Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at a theory breaking exoplanet, a theory confirming star, Saturn moon Titan, lunar formation theories, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Breaking Planetary Formation Theories Again

• Astronomers have announced that they have discovered a new type of planet – a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth
• Past theories believed such a world couldn’t form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant
• This planet; however. is solid and much bigger than previously discovered “super-Earths,” making it a “mega-Earth.”
• Kepler-10c
• It is located about 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco
• It’s orbit lasts 45 days
• The system also hosts a 3-Earth-mass “lava world,” Kepler-10b, in a remarkably fast, 20-hour orbit
• Discovery
• Kepler-10c was originally spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
• By measuring the amount of dimming, astronomers can calculate the planet’s physical size or diameter
• However, Kepler can’t tell whether a planet is rocky or gassy
• Kepler-10c was known to have a diameter 2.3 times as large as Earth
• This suggested it fell into a category of planets known as mini-Neptunes, which have thick, gaseous envelopes
• It’s a Rocky Planet
• The team used the HARPS-North instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) in the Canary Islands to measure the mass of Kepler-10c
• They found that it weighed 17 times as much as Earth – far more than expected, this showed that Kepler-10c must have a dense composition of rocks and other solids.
• It is so massive that it would have been able to hold onto an atmosphere if it ever had one
• Planetary Formation Theories
• Planet formation theories have a difficult time explaining how such a large, rocky world that need elements like silicon and iron, could develop
• The Kepler-10 system is about 11 billion years old, which means it formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang
• The early universe contained only hydrogen and helium
• Heavier elements are created and scattered through the universe when a star goes supernova, when help create later generations of stars and planets
• This process should have taken billions of years; however, Kepler-10c shows that the universe was able to form such huge rocks even during the time when heavy elements were scarce.
• What This Means
• This tells us that rocky planets could form much earlier than we thought
• This research implies that astronomers shouldn’t rule out old stars when they search for Earth-like planets
• If old stars can host rocky Earths too, then we have a better chance of locating potentially habitable worlds in our cosmic neighborhood
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers find a new type of planet: The ‘mega-Earth’ | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

A New Sneaky Star Type

• A Thorne-Zytkow Object, or TZO are actually two stars in one: a binary pair where a superdense neutron star has been absorbed into its less dense supergiant
• Thorne-Zytkow Object
• First theorized in 1975 they are difficult to find in real life because of their similarity to red supergiants, it is only through detailed spectroscopy that the particular chemical signatures can be identified.
• While normal red supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, TOs are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores
• Discovery
• The astronomers were examining the spectrum of light emitted from apparent red supergiants, which tells them what elements are present
• When the spectrum of one star, HV 2112, was analyzed the scientists were quite surprised by some of the unusual features
• They took a close look at the subtle lines in the spectrum they found that it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum
• Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these elements; however, high abundances of all three of these at the temperatures typical of red supergiants is a unique signature of TŻOs
• Only by absorbing a much hotter star – such as a neutron star left over from the explosive death of a more massive partner – is the production of such elements presumed to be possible
• Formation Theory
• TOs are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars-a red supergiant and a neutron star formed during a supernova explosion-in a close binary system
• The much more massive red supergiant essentially swallows the neutron star, which spirals into the core of the red supergiant
• Scientists are careful to point out that HV 2112 displays some chemical characteristics that don’t quite match theoretical models
• There are some minor inconsistencies between some of the details of what we found and what theory predicts, but the theoretical predictions are quite old, and there have been a lot of improvements in the theory since then
• What This Might Mean
• Studying these objects represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work
• In these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers discover first Thorne-Zytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star | ScienceDaily
• Astronomers Find Evidence of a Strange Type of Star | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Waves on Saturns Moon?

• Cameras on NASA’s spacecraft Cassini recently saw what appear to be waves on one of Titan’s largest methane lakes, if confirmed, the discovery would mark the first time waves have been seen outside Earth.
• What Did They See?
• The team found patterns in the sunlight reflecting off a northern lake called Punga Mare that they interpret as two-centimeter-high waves
• It may simply be a mudflat instead of a deep lake, and a shallow film of liquid on top may be the cause of the unique light signature
• What it Might Mean
• Waves on Titan would confirm that the lakes actually are deep reservoirs of methane and ethane,
• If life on Titan exists, the best place to look is in large bodies of liquid, the kind that form waves
• True liquid bodies would also make a robotic spacecraft mission to explore Titan’s habitability more feasible
• More Certainty
• By 2017 scientists should know for certain whether what they are seeing is indeed caused by waves
• Cassini has been observing the moon during its northern winter, when weak winds are at work
• As spring starts over the next few years, it brings stronger winds to kick up seas, so the probe should capture more definitive evidence of waves if they exist
• Further Reading / In the News
• Lake on Saturn’s Largest Moon May Have Waves | Scientific American

Lunar Formation Theory Evidence?

• Current Lunar Formation Theory
• According to one lunar formation theory billions of years ago a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into Earth
• Earth survived and the fragments from the crash gradually coalesced into the Moon that we see today
• The problem with this was that no evidence had been found of “Theia”
• Scientists now believe they have found traces of Theia in lunar rocks pulled from the Apollo missions
• Oxygen Isotopes
• Before, the “resolution” of microscopes couldn’t find any significant differences isotopes or types of oxygen of any of the Lunar samples of the Moon brought back by the Apollo missions
• New research appears to show a difference between the Earth and the Moon which implies that a body of different composition caused the changes
• The new data reveals the moon rocks have 12 parts per million more oxygen-17 than the Earth rocks
• “The differences are small and difficult to detect, but they are there,” | lead researcher Daniel Herwartz
• What This Means
• First, scientists can now be reasonably sure that the giant collision took place
• Second, it gives us an idea of the geochemistry of Theia
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Where Did The Moon Come From? – Do We Really Need the Moon? – Preview – BBC Two | BBC
• Further Reading / In the News
• The work was published in Science and will also be presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in California on June 11.
• Hulk Smash! Collision That Formed Our Moon Shows Up In Lunar Rocks, Study Says | UniverseToday.com
• New isotopic evidence supporting moon formation via Earth collision with planet-sized body | phys.org

—UPDATE—

Asteroid UQ4 Catalina Turns Comet – Still Looking Promising

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 130 | Solar Sibling & Comets | May 13, 2014
• Asteroid Turns Comet
• On October 23, 2013, astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey picked up a very faint asteroid with an unusual orbit more like a that of a comet than an asteroid
• 2013 UQ4 belongs to a class of objects known as damocloids, these are thought to be inactive varieties of comet nuclei
• By May 7, the asteroid had grown a little fuzz, making the move to comethood, soon afterwards it displayed a substantial coma or atmosphere
• It is brightening on schedule and should be a binocular object greater than +10th magnitude by the end of June
• It will reach perihelion on July 6th only four days before its closest approach to the Earth
• At that point, the comet will have an apparent motion of about 7 degrees a day — that’s the span of a Full Moon once every 1 hour and 42 minutes
• Further Reading / In the News
• Asteroid-Turned-Comet 2013 UQ4 Catalina Brightens: How to See it This Summer | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

ISEE-3 Reboot Project

• The team is now receiving information from the spacecraft’s magnetometer
• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 132 | ISEE-3 Back To Life | May 27, 2014
• SciByte 133 | Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | June 3, 2014
• What ISEE-3 Really Looks Like
• Spacecraft Mass: 479 kg [1,056 lb]
• Spacecraft Dimensions: 16-sided body 1.7m [5.6ft] diameter, 1.6m [5.2ft] high
• Spacecraft Power: solar cells
• Maximum Power: 173.0 W (nominal power)
• It has 4 large antennas that span 91 meters and it spins ~ once every 3 seconds
• The spacecraft is spinning at 19.16 rpm, the mission specification is 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm so the spin rate of spacecraft is slightly below what it should be
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Image | ISEE-3 Propulsion System Overview | Space College
• Using GNU Radio to Talk to ISEE-3
• The amazing accomplishment of successfully designing a deep-space uplink modulator in a couple of days was accomplished through a lot of team work, strong leadership, and generous support from the community at large
• The uplink commands to the spacecraft uses products like the Ettus Research USRP, the open source SDR framework GNU Radio have made this exceedingly easy
• Transmitting Rate Change
• On Just 9, the team was able to switch ISEE-3’s B transmitter to a data rate of 64 bps, they hope to eventually leave it this way so as to allow dishes smaller than Arecibo to complete the link and have solid two-way communication with ISEE-3.
• After this they were able to detect signals from the craft with an 8 foot dish
• Telemetry Data
• On June 12, telemetry from ISEE-3 indicating that its entire suite of science instruments is powered up and has been powered up since NASA last commanded the spacecraft many years ago
• The engineers are getting data back from the magnetometer that indicates that science data is coming back; however, just because an instrument is powered up doesn’t mean that it is functioning normally
• Some of the ISEE-3 instruments had begun to fail or become partially functional as early as 1982
• Spinning Up
• The team plans to briefly fire two of the spacecraft’s thrusters on 21 June so as to spin it up from 19.16 rpm to the mission specification of 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm [the spin-up target is 19.733 rpm]
• This optimal spin rate is required in order to properly fire the axial thrusters during the much longer trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) we need to perform to adjust the spacecraft’s course
• Multimedia
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Twitter | @ISEE3Reboot
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Channel
• Further Reading / In the News
• Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives
• Contact With 36-Year Old Spacecraft Results in Dancing, Hugs. Now Comes Even Bigger Challenge | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• The Road Trip Continues
• Curiosity is currently driving toward Mount Sharp, the layered mountain at the middle of Mars’ Gale Crater.
• The rover is carrying with it some of the drilled powdered sample material from the Windjana location that can be delivered for additional internal laboratory analysis during pauses in the drive.
• Mercury Transit
• The observations were made on June 3, 2014
• Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury’s expected path based on orbital calculations.
• This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars
• The same Mastcam frames show two sunspots approximately the size of Earth. The sunspots move only at the pace of the sun’s rotation, much slower than the movement of Mercury.
• Mercury and Venus transits are visible more often from Mars than from Earth, the next Mercury transit visible from Earth will be May 9, 2016.
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Testing Future Landing Technologies
• Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) | nasa.gov
• The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces
• As NASA plans increasingly ambitious robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, accommodating extended stays for explorers on the Martian surface will require larger and heavier spacecraft
• This test will use a helium balloon (that, when fully inflated, would fit snugly into Pasadena’s Rose Bowl) to lift the vehicle to 120,000 feet
• A fraction of a second after dropping from the balloon, and a few feet below it, four small rocket will stabilize the saucer
• A half second later, a solid-fueled rocket engine will send the test vehicle to the edge of the stratosphere
• “Our goal is to get to an altitude and velocity which simulates the kind of environment one of our vehicles would encounter when it would fly in the Martian atmosphere,” | Ian Clark, principal investigator of the LDSD project at JPL
• Two supersonic decelerator technologies that will be thoroughly tested during two LDSD flight tests next year.
• The SIAD-R, is essentially an inflatable doughnut that increases the vehicle’s size and, as a result, its drag to quickly slow the vehicle
• A second system being tested is the largest supersonic parachute ever flown, to be used when the craft first hits the supersonic flow
• NASA’s flying saucer-shaped test vehicle was not able to be flight tested during the reserved testing launch period unfavorable weather conditions, NASA is continuing to look at options for a future launch window.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA’s LDSD ‘Flying Saucer’ Test–Update – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 25, 1997 : 17 years ago : Space Station Mir Accident : The space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power
• The One Martian Year Birthday to Curiosity June 24, 2014. The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun is its sidereal year, and is about 686.98 Earth solar days.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Planets
• Mercury | Hidden by the sunrise
• Venus | Dawn | Low in the East
• Mars | Twilight | High in the SW, with the Blue-White giant star Spica to its left. Mars sets in the W ~ 1AM DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Low in the W-NW in twilight, setting by nightfall

• Saturn | Evening | S sky in the evening

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Super-Earth & Lunar Formation | SciByte 134 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at sleeping away fear, lunar formation, neonatal hypoglycemia, sending messages to interstellar space, viewer feedback, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

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— Show Notes —

Sleep and Fear

• A fear memory was reduced in people by exposing them to the memory over and over again while they slept
• The Study
• Scientists have shown that sleep is very important for strengthening new memories
• Previous projects have shown that spatial learning and motor sequence learning can be enhanced during sleep
• If the results of this new study continue to show promising results it will be the first time that emotional memory have been manipulated in humans during sleep
• What it Could Mean
• It offers the potential of a new way to enhance typical daytime treatments of phobias, through exposure therapy by adding a nighttime component
• If it can be extended to pre-existing fear, the bigger picture is that, perhaps, the treatment of phobias can be enhanced during sleep.\”
• The Test
• 15 healthy human subjects received mild electric shocks while seeing two different faces
• Subjects also received different odorants to smell with each face such as woody, clove, new sneaker, lemon or mint
• This caused the brain to associate the faces and corresponding smells with fear
• During the slow wave sleep state, when memory consolidation is thought to occur, a smell was represented without the corresponding face and shock
• When a given smell was reintroduced during sleep, it was activating the memory of that face over and over again
• The Results
• When the subjects woke up they saw the face linked to the smell they had been exposed to during sleep
• Their fear reactions were lower than their fear reactions to the other face
• Fear was measured in two ways, through small amounts of sweat in the skin, similar to a lie detector test and through neuroimaging with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging).
• The fMRI results showed changes in regions associated with memory and changes in patterns of brain activity in regions associated with emotion
• These brain changes reflected a decrease in reactivity that was specific to the targeted face image associated with the odorant presented during sleep
• Further Reading / In the News
• First evidence that fear memories can be reduced during sleep | MedicalXpress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Lunar Formation and Age

• New research suggests that the moon is younger than scientists had previously believed
• Current Leading Lunar Formation Theory
• Suggest that the Moon was created when a mysterious planet, one the size of Mars or larger, slammed into the Earth about 4.56 billion years ago, just after the solar system came together
• New analyses of lunar rocks suggest that the moon, is actually between 4.4 billion and 4.45 billion years old
  +This analysis would mean the moon would 100 million years younger than previously thought and would reshape scientists\’ understanding of the early Earth
• Opens New Questions
• Giving the Earth another 100 million years of development before a giant impact could have provided enough time for a primordial atmosphere to develop
• If that did have time to occur, could an impact have been able to \’blown off\’ that atmosphere
• Age of Smaller Solar System Bodies
• Scientists are very sure that the solar system\’s age is 4.568 billion years
• They can pin down the formation times of relatively small bodies such as asteroids precisely
• By noting when these objects underwent extensive melting, from the heat generated by the collision and fusion of these objects\’ building-block \”planetesimals.\”
• Analysis of meteorites that came from the asteroid Vesta and eventually rained down on Earth reveals that the 330-mile-wide (530 kilometers) space rock is 4.565 billion years old
• Vesta cooled relatively quickly and is too small to have retained enough internal heat to drive further melting or volcanism
• Age of Larger Solar System Bodies
• The age of larger solar-system bodies is harder to narrow down
• Earth likely took longer to grow to full size compared to a small asteroid like Vesta
• Every step in its growth tends to erase, or at least cloud, earlier events
• Lunar formation Impact Event
• Currently the \’lunar formation impact event\’ puts the age of the Moon at around 4.56 billion years ago
• As scientists refine techniques and technology improves, estimates are pushing the moon\’s formation date farther forward in time
• The moon is thought to have harbored a global ocean of molten rock shortly after its formation
• Currently, the most precisely determined age for the lunar rocks that arose from that ocean is 4.360 billion years
• Here on Earth, scientists have found signs in several locations of a major melting event that occurred around 4.45 billion years ago
• Evidence is building that the catastrophic collision that formed the moon and reshaped Earth occurred around that time, rather than 100 million years or so before
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Where Did The Moon Come From? – Do We Really Need the Moon? – Preview – BBC Two | BBC
• YouTube | The formation of the Moon | piesforyou
• Further Reading / In the News
• The Moon Is 100 Million Years Younger Than Thought | Space.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Infant Blood Sugar

• Newborns with low blood sugar sometimes have to go to the intensive care unit for intravenous infusions of glucose
• A new study has found that rubbing a sweet gel onto the insides of babies’ cheeks can also help with low blood sugar
• Neonatal Hypoglycemia
• Low blood sugar in newborns, or neonatal hypoglycemia, occurs when the tiny body needs more glucose to meet energy needs than is available in the bloodstream
• Prolonged hypoglycemia risks neurological injury.
• Prevalence
• Low blood glucose shows up in 5 to 15 percent of otherwise healthy newborns as measured by blood tests
• Of note, doctors typically don’t run the analysis on every newborn
• Doctors often only call for blood sugar blood tests if they see symptoms, such as poor color, seizures, irritability, lethargy, jittery behavior and a lack of interest in feeding
• Although many infants with low blood glucose don’t have such symptoms
• One report designates at-risk infants as those who are born preterm, have diabetic mothers, or are either large or small for their gestational age
• The Study
• In the new study, researchers identified 237 apparently healthy newborns who had one of those risk factors or who were feeding poorly
• Half of the babies were randomly assigned to get a gel made of dextrose, a form of glucose, rubbed on the inner cheeks up to six times over 48 hours; the rest received a placebo gel
• Results in the Following Week
• Placebo gel group | 30 babies, 25%, were placed in intensive care for hypoglycemia
• Dextrose gel group | 16 babies, 13%, were placed in intensive care for hypoglycemia
• Previous Usage
• Dextrose had been tried in the 1990s as an oral rub for infants but wasn’t fully tested or put into widespread use
• Further Reading / In the News
• Dextrose rub helps newborns with low blood sugar | Body & Brain | Science News

New Horizons Message Initiative

• SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have created a petition called the New Horizons Message Initiative
• This petition is asking NASA officials to upload a yet-to-be-determined crowdsourced message from humanity onto the New Horizons craft after its encounter with the Pluto system
• \”This website is an opportunity for anyone who is interested to sign a petition that asks NASA to approve the future use of the spacecraft\”
• Were There Plans About This from NASA?
• Before New Horizons launched, NASA officials discussed including an onboard message, but decided against it due to a small team on a tight budget
• The team didn\’t want to get distracted from the project
• New Horizons Message Initiative
• The group would need formal permission from the agency and sub-support to make this happen
• NASA funds will not be used for the project, but initiative officials are asking for support from private individuals.
• The idea is to use some of the spacecraft\’s memory to store messages from earthlings beamed up to the probe, when New Horizons completes its mission
• They say that it might be possible to reprogram about 100 megabytes of its memory and upload a new sights and sounds of Earth
• Further Reading / In the News
• Want to Phone Aliens? Help Get Your Messages On NASA\’s Pluto-Bound Spacecraft | Space.com
• New Horizons Message Initiative
• Twitter | New Horizons Message @NewHorizonsMsg

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Lightsaber Tech?!?!?!

• Viewer Feedback : Check This Out
• Nikki, Summer SciByte co-host, current STOked radio co-host
• What’s Going On?
• Researchers have found a way to bind photons together much like molecules
• This discovery goes against what scientists previously understood of photons: that elementary light particles are massless loners that do not interact with each other.
• Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless, and that they do not interact with each other
• The Test
• Researchers fired a couple of photons into a cloud of rubidium – a chemical element belonging to the metal group – in a vacuum chamber cooled to just a few degrees above absolute zero.
• When the photons exited the other side of the cloud of atoms the researchers were surprised to see the pair emerge as a single molecule.
• The cloud they passed through is a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other strongly that they begin to act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules
• Rydberg Blockade
• Rydberg blockade states that when an atom has energy imparted to it, nearby atoms cannot be excited to the same degree
• The pair of photons moved through the cloud of atoms, the first photon excited atoms, but had to move forward before the second photon could do the same.
• The pair of photons pushed and pulled each other through the cloud like atomic interaction, which made these two photons behave like a molecule
• The Future
• The team is hoping to use their newly discovered state of matter in the advancement of quantum computing
• Further Reading / In the News
• Researchers at Harvard University and MIT discover previously unobserved state of matter by binding photons together into molecules, creating real-life \’lightsaber\’ | CTVNews

SciByte Pages / How to Contact?

• Todd Thiner ‏@mininessie
• *Do you have a Facebook page?
• Ways To Contact Me
• Twitter | @JB_Mars_Base
• JupiterBroadcasting.com Contact Form
• Google+ Mars_Base

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Water in the Soil
• The Curiosity rover team has now revealed that the first scoop of soil analyzed by the rover showed several percent water by weight
• The data showed about 2% of the soil on the surface of Mars is made of up water
• The sample also released significant carbon dioxide, oxygen, and sulfur compounds when heated
• Organics would not likely preserved in surface soils, which are exposed to harsh radiation and oxidants
• The team says that the layer of surface soil that has been mixed and distributed by frequent dust storms, so that a scoop of this stuff is basically a microscopic Mars rock collection
• Another Ancient River
• Curiosity has discovered a new patch of pebbles formed and rounded eons ago by flowing liquid water
• The new finding at a sandstone outcrop called ‘Darwin’ during a brief science stopover spot called ‘Waypoint 1’.
• This discovery is important because it significantly broadens the area here that was altered by flowing liquid water
• The other location that showed ancient fluid flow was at Yellowknife Bay where the mission spent it\’s first six months exploring
• Because the veins are different, we know that they were made at different times in history
• Further analysis of any other locations like this will help scientists to get a better idea of when and where the water flowed in this location
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Pebbly Sandstone Conglomerate Rock at Curiosity\’s Waypoint 1 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• [Pebbly Sandstone Conglomerate Rock at Curiosity\’s Waypoint 1 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov(https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5564)
• Mars rover Curiosity finds water in first sample of planet surface | Phys.org
• Curiosity Discovers Patch of Pebbles Formed by Flowing Martian Water on Mount Sharp Trek | UniverseToday.com
• Curiosity Finds Water And Poison In Martian Soil | Popular Science
• Curiosity gets the dirt on Mars | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
• NASA\’s Curiosity Rover Finds More Signs that Ancient Mars Had Water | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Oct 04, 1958 : 55 years ago : Sputnik : The Space Age began as the Soviet Union, to the dismay of the United States, launched Sputnik, the first manmade satellite, into orbit around the earth. The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour 500 miles above the Earth. The Sputnik (meaning \”companion\” or \”fellow traveller\”) was launched from Kazakhstan. It stayed in orbit for about three months. Sputnik fell from the sky on 4 Jan 1958. The 184-lb satellite had transmitted a radio signal picked up around the world, and instrumentation for temperature measurement
• Wikipedia Sputnik

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• For the next two weeks you might be able to spot the “false dawn” , also known as Zodiacal light. Caused by sunlight scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud, it is so faint that either moonlight or light pollution renders it invisible. YouTube Zodiacal Light from Rozhen | emivanov1
• Thurs, Oct 3 | 12-1 am local | Jupiter rises and climbs higher until dawn
• Fri, Oct 4 | Twilight | Cassiopeia is high in the NE, shaped like a broad W nearly on its end
• Tri, Oct 4 | Twilight | The Big Dipper is lowering in the NW
• Planets
• Venus and Saturn | Are both low in the W-SW during twilight. Saturn is much fainter and is 17* to the right of Venus on Friday (15* ~ pinky to pointer finger stretched out held at arms length)
• Mars | ~3am local | Rises in the E, below Mars is blue-white \’star\’ Regulus (actually two binary stars orbiting each other). They are separated by roughly 6* on the 5th (5* ~ your three middle fingers held together at arms length)

• Jupiter | Rises ~ midnight | Rises in the E and is in he high E-SE by early dawn

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Fear & Lunar Formation | SciByte 104 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at why some people may like spicy foods, cracker sized satellites, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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