Amazing Facts

Pale Blue Dot 35 years later: Earth in a sunbeam
Amazing Facts

Pale Blue Dot 35 years later: Earth in a sunbeam

View larger. | In this image from Voyager 1 – acquired on February 14, 1990, from a distance slightly past the orbit of Saturn – planet Earth appears as a pale blue dot within the sunbeam, just right of center. As you can see, the blue glow of Earth occupies less than a single pixel so it’s not fully resolved. Image via NASA. February 14, 1990: the Pale Blue Dot The Voyager 1 spacecraft, out near Saturn, took this iconic image of Earth 35 years ago. It turned out to be one of the most memorable images ever taken from space. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot: Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our j...
A look at Nigeria and Ghana cybercriminals will surprise you
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A look at Nigeria and Ghana cybercriminals will surprise you

People find love in many ways and through diverse mediums. Online platforms have become popular meeting places for people looking to find intimate partners, making them a prime target for cybercriminals. Online romance fraud has become a global phenomenon. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US, romance scams accounted for losses to about 24,000 Americans, exceeding US$1 billion, in 2022. On the African continent, Nigeria and Ghana have emerged as hubs for internet fraud. The “Yahoo Boys” operating in Nigeria and “Sakawa Boys” in Ghana have a reputation for engaging in various fraudulent schemes, including online romance scams. Over the past decade, I have researched cybercrime and criminology, focusing on west African online fraudsters. Coverage of romance sca...
Bird fossil hints Antarctica was a refuge from killer asteroid
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Bird fossil hints Antarctica was a refuge from killer asteroid

An artist’s concept of Vegavis iaai, a loon-like waterfowl. Scientists think it was a diving bird, shown here chasing fish. Researchers discovered an almost complete Vegavis iaai skull in Antarctica and said it’s the oldest-known modern bird fossil. Its existence in Antarctica suggests this land was a refuge from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Image via Mark Witton/ Ohio University. Scientists have discovered the earliest-known modern bird in the fossil record, dating back 69 million years. An almost complete skull of the loon-like bird Vegavis iaai shows features found in modern birds. Scientists found this fossil in Antarctica. The location suggests this region may have played a role in modern birds’ survival of the dinosaur-killing asteroid. Skull in Antarctica is the earlies...
Signs of life on Enceladus might remain hidden in its ocean
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Signs of life on Enceladus might remain hidden in its ocean

View larger. | Artist’s illustration of Cassini spacecraft flying through the water vapor plumes of Enceladus. A new study from researchers in the UK has found that Enceladus’ subsurface ocean might have layers that make it difficult to find traces of life on Enceladus. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Space Science Institute. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a global subsurface ocean and plumes of water vapor that erupt from the icy surface. The plumes could contain evidence of life that a spacecraft might find. But is it that easy? Traces of life might get trapped or altered in ocean layers before they ever reach the surface. This could make finding evidence for life a lot more difficult. Signs of life on Enceladus might remain hidden in its ocean The ocean moons in our solar system are some of...
Hypervelocity star drags fastest exoplanet through space at 1.2 million mph
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Hypervelocity star drags fastest exoplanet through space at 1.2 million mph

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's super Neptune! But this Superman-mimicking planet is not blasting through space on its own. It is being dragged along by its parent star.NASA scientists have discovered what they suspect is the hypervelocity star racing through space with a Neptune-like planet in tow. The system appears to be moving at an incredible speed of 1.2 million miles per hour (1.9 million kilometers per hour). If the discovery is confirmed, this will be the fastest extrasolar planet, "exoplanet," system ever seen. "We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system," said team leader Sean Terry, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. "If so, it ...
The Sky This Week from February 14 to 21: Venus reaches greatest brilliancy
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The Sky This Week from February 14 to 21: Venus reaches greatest brilliancy

Caption: Venus is the brightest point of light shining at lower left in this gorgeous astrophoto of the February night sky. Credit: Toby Baier (Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0) Friday, February 14The dwarf planet 1 Ceres is in conjunction with the Sun at 5 P.M. EST today. While this means we can’t see Ceres for now, we can see Venus — which is at its brightest, reaching greatest brilliancy this evening at 6 P.M. EST Earth’s sister planet is now a long-lingering “evening star,” shining at magnitude –4.9 and some 40° high in the western sky at sunset. The planet remains visible for more than 3 hours, finally setting around 9 P.M. local time.  The best time to observe the phase of Venus is shortly after sunset, when the sky is still bright with twilight. This is because a bright...
A Hyper Velocity Star Found with an Exoplanet Hanging on for Dear Life
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A Hyper Velocity Star Found with an Exoplanet Hanging on for Dear Life

Hypervelocity stars have been seen before but NASA scientists have just identified a potential record-breaking exoplanet system. They found a hypervelocity star that has a super-Neptune exoplanet in orbit around it. This discovery could reshape our understanding of planetary and orbital mechanics. Understanding more about these fascinating high velocity stars challenges current models of stellar evolution. However it formed, its amazing that somehow, it has managed to hang on to its planet through the process! High-velocity stars travel through space at extraordinarily high speeds, often in excess of hundreds of kilometres per second. These rapidly moving stars are usually expelled from their galaxies due to gravitational forces, perhaps from close encounters with supermassive black...
NASA Tests Drones to Provide Micrometeorology, Aid in Fire Response
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NASA Tests Drones to Provide Micrometeorology, Aid in Fire Response

In Aug. 2024, a team of NASA researchers and partners gathered in Missoula, to test new drone-based technology for localized forecasting, or micrometeorology. Researchers attached wind sensors to a drone, NASA’s Alta X quadcopter, aiming to provide precise and sustainable meteorological data to help predict fire behavior. Wildfires are increasing in number and severity around the world, including the United States, and wind is a major factor. It leads to unexpected and unpredictable fire growth, public threats, and fire fatalities, making micrometeorology a very effective tool to combat fire. The campaign was run by NASA’s FireSense project, focused on addressing challenges in wildland fire management by putting NASA science and technology in the hands of operational agencies. “Ensurin...
Nanoscale 3D printing is saving lives and scoring awards
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Nanoscale 3D printing is saving lives and scoring awards

A University of Adelaide biomedical engineer has received an international award for her invention of 3D-printed hair-thin endoscopes that can see inside the human body. Associate Professor Jiawen Li received the Judges’ Commendation at the Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature, at the award ceremony in Tokyo last week. She is the only Australian researcher among the four winners. “It’s really exciting … to be recognised by a big-name technology company and publisher, and be seen as innovators, not just as women innovators,” she says. Li’s work is worth celebrating. For more than a decade, she has been developing tiny imaging devices that can probe deep inside the body in a minimally invasive way. The real-time physiological data can help medical procedures from heart treatme...
Curiosity’s Other Important Job: Studying Martian Clouds
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Curiosity’s Other Important Job: Studying Martian Clouds

MSL Curiosity is primarily a rockhound. It’s at Gale Crater, examining the rocks there and on Mt. Sharp, which sits in the middle of the crater and rises 5.5 km above the crater floor. But Curiosity is also a skywatcher, and its primary camera, Mastcam, was built with Martian clouds in mind. When the sun set on Mars’ Gale Crater on January 17th, MSL Curiosity spent 16 minutes capturing images of the sky with Mastcam, the rover’s primary camera system. The images are part of an effort to understand noctilucent clouds, which are made of CO2 ice and only form over certain regions. In the animation below, the 16 minutes of images have been sped up by about 480 times. “The white plumes falling out of the clouds are carbon dioxide ice that would evaporate closer to the Martian surface,...