40 lbs. The largest pieces could slam into the Earth's surface at about 100mph." He added: "If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground on Monday, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it." The EAS, which had been installed in 2001, was rendered obsolete by upgrades aboard the space station and was jettisoned to make room for new hardware. Update: The tank appears to have come down early, Spaceweather.com is reporting. Observers who had been monitoring it looking like a moderately bright star, said they could find no trace of it today. The final observation reported of it was made by Thomas Dorman, from Horizon City, Texas, as it crossed his sky on Saturday night. It failed to appear on later predicted flyovers. He commented: "I think it is safe to assume EAS has reentered." US Space Command later said they believed the EAS reentered Earth's atmosphere as a fireball yesterday at 04.51 GMT over the Indian Ocean, south of Tasmania. Photo: The EAS floats away from the space station after being jettisoned by Clayton Anderson (NASA). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com