INFORMATION

NASA's MSL Curiosity rover found a bathtub ring-like deposit of zinc, manganese, and iron in Gale Crater. These metals precipitate out of water in the right conditions, and there's not really any other way they could've become concentrated here. Adding to the excitement, these deposits also form in lakes on Earth, where the concentrated metals are food for some types of bacteria. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/b0nwkP2 via IFTTT

At the heart of our Galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of our Sun. For decades, astronomers have watched mysterious gas clouds drifting towards it on almost identical paths, wondering where they came from and why. Now, a team of researchers think they have finally cracked the puzzle and the answer involves two massive stars locked in a violent embrace! from Universe Today https://ift.tt/wfmSx4B via IFTTT

An international team led by Monash University has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, helping to shed light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. At the end of their lives, most massive stars collapse into black holes—objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. But some are completely destroyed in pair-instability supernova explosions. This can explain the so-named "Forbidden Gap" in black hole masses. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/rzmjxWw via IFTTT

MSL Curiosity found 7 new organic molecules preserved in Martian sandstone. While they aren't proof that life existed on Mars, they are important. They show that the planet is capable of protecting ancient biosignatures from radiation and preserving them in rock. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/TruA3iq via IFTTT

Scientists have been debating for decades whether Mars once held a vast ocean covering a large part of its northern face. To prove the idea, they’ve been looking for a “bathtub ring” - a distinct, level shoreline that shows where water once stood. But, despite years of looking, they’ve only been able to find a very distorted potential shoreline whose height deviates by several kilometers - not exactly great evidence of a stable water level. But, according to a new paper in Nature from Abdallah Zaki and Michael Lamb of CalTech, what scientists should have been looking for wasn’t a bathtub ring, but a continental shelf. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/pGNwXyl via IFTTT

The search for life beyond Earth has traditionally focused on exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars, which is a G-type star. However, low-mass stars, which are designated as K-type and M-type stars, have rapidly become a target for astrobiology, primarily due to their much longer lifetimes. This also means the habitable zone (HZ), which is the distance from a star where liquid water could exist, is much smaller than our solar system’s HZ, and is referred to as the liquid water habitable zone (LW-HZ). In contrast, another type of HZ that involves a star’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation potentially enabling life-harboring conditions is known as UV-HZ. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/R20wyrE via IFTTT