Argument about a lemon- or orange-shaped planet highlights importance of international competition in science, curator says
It was a row that split scientists, launched globe-trotting expeditions and for one man, ended in murder: was the Earth shaped like an orange or a lemon?
The 18th-century debate – and the endeavours that settled it –can now be relived by visitors to this year’s Royal Society summer science exhibition, in a display called “Figuring the Earth”.
Continue reading...The soaring price-tag of a plan to fly rock samples back to Earth is jeopardising other space projects, say critics
It is one of the most complex space missions ever contemplated. A flotilla of unmanned probes and robot rovers will be flown to Mars to gather rock samples which will then be blasted back to Earth for study for signs of life.
This is Nasa’s Mars Sample Return and it would involve the first-ever space launch from another planet, as well as the first-ever rendezvous in orbit around another planet.
Continue reading...Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus will be in alignment near the moon and visible using binoculars from Tuesday evening
A planetary alignment is set to light up Australia’s night sky.
Five planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus – will be in alignment near the moon from Tuesday evening.
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Continue reading...Scientists think a planet larger than Earth lurks in the far reaches of the solar system. Now a new telescope could confirm their belief and change solar system science
You’d think that if you found the first evidence that a planet larger than the Earth was lurking unseen in the furthest reaches of our solar system, it would be a big moment. It would make you one of only a small handful of people in all of history to have discovered such a thing.
But for astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, it was a much quieter affair. “It wasn’t like there was a eureka moment,” he says. “The evidence just built up slowly.”
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