planetary science
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Life Under Three Suns: The Real Physics Behind Netflix’s 3 Body Problem
By now, I’m assuming that we’ve made our way through all eight episodes of the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The 3 Body Problem (and by we, I mean sci-fi nerds). The series is packed with science—much of it way over the top—but it grounds itself in quantum mechanics and astrophysics. The show combines hard…
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Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ Moon Is Hiding an Ocean Beneath Its Mangled Surface
An odd little moon that orbits closely to Saturn just revealed its biggest mystery: a hidden ocean that lies beneath its heavily cratered surface. Mimas is less than 123 miles (198 kilometers) wide, too small to be perfectly round, and its icy shell is covered with deep scarring from objects slamming into it. Its most…
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Vintage Voyager Data Reveals Plasma Jets in Jupiter’s Magnetosphere
There are jets in Jupiter’s magnetosheath, according to Voyager 2 mission data from 1979. The 45-year-old information is now revealing the dynamics of the plasma stream. You may remember Voyager 2. It launched in August 1977 and is now 12.66 billion miles from Earth, hurtling out into interstellar space. It is the second-most-distant object humans…
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Venus’s Skies Are Covered in Oxygen, Actually
While air is a gaseous delight unique to Earth, a team of astrophysicists have made a satisfying discovery: the direct observation of atomic oxygen on Venus’ dayside, confirming that the element crucial for our existence exists on both sides of the hellish planet. About 96% of the atmosphere on the second planet from the Sun…