science

The Missing Link Roundup

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Atlas V MMS Launch - NASA

NASA’s Atlas V rocket launched recently from Cape Canaveral with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft onboard. The MMS spacecraft will construct the first ever 3D view of Earth’s magnetosphere. Awesome! — NASA

China’s Yutu moon rover has quietly been doing a bunch of science on our moon. Recently scientists announced that they’ve discovered over nine different layers of rock beneath the surface, leading them to believe that the moon has actually been volcanically active over the last 3 billion years. — New Hampshire Voice

Did you know there is a small binary star system called “Scholz’s star” that grazed our solar system 7000 years ago? — CNET

The Missing Link Roundup

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Hops383HOPS 383 is a young Class 0 (short-lived) protostar, and we’ve seen it start to form before our eyes. NASA says that HOPS 383 is the youngest protostellar eruption we’ve ever recorded, which is pretty awesome as we’re still trying to figure out exactly how this kind of thing happens. — NASA

Newly published research takes a look at why our solar system is so abnormal, could it be Jupiter’s fault? The Jupiter-gravity theory explains not only the hole in our inner solar system but also how the inner rocky planets formed. — UCSC News

Scientists have discovered evidence of nitrates in rocks from Mars. This is a huge discovery because  while we don’t know what it means yet, Nitrogen is one of the crucial building blocks of life (as we know it). — Phys.org

The Missing Link Roundup

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In honor of the Solar Dynamic Observatory’s (SDO) fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. It features giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun’s surface, among many, many other amazing moments. — Youtube/NASA

The science community has been pushing to go to Saturn’s moon Titan for years, so NASA recently discussed how we might be able to explore a planet that is mostly liquid. Solution? Send a badass submarine 886 million miles from Earth to Titan. — i09

The Curiosity rover recently took a composite selfie on Mars, giving us a very cool panorama view of the Martian landscape. There is also an annotated version on this page which points out where Curiosity has been recently, in the background of the photo. — NASA JPL

The Missing Link Roundup

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Supernova RefsdalWhat are we looking at in the above photo? The singular Supernova Refsdal exploding at four different stages in time, thanks to Einsteinian optics. This is known as an Einstein Cross, and we’ve never witnessed a supernova captured within one before. The scientists that found it published their study in the new issue of Science, which just so happens to coincide with the 100 year anniversary of Einstein’s release of his general theory of relativity papers. — NY Times

Recently a group of passionate artists and scientists combined to film an amazingly beautiful dance/opera inside of CERN, called Symmetry. It will be debuting this month at several film festivals, but you can check out the teaser trailer now. I can’t wait to see this in full length! — The Creators Project

While we still don’t know a lot about dark matter, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics think the amount of dark matter in a galaxy is directly proportionate to the mass of the black hole at the center of said galaxy. How and why? We still don’t know, but this is an interesting read! — CFA

The Missing Link Roundup

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NuSTARNASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, normally spends time probing black holes, supernova remnants, and other extreme objects in the far reaches of space. Recently we pointed it at our own sun and it has produced the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy X-rays. —Astronomy.com

In February Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, began a million-mile journey that will bring it to a place where the gravitational forces between the sun and Earth are balanced so it can do science! —KQED News

Did you know that Pluto, including its atmosphere, is technically bigger than Earth? Why is that the case, and why aren’t we demanding for Pluto to be called a planet again?!? — New Horizons Website

The Missing Link Roundup

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NASA Lunar PhotosA number of NASA’s ‘blooper’ reels from older space missions are up for auction. Which means we get to see all the photos, and they are very cool. — Sploid

After traveling for 9 years, NASA’s New Horizon’s craft is out of hibernation and closing in on Pluto. Even though it may not be a planet, we are about to learn a lot about the little icy rock on the fringe of our solar system. — NASA

On the 85th anniversary of Pluto’s discovery, New Horizon took photos of Pluto and its moons, Nix and Hydra. While the craft is still over 100 million miles away from the celestial bodies this is the best ever view we’ve gotten of the moons. — NASA

The Missing Link Roundup: Rosetta

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67P - taken from the Rosetta craftAbove is the first color photo taken of 67P from the Rosetta space craft. Even in color 67P looks black and white! — BBC News

Philae had Cometary Acoustic Surface Sounding Experiment sensors recording onboard the lander when it bounced onto the surface of 67P. Want to hear what a comet sounds like? — CNET

Recent findings from the VIRTIS instrument (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer) on Rosetta were published. They found that 67P is one of the darkest objects in our Solar System. That we know about at least! — ESA Blog

While no one really knows where Philae is resting, ESA believes that by May it could start receiving enough solar energy to wake up. You know, before it is fried by radiation. — ESA Blog

The Missing Link Roundup

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Messier 82 Galaxy

Dead stars at the center of the galaxy Messier 82

The Chalmers University of Technology captured the sharpest astronomical image ever taken at long radio wavelengths, of the Messier 82 galaxy. The Messier galaxy sits 11.5 million light years from Earth. — Gizmodo

Cassini has been hanging out with Saturn for a bit, taking some really awesome photos and teaching us all kinds of things about the outer planets. Check out this picture of Saturn and its moon Rhea. — NASA

Could the orientation of Quasars lead us to some great cosmic answer? Scientists in Belgium are trying to figure out how and why quasars are aligned with each other despite being hundreds of millions of light years apart. — IFLScience

The Missing Link Roundup

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CG4 aka the God's Hand Nebula

CG4 aka the God’s Hand Nebula

ESO released a new photo of the God’s Hand Nebula, located 13,000 light years from Earth. Also known as CG4, it is a sub-type of a nebula referred to as a Bok globule, the smallest type of nebula that exists, and it is very cold and very dense.  — ESO

Researchers in Madrid completed a study on ETNOs (extreme trans-Neptunian objects) within our solar system and found that there may be at least two more Earth-sized planets past Pluto. It’s 2015, we landed a robot on a comet, yet we are still discovering what exists in our own solar system! You know what Papa Carl would say* about this. — NBCNews

The Dawn Spacecraft is heading toward a proto/dwarf planet in our asteroid belt named Ceres and we are seeing close up photographs of it for the first time ever. Expect more of these over the next few months! —i09 and CNET

*“Astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

The Missing Link Roundup

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The Egg NebulaIn November, the Hubble telescope captured a beautiful new image of the Egg Nebula. This star was discovered only 40 years ago and is classified a “preplanetary nebula”. We are lucky to have found this star during such a brief, yet dramatic, moment in it’s lifespan. — ESA

Pulsar J1906 was discovered several years ago by a team from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. However, J1906 wasn’t any ordinary pulsar; this star had a companion star and they circle each other in just four hours. The team watched the pulsar every night for five years, before one night it just disappeared. What happened? — BBC News

Impact on Mars! There is a new impact crater in Elysium Planitia that was first discovered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The last picture was taken several years ago, meaning the impact happened sometime between February 2012 and June 2014. — NASA