Hasta La Gadget!

Could it be revenge for being demoted to “dwarf planet” status in 2006? New Hubble Space Telescope photos show that Pluto has turned redder–as if it were angry–and its ice sheets are also shifting around, according to the Associated Press.

In recent photos, Pluto is turning up significantly redder than it has during the past several decades. It still looks vaguely yellow-orange, but astronomers claim there is about 20 percent more red pigment in there than there was before, the report said. This is despite the fact that a “season” lasts 120 years in some regions of the planet.

Last month, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern with a dust and gravel trail. NASA scientists now believe that the image showed the immediate aftermath of an extremely rare event, according to Popular Science: two small asteroids colliding.

The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program first discovered the “object,” which is about 90 million miles from Earth (nearly the same distance away as the Sun). Hubble’s new Wide Field Camera 3 picked up the image, which scientists initially thought was a comet–except that the debris tail is much rougher than a comet’s usual smooth dust envelope, the report said.

If true, the asteroid crash occurred at about 11,000 miles per hour, or five times the speed of a rifle shot, according to researchers. Holy smokes. (Image credit: NASA)

Tonight, as you may have heard, is the largest and brightest full moon of the year . This is thanks to the fact that the moon is near perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit to Earth. Tonight’s moon will be about 14 percent wider and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons, according to Space.com. And you can’t miss the brilliant, reddish “star” near the Moon: It’s actually the planet Mars, which made its closest approach to Earth (60 million miles) in more than 2 years on Wednesday; it won’t be closer until 2014. Tonight it’s “at opposition,” opposite the sun in the sky and visible all night.

Taking a picture of the Moon can be a challenge. It’s difficult to get a good photo of even a normal full moon because its intense glare tends to wash out detail, especially in brighter areas of its surface. (At a full moon, the Earth is located between the sun and moon, and sunlight is reflected straight back at us, with no shadows to provide contrast.) How to counteract this depends on the type of camera you’re using.

Researchers may have figured out a way to dislodge dust particles from sensitive equipment on the Moon or Mars using sound waves.

Here’s how it works: by playing back a high-pitched (13.8 KHz, 128 dB) standing wave of sound from a 1.25-inch tweeter, and focusing it on a reflector several inches away, researchers from the Department of Physics and Materials Science Program found it was enough to dislodge dust particles on the reflector’s surface, according to Physorg.com.

Later, the researchers tested this acoustic levitation process, as it is called, on a solar panel that was reduced to just 10 percent of its original power output after being coated with fine dust. The process boosted output back to 98.4 percent of maximum, the report said.

This is especially important since dust particles on the Moon and on Mars are sharper and more abrasive than on Earth, thanks to the thinner atmosphere. The next step: figuring out how to make the process work when actually out in the thin atmosphere; right now it would only work inside a sealed space station. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

It could be like the 1848 Gold Rush–except for diamond, and on another planet.

Discovery News reports that oceans of liquid diamond, complete with solid diamond icebergs, could be flowing on both Neptune and Uranus. The research, first reported in the journal Nature Physics, found that diamond behaves just like water when freezing or melting, with solid forms floating on top of liquid forms, the report said.

What’s interesting about this is that diamond is very difficult to melt. It’s very hard, and tends to turn into graphite at very high temperatures. That graphite is what melts in the end, the report said. When researchers liquefied the diamond at super-high pressures similar to those found on Uranus and Neptune, and then reduced the temperature later, solid pieces of diamond began to appear that didn’t sink.

Diamond oceans–already theorized numerous times in the past, but even more likely in light of this latest research–could also explain the orientation of Uranus and Neptune’s magnetic fields, the report said. We won’t know the composition for sure without either sending spacecraft there, or simulating the conditions here on Earth; both of which require oodles of money.

And for the record, I was joking about a new Gold Rush. Because that’s all we need: Richard Branson in his SpaceShipTwo flying to Neptune and sticking a flag in its (gaseous) surface.