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It's full of planets...
All the signposts were there but as always in science the proof is in the pudding. Today the Kepler mission made its second major data release and served up a massive dose of sugar and carbohydrates....
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It's full of Neptunes...
Among the multitude of delicious Kepler results to digest from yesterday was an estimate of the frequency of occurrence of particular planet categories. Now the full report by Borucki et al. is...
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Moons
In the continued wake of the Kepler results that indicate a likely wealth of planets in our galaxy I thought I'd post a rather more personal note about an intimately related area that I think in many...
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Oasis Earth
Water is such an integral part of life on this planet that it's surprising we don't really know where it all came from. The more we've figured out about the Earth's origins and the formation of the...
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Oceans in the night
Talk of planets, planet-like moons, and the origins of terrestrial water tends to lead to all sorts of visions of nice moist worlds and warm tropical beaches. Or perhaps that's just me. It feels like...
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The X factor
This past week the Sun underwent an X-class solar flare and subsequent coronal mass ejection event. It was notable for a number of reasons. The Sun is slowly emerging from a minimum of activity - part...
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Make me a planet
Planet formation. Not so long ago one might have said that we had some pretty good ideas about how it worked. None of them were perfect for sure, but the general feeling was that somewhere in amongst...
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A whiff of blue sulfur
A lot of observations, especially those relating to the deep history of a planet, tend to become received wisdom after a time. This is not to say that they are wrong, but it's certainly true that the...
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The Evolution of Planet Earth
About 425 million years ago something quite extraordinary happened to this small rocky planet. A new type of living structure began to cover the surface of its dry landmasses. For a distant observer...
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There's Something About Meteorites
Yikes. This is a post I wasn't going to write. Claims of microbial fossils in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites in a slightly dodgy feeling journal with a peculiar angle on publicity and the...
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The Romans go to Jupiter
With so much attention focused on the extraordinary progress being made in exoplanet searches it can be easy to forget that there is still much that we do not know about the planets in our own solar...
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Springtime on Enceladus
What a difference seven years can make. Before 2004 Saturn's moon Enceladus was just another of the 61 significant natural satellites in this system. Yes, it was exceptionally reflective, its snowy...
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Multiple intelligence test
This will sound like it's off topic, but it's not. Really. Even if it rambles. Some very intriguing discussion has been taking place recently on the apparent discovery that Neanderthal's were making...
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The End is not the End
A couple of weeks ago a slightly provocative, but intriguing paper started doing the rounds. Its title "Transit surveys for Earths in the habitable zones of white dwarfs". The author, Eric Agol, makes...
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Carbonaceous Cotton Candy
A typical proto-star is surrounded for a few tens of millions of years by a great disk of nebular material. One percent of the mass of this disk is initially microscopic dust, most likely produced in...
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JWST Launch Brought Forward to 2012
Time for fun. Here on the east coast of the United States the planet has clawed its way into night again, but in a few short hours we'll be entering the Gregorian date of April 1st. Fools day. The...
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Paradox Earth: III
Understanding the climate and overall environment of the very young Earth continues to be an extremely tricky business. Previous posts on several issues (I, II) surrounding the so-called Faint Young...
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Rotten Eggs
Posts here have been a bit more threadbare than usual. Mea culpa. Can be blamed on a number of projects, including a fun writing one that you will be able to find in the May 7th issue of New Scientist...
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Three Billion Years B.C.
The Earth is still forming. Every year our planet accumulates another 40 million kilograms of material, mostly in the form of microscopic interplanetary dust. More sporadically the planet is also hit...
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SETI Lost and Found
The announcement that the primary instrument in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the Allen Array, is going offline for lack of money is a sobering reminder of the challenges faced...
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