SCIENCE
Scientists detect 1st evidence of volcanic activity on Venus
The images revealed a volcanic vent changing shape and increasing significantly in size in less than a year. "I didn't really expect to be successful, but after about 200 hours of manually comparing the images of different Magellan orbits, I saw two images of the same region taken eight months apart exhibiting telltale geological changes caused by an eruption," said Robert Herrick, Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the search of the archival data.
NASA mission to Saturn's moon may unravel chemistry leading to life
The mission called Dragonfly is due to launch in 2027, and will reach Titan in 2034. Dragonfly carries an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), which will shed light on the kinds of chemical steps that occurred on Earth that ultimately led to the formation of life, called prebiotic chemistry.
Water on Earth older than our Sun, has interstellar origin: Study
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, astronomers detected gaseous water in the planet-forming disc around the star named 'V883 Orionis' about 1300 light-years away from Earth. This water carries a chemical signature that explains the journey of water from star-forming gas clouds to planets, and supports the idea that water on Earth is even older than our Sun.
AI may help find life on Mars, icy worlds
A team of astrobiologists developed an AI model and tested its ability to look out for sparse life hidden away in salt domes, rocks and crystals at Salar de Pajonales at the boundary of the Chilean Atacama Desert and Altiplano -- one of the driest places on the planet, resembling the features of a Martian surface.
NASA's Curiosity spots first 'Sun rays' on Mars
The rays were imaged as the Sun descended over the horizon on February 2, with "rays of light illuminated a bank of clouds". These are also known as crepuscular rays, from the Latin word for "twilight". "It was the first time sun rays have been so clearly viewed on Mars," according to the mission officials. Curiosity captured the scene during the rover's latest twilight cloud survey.
Explained: Sun did not break off its chunk, just a normal solar activity
A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. Reports last week surfaced that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) caught "a piece of Sun being broken off" from its surface.
Has Earth's inner core stopped rotating? Debate rages
The rotation of the Earth's solid inner core may have recently paused and could be reversing, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. The authors showed evidence that oscillation in the rotation of the inner core coincides with periodic changes in the Earth's surface system and that there is an interaction between different layers of the Earth.
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