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Scientists Can Detect Life in Single Grain of Alien Ice
Icy moons like Europa and Enceladus are exciting venues for the prospect of life beyond Earth, because they are thought to contain oceans of water beneath their frigid surfaces. Now, a team of scientists has concluded that a single grain of material spewed up by the outgassing moons could contain biosignatures—signs of life—if there are…
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Vintage Voyager Data Reveals Plasma Jets in Jupiter’s Magnetosphere
There are jets in Jupiter’s magnetosheath, according to Voyager 2 mission data from 1979. The 45-year-old information is now revealing the dynamics of the plasma stream. You may remember Voyager 2. It launched in August 1977 and is now 12.66 billion miles from Earth, hurtling out into interstellar space. It is the second-most-distant object humans…
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A SpaceX Booster Falls and Breaks, and More Science News of the Week
Our top science stories this week include a physics experiment to turn light into matter, an update from NASA’s Juno mission (it’s about to make a close encounter with Jupiter’s moon Io), and a roundup of the best archaeological discoveries of 2023. Physicists Designed an Experiment to Turn Light Into Matter An artist’s impression of…
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Webb Telescope Reveals a High-Speed Jet on Jupiter
In July 2022, the Webb Space Telescope detected an intense jet shooting across the equator of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The jet is travelling at about 320 miles per hour (515 kilometres per hour) and is about 25 miles (40 km) in altitude, corresponding to Jupiter’s lower stratosphere. Astronomers knew east-west…