Astronauts Could Ride Asteroids to Mars, Study SaysSpace rocks would shield crews from cosmic rays. Future astronauts could hitchhike their way to Mars—without the need for a Vogon Constructor Fleet. According to a new paper, space explorers could reach the red planet by riding along inside asteroids. Landing a ship on a space rock would solve a key issue facing Mars travelers: how to shield astro
Two Brothers Found?In 2008, 185 years after the Massachusetts whaling ship Two Brothers came to rest on a Hawaiian reef, its rusty anchor is measured by divers.Two Brothers was captained by George Pollard, Jr., whose only other whaling ship, the Essex, sank in 1820 after being rammed by a sperm whale—an incident that inspired Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Read the full story: "Rare 1823 Wreck Found
Linked to Moby-Dick and skippered by a man who (reluctantly) ate his own cousin, the whaling ship Two Brothers has been lost on a remote Pacific reef since 1823. Now experts say they've found hard evidence of the ship 600 miles (970 kilometers) from Honolulu (map). If confirmed, the discovery would be the first of a wrecked whaler from Nantucket (map), Massachusetts—the birthplace of the U.S. whal
An entire galaxy may be lurking, unseen, just outside our own, scientists announced Thursday. The invisibility of "Galaxy X"—as the purported body has been dubbed—may be due less to its apparent status as a dwarf galaxy than to its murky location and its overwhelming amount of dark matter, astronomer Sukanya Chakrabarti speculates. Detectable only by the effects of its gravitational pull, dark mat
Blackbeard's Sword?Could this partly gilded hilt have held Blackbeard's sword? There's no way to know for sure, though it was found amid the North Carolina wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of the infamous 18th-century pirate.Since 1997, archaeologists have been excavating the Queen Anne's Revenge. The sword hilt—found in pieces but reassembled for this picture—is among their latest
NASA Finds Smallest Earthlike Planet Outside Solar SystemRocky world 1.4 times Earth's size is "missing link," astronomer says. The smallest planet yet spied outside our solar system has been found orbiting a sunlike star about 560 light-years away, astronomers announced today. Known as Kepler-10b, the planet is just 1.4 times Earth's size and 4.6 times its mass. The planet, found using NASA's Kep
Thunderstorms can shoot beams of antimatter into space—and the beams are so intense they can be spotted by spacecraft thousands of miles away, scientists have announced. Most so-called normal matter is made of subatomic particles such as electrons and protons. Antimatter, on the other hand, is made of particles that have the same masses and spins as their counterparts but with opposite charges and
Magma Chamber Surprisingly Close to Hawaii's Surface?Lava source found within two miles of surface, research suggests. A giant magma chamber burning beneath the Hawaiian Islands is closer to the surface than any other magma chamber yet measured—as little as 1.9 to 2.5 miles (3 to 4 kilometers) below the surface, scientists say. But Hawaiians don't need to worry about plunging into the magma below,
Rock-Chewing Sea Urchins Have Self-Sharpening TeethFinding may lead to never-dull tools, study says. Sea urchins are perhaps best known for their armor of spines. But their mouths may be even more daunting—urchin teeth can literally chew through stone without getting dull. (Related: "Eyeless Urchins 'See' With Spines.") Now scientists are solving the mystery of how urchins keep their teeth so keen
The first x-ray images of a lightning strike have been captured by a, well, lightning-fast camera, scientists say. The pictures suggest a lightning bolt carries all its x-ray radiation in its tip. (Get lightning facts.) During recent thunderstorms in Camp Blanding, Florida, the camera's electronic shutter "froze" a lightning bolt—artificially triggered by rockets and wires—as it sped toward the gr
Polar Bear-Grizzly HybridA stuffed "grolar bear," or "pizzly"—grizzly-polar bear hybrid—looms over the living room of Jim Martell in Glenn Ferry, Idaho, in 2007. Martell shot the animal (picture), the first recorded grolar bear, in Canada's Northwest Territories in 2006. As the Arctic thaws as a result of global warming, polar bears will increasingly be forced to stay onshore, where they're likely
Saturn's moon Titan has long been suspected of sporting ice volcanoes. Now NASA pictures appear to confirm at least one huge, dormant "cryovolcano"—and perhaps more. If the evidence bears out, it might represent the best evidence yet that life could exist on Saturn's biggest satellite. (Also see "Saturn's Largest Moon Has Ingredients for Life?") Not unlike the volcanoes of Hawaii, the supposed ice
Pools of liquid water may even now exist just a few meters below the Martian surface, according to new research. The finding hints that humans may one day be able to tap into Mars's watery bounty. Although the surface of Mars is too frigid for liquid water to be stable, pockets of water underground could be kept warm enough by an insulating blanket of porous sediment, an international team writes
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