First Earth-Size Planet Is Discovered in Another Star’s ‘Habitable Zone’
A team of astronomers that includes Penn State scientists has discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone” — the distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery...
NASA: Vitamin B3 Might Have Been Made in Space, Delivered by Meteorites
Ancient Earth might have had an extraterrestrial supply of vitamin B3 delivered by carbon-rich meteorites, according to a new analysis by NASA-funded researchers. The result supports a theory that the origin of life may have been assisted by a supply of key molecules...
Building Better Soybeans for a Hot, Dry, Hungry World
A new study shows that soybean plants can be redesigned to increase crop yields while requiring less water and helping to offset greenhouse gas warming. The study is the first to demonstrate that a major food crop can be modified to meet multiple goals at the same...
New Study Outlines ‘Water World’ Theory of Life’s Origins
Life took root more than four billion years ago on our nascent Earth, a wetter and harsher place than now, bathed in sizzling ultraviolet rays. What started out as simple cells ultimately transformed into slime molds, frogs, elephants, humans and the rest of our...
Saturn’s hexagon: An amazing phenomenon
In 1980 and 1981 NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 space probes passed for the first time over the planet Saturn, located 1,500 million km from the Sun. Among their numerous discoveries they observed a strange, hexagon-shaped structure in the planet’s uppermost...
Mars scientist: Crater once held a lake after all
If desert mirages occur on Mars, “Lake Gusev” belongs among them. This come-and-go body of ancient water has come and gone more than once, at least in the eyes of Mars scientists. Now, however, it’s finally shifting into sharper focus, thanks to a...
Images From NASA Mars Rover Include Mysterious Bright Spots
Images taken by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on April 2 and April 3 include bright spots, which might be due to the sun glinting off a rock or cosmic rays striking the camera’s detector. The image from April 3, from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera, is...
NASA’s OCO-2 Brings Sharp New Focus on Global Carbon
Simply by breathing, humans have played a small part in the planet-wide balancing act called the carbon cycle throughout our existence. However, in the last few hundred years, we have taken a larger role. Our activities, such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation,...
