In an interesting experiment to see how well terrestrial bacteria might survive on Mars, a group built their own Mars simulator.

From UniverseToday.com:

A team led by Giuseppe Galletta of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Padova simulated the conditions present on Mars, and then introduced several strains of bacteria into the simulator to record their survival rate.

So how did the experiment turn out?

The results – some of the strains of bacteria were shown to survive up to 28 hours under these conditions, an amazing feat given that there is nowhere on the surface of the Earth where the temperatures get this low or the ultraviolet radiation is as strong as on Mars.

We can all discuss this at the upcoming Carl Sagan Day: Carl Sagan Day Saturday November 7th

Bacteria Could Survive in Martian Soil | Universe Today

Originally from Arxiv and here

The Russian space research institute IKI has announced ambitious plans to explore the planet Venus. Is this a sign that they’ve forgone Mars because the “Red Planet” is just so cliche now? Or do they know something we don’t?

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Russia plots return to Venus

Mr. Show had it first…

Real story.

Ah, moons. So often overshadowed by your rocky, gassy, and thermonuclear overlords, you help invoke tides, stabilize axial tilts, sculpt and replenish rings, and provide at least one species with a stepping stone to timidly venture from the safety of their home planet. In this article we pay tribute to all those underappreciated planetary custodians by recognizing five of the downright weirdest moons in the solar system.

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photo credit: aresauburn™

Space.com posted an article last week about a boy being hit in the hand with a meteorite. Since then the online community has been abuzz, some excited, some crying fraud.

The details of the event itself are sketchy and vague, though the meteorite reportedly left a scar on the boy’s hand before drilling a crater into the ground. We talked to Astronomer Phil Plait about the incident. He gives a great breakdown of the case on his website Bad Astronomy.

Us: So do you think it is at all likely that the kid was hit with a meteorite?

Phil: It’s possible, but there are too many holes in the story. I’m pretty suspicious of this for the obvious reasons — it’s pretty unlikely — but a lot of the story doesn’t add up. He was on his way to school on what’s obviously a suburban street, but no one else saw the flash, the bang, him getting hit? Plus, the Telegraph article misquotes the scientist, so it seems like this is less and less likely the more and more I look at it.”

The Bad astronomer alerted us to the existence of photographs of the boy, crater and meteorite on a German Newspaper’s website. He believes that the impact crater in the photo is probably a fake.

But if confirmed, this incident will be one of the only known direct meteorite strikes that has occurred since Ann Hodges was struck with a grapefruit size meteorite in 1954, the first known incident in human history. We aren’t holding our breaths just yet.

Saturn’s North Pole (Cassini-Huygens, 2007 and 2008)

In November 1980, planetary scientists eagerly examined transmissions received from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it sped past Saturn. And with good reason! Amid those transmissions was the first image of Saturn’s North Pole – a region that’s virtually impossible to see from Earth, and, depending on the degree by which Saturn is tilted, can be cloaked in darkness for up to 15 years at a time (and you thought your last winter was never going to end).

What those scientists saw, and later missions confirmed, was a decidedly bizarre feature in the gas giant’s atmosphere directly above the North Pole: a 15,000-mile-wide hexagon.

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A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…

Probably the most fascinating idea that Star Trek popularized was the idea of a warp drive. This was a concept from golden age sci-fi that went mainstream via Trek as space-age audiences became sophisticated enough to realize that NASA’s fastest rockets wouldn’t take you very far in a human lifetime. Even going the speed of light wouldn’t work for a show that tried to visit more than one star system in it’s 3 season run (due to time dilation your characters could visit those places, but their friends back on earth would be long dead). What was needed was a (plot) device that allowed you to visit distant planets in the time it takes to drive to the next state.

Since Star Trek, warp drive has become a part of public consciousness. It’s a theoretical form of technology that some feel is as inevitable as AI and teleportation.

There’s one big catch; while AI (or something that acts like it) seems to be a problem solved at some point on a graph projecting the development of intelligent systems and teleportation seems to be more of an energy problem, there’s not a viable theory for how a warp drive could work (exotic matter, worm holes, Alcubierre drives etc.) that doesn’t violate the laws of physics (as we know them) or result in some equation balancing phenomenon like a “quantum scream” (an obscure term used in an equally obscure paper on the subject).
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Astronomers have identified two massive balls of ice, orbiting a dwarf planet on the fringe of our solar system. According to sciencenews.org:

You’d need a mighty tall glass to hold two space objects that researchers have now identified as ice cubes at the fringes of the solar system. The larger of the icy bodies is about the width of Ohio, the smaller about twice the length of Rhode Island. Both bodies are moons of the dwarf planet Haumea.

Now that’s a lot of ice. It’s nice to know that when we finally get around to colonizing the solar system that there will be no shortage of fresh water to be harvested from these two ice spheres and space objects like them.