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Could We Actually Terraform Mars? A New Scientific Roadmap Lays Out the Blueprint—And the Risks

Reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson brings the benefits and pitfalls of efforts to terraform the Red Planet into sharp relief. Since the 1970s, when Carl Sagan first suggested the possibility that we could make Mars more Earth-like, that process has been a staple of science fiction. But there’s always been a significant amount of humanity that thinks we shouldn’t. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago and his co-authors skirts around the ethical and moral questions of whether we should and tries to take a long hard look at whether we can. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/OXbfm2j via IFTTT
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Webb's Picture of the Month Features Two Planet-Forming Disks and a Possible Planet

Two images of protoplanetary disks side-by-side. The left image shows a dark horizontal band covering the star, with broad, colorful, conical outflows above and below it, and a narrow jet pointing directly up and down from the star. The right image shows the star within a yellow dusty disk, with scattered dust creating purple lobes above and below the disk. Each is on a black background with several galaxies or stars around it. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/K128Akv via IFTTT
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A Mercury Rover Could Explore the Planet by Sticking to the Terminator

A Mercury lander mission would create opportunities to sample unique geological features. However, extreme temperature fluctuations on Mercury’s surface pose challenges for exploration on the planetary surface. In a narrow region near the terminator, temperate conditions would allow a rover to run on solar power and collect data and surface samples without needing to withstand the extreme heat. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/oAxugZL via IFTTT
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A New Class of Star: Merger Remnant

In the vastness of the Universe, any new object with interesting properties can spur the search for similar objects, potentially establishing a new class of stars. In a paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and an arXiv preprint, researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) describe two stellar remnants that share five properties, including X-ray emission, despite being isolated objects. According to the team, these two remnants are sufficient to define a new class of stars. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/3JMQawi via IFTTT
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Meet Orpheus - A Hopper Mission Built To Hunt For Life In Martian Volcanoes

We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it's likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). from Universe Today https://ift.tt/YSZb4Uo via IFTTT
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SuperCDM Experiment Reaches Critical Temperature, Bringing it One Step Closer to Detecting Dark Matter

The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment has reached its coldest operating temperature, hundreds of times colder than outer space. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8GSPAnC via IFTTT
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The Outer Solar System Contributed Nothing To Earth

New research shows that Earth formed from inner Solar System material. Isotopic geochemistry analysis found no evidence that material from beyond Jupiter contributed to Earth's bulk composition. The results also support the idea that Earth's water wasn't delivered by comets. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/rktpdY6 via IFTTT
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