Nov. 8, 2018
Nuclear-powered laser beams; Martian rocks vaporized to dust; clouds of plasma emitting light waves captured by space robots—to most, this sounds like the makings of a science-fiction novel. To Northern Arizona University doctoral student Sarah Lamm, this is just another day at work. As a member of NASA’s Curiosity mission team and a student of astronomy and planetary science, searching… Read more
USA TODAY
Scientists discovered an extremely distant object billions of miles beyond Pluto.
The object has an orbit that hints at an even-farther-out “Super-Earth” or larger “Planet X” that could be lurking out there.
The findings were announced Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.
The object,… Read more
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and his colleagues—Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo, and the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen — are once again redefining our Solar System’s edge. They discovered a new extremely distant object far beyond Pluto with an orbit that supports the presence of an even-farther-out, Super-Earth or larger Planet X.
The newly found object, called 2015 TG387, was announced Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. A paper with the full details of the discovery has… Read more
People have long thought about converting Mars from the cold, dry planet it is today to one that would be inhabitable by humans. This notion of “terraforming” Mars has been popular for decades in science fiction and popular media—including, for example, several of the Star Trek movies and television episodes. In some sense, the idea of a terraformed Mars harkens back to the time when Percival Lowell postulated that Mars was inhabited by Martians, using giant canals to transport… Read more
By Kerry Bennett
Office of the Vice President for Research
Colonizing Mars as a backup planet for Earth has been a theme in both science fiction and popular science for decades, and NASA plans to send human explorers to the Red Planet within the next 20 years.
But how feasible is it… Read more
Christopher Edwards paper in Nature Astronomy was published and resulted in lots of press coverage: “Inventory of CO2 available for Terraforming Mars.” This article and NAU were mentioned in over 120 nationally and internationally recognized news articles. Such as (more…)